As far as the best research can uncover, in 1971, Gordon Henry Jakes (pictured above), a junior lab technician at Kozar Semiconductors in Modesto, California became the very first person to humorously type 5318008 into a digital calculator’s display screen, which as any third grader from 1982 can tell you, when turned upside down, spells the digital approximation of “boobies.”
“You know, they say the average human male thinks about sex every seven seconds or thereabouts, and I guess, back then, I was no different,” remembers Mr. Jakes. “If it hadn’t been me, it would’ve been somebody else--I just happened to record it in our annual joke book the gang in Lab C did every year for the company picnic. So the paper trail is there. History’s gaze falls on me, oddly enough. Sort of like how they say language most likely arose independently in three distinct areas in the world, there were probably a legion of calculator users like me typing “boobies” and giggling all through the seventies. What’s really interesting, is the limited window of this joke. Who uses calculators anymore, really? At least not in the way they were used back in my day. Do grade schoolers still have a Texas Instruments calculator in their book bag? Or even if they do, they also probably have a web-enabled device that, if their parents aren’t careful, will let them access real boobies at any moment of the day. 5318008 can’t compete against that. I wonder if there were similar gags with similarly short windows of historical relevance. Was there some euphemistic pun made about phonograph needles, or butter churners, that made eight year olds of their own day snort milk through their nose as they tried to stifle a guffaw? I’m just glad I got to add my bit to the conversation.”