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My dad's a physics prof, so I got to check out the various labs he would work in. The first computer I saw was probably in 1975. A paper terminal hooked up to a mainframe.
I got to start playing with them myself around 1977 or 1978 at his lab. He built a Heathkit terminal for our home in around 1980 or so and I used to dial in to the college computer which was hooked up to the Dartmouth computer where there was a chat room. I was doing that in 1982 for sure. Maybe in 1981. It had a 300 baud modem. You would see the text fill the screen, character by character, line by line.
We also borrowed a friend's Apple 2 somewhere around 1984, and had that set up in our basement for a year or so. That was my first real personal computer experience.
I got exposed to a lot of high tech equipment in my youth. I remember when somebody was excitedly showing me the Cray computer they got to use in the late '80s, and I was most impressed by the built-in padded bench. I sat on it.
I'd consider the Heathkit terminal to be the first. This is what it looked like.
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