It'sall relative
Back in 1966 it was considered quite an achievement to have shoehorned a magnetic tape multi-tasking operating system - and a high level language compiler - into the largest new computer the company possessed. That was a whole 131kbytes of ferrite store on an RCA Spectra 70/45.
It was lightning fast at running the self-booting papertape "perfect numbers" program that had become a staple "impress the visitors" demonstration for the Company's computers. It clattered out the discovered numbers on the console Teletype at a slowly reducing frequency.
The next year the top of the range prototype English Electric Computers System 4/70 had 1Mbyte of memory. This was massive both in capacity - and the number of six feet high cabinets stretching down the room. It made the previous "perfect numbers" demonstration look quite lethargic.
Somewhere in my archive should be a January 1970 edition of a free IT magazine with a front cover graphic proclaiming "Year Zero". The previously bumper revenue earning job advertisements were reduced to almost nothing as the 1960s computing boom hit the rocks.
Another item that has miraculously survived is Issue 1 of an ICL "Network News" dated January 1976.
A few quotes from the leader article:
"In the last few years a number of large network systems have been pioneered in the Unite States. These include the scientific ARPA network and the general administrative system Infonet.
[...]
This country is behind in such matters.
[...]
A network, then, should be regarded as a mainframe manufacturer's first answer to distributed computing.
[...]
At present, the Post Office are conducting trials on the Experimental Packet Switching System (EPSS) [...].
End quotes
It all seems just like yesterday.