ANTIC Interview 388 - Henry and Nancy Taitt, Creative Learning Association

06/22/20 • 42 min

Henry and Nancy Taitt, Creative Learning Association Henry Taitt was founder of the Creative Learning Association, which created books and classes about how to program computers in BASIC. Henry, along with his wife Nancy Taitt, ran the company from 1982-1988. The book series, TLC For Growing Minds — TLC means Thinking, Learning, Creating — delivered self-paced lessons about the BASIC programming language. Versions of the series were available for Atari 8-bit, Apple II, IBM PC, TRS-80, and other platforms. Each platform series had seven books with color-coded covers: the red cover was level 1, orange for level 2, yellow for level 3, and so on down the rainbow. Another series offered platform-agnostic microcomputer projects. The material was used as the bases for in-person classes at computer labs around the United States. Creative Learning Association also published a newsletter and a "national registry of computer programers" highlighting students who had progressed in the book series. I have been able to find and scan some of Creative Learning Association materials and upload them to The Internet Archive. This interview took place on April 14, 2020. TLC for Growing Minds book scans

Nancy Taitt died in 2022. Her obituary.

Nancy Taitt died in 2022. Her obituary.

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ANTIC Interview 387 - Claudia Cohl, Editor-in-Chief of Family Computing and K-Power Magazine

Claudia Cohl, Editor-in-Chief of Family Computing and K-Power Magazine Claudia Cohl was the editor-in-chief of Family Computing Magazine for its entire run. Published by Scholastic, the magazine ran for 49 issues, from September 1983 through September 1987. Then it published 11 more issues, though August 1988, as "Family and Home Office Computing." Finally, it was rebranded "Home Office Computing". Claudia remained editor there until a new division was formed, and she moved to the Professional Publishing department to focus on magazines for teachers. In a 1983 New York Times article "Children's Magazine for a Computer Age," Claudia is quoted: "Our magazine is primarily for parents. Parents feel confused about computers and software and they feel they have no place to turn. We think parents will be using our magazine themselves or with their kids. Children will be picking up the magazine too." Claudia was also editor-in-chief of K-Power magazine, a computer magazine for kids. Only eight issues of K-Power were published, running from February 1984 to November/December 1984, after which it was merged with Family Computing. Our interview took place in two portions, on June 29, 2018 and December 11, 2019. Read Family Computing at Internet Archive Read K Power at Internet Archive Wikipedia on Family Computing New York Times article "Children's Magazine for a Computer Age"

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ANTIC Interview 389 - Brad Stewart, Covox

Brad Stewart, Covox Brad Stewart was the co-founder and chief designer of Covox, the company that created Covox VoiceMaster. VoiceMaster was speech digitizer and voice recognition hardware for the Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit, and Apple II computers. Covox's own demonstration audio tape describes it well, although the demo tape that I found doesn't mention the Atari. This interview took place on May 21, 2020. Aerosynth Brad's blog post about Covox Voice Master Kay plays with VoiceMaster in 2014 Covox Voicemaster Demo cassette A Bionic Approach to Speech Processing Escape from Planet X at AtariMania