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Supplement: Hollerith by, The Quarterly, Columbia University School of Mines, Vol.X No.16 (Apr 1889), pp.238-255. Supplement: Grosch by Dr. (2003), 500+ pages, including several chapters on IBM's Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University in the 1940s and 50s.

[ Also available in ] Supplement: Brennan by Jean Ford Brennan (1971). 76 pages, 25 photos. The history of IBM-sponsored computing research and laboratories at Columbia University, 1928 though 1970.

Supplement: Hankam, the memoir of computing education pioneer, including his escape from Nazi Europe, his time at IBM Watson Laboratory at Columbia University, and his continuing adventures. Supplement: Krawitz by Eleanor Krawitz, Columbia Engineering Quarterly, November 1949.

Personalities: [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] IBM Punched-Card Machines: [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Other Popular Sub-Pages: [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Making History. [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] The story of computing at Columbia is presented chronologically. Most links are to local documents, and therefore will work as long as all the files accompanying this document are kept together. There are also a few relatively unimportant external links, which are bound to go bad sooner or later -- such is the Web. Columbia University was established by in 1754 in downtown Manhattan near what is now City Hall.

The campus moved to 49th Street and Madison Avenue in 1857, and from there to its present site at 116th Street and Broadway in 1897 (). In 1879, (1860-1929) received his Engineer of Mines (EM) degree from the Columbia University []. After graduation he stayed on as an assistant to one of his professors, W.P. Trowbridge, who later went on to what was to become the US Census Bureau and took Hollerith with him. This led to Hollerith's development of the modern standard punch card and the and that were used to process the 1890 Census []. Hollerith wrote up his invention and submitted it to the Columbia School of Mines, which granted him a PhD in 1890 [].

Hollerith's name is synonymous with the advent of automatic computing; until about 1940, punched-card calculators, tabulators, and so on were commonly called 'Hollerith machines', even when they were made by other companies. 1896: Herman Hollerith founds the Tabulating Machine Company, which was to become (through various mergers and renamings) the International Business Machines company, IBM.

1900-1920: Prof. Harold Jacoby, Chair of the Astronomy Department, in a memo dated 4 December 1909, refers to 'Miss Harpham (our chief computer)' [].

'Computer' was an actual job title in those days, referring to someone whose job was to compute -- usually tables from formulas -- by hand or using a mechanical calculator (more about this in Herb Grosch's, e.g. The 1917-18 Columbia University Bulletin, Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, in the Equipment section, lists 'five computing machines' without further detail (you can find a list of possible candidates at the ). Apropos of nothing, professor Jacoby was a graduate of the Columbia class of 1885, and organized a gift from that class to the University: the that was mounted on the Sundial on 116th Street (now College Walk) from 1914 to 1946, and now sits in the middle of a field in Michigan []. Jacoby died in 1932; Wallace Eckert (about whom much more ) wrote his obituary in Popular Astronomy. 1906: Hollerith brings his to market, the first with and the first such device that is 'programmable' via a.

16 June 1911: The Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation, CTR, is founded by the merger of Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company with several others. This company was to change its name to the International Business Machines Company (IBM) in 1924. IBM celebrated its 100th anniversary on 16 June 2011. [ ] [ 1920 ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] The Columbia University Statistical Laboratory (location unknown) includes Hollerith,, and sorting machines, Burroughs adding machines, and calculators (the latter was the first device to perform direct multiplication), plus reference works such as math and statistical tables. Chaddock (Statistics Dept) was in charge. The Astronomy department (Prof.

Jacoby) still has the 'five computing machines' []. For a gallery of late-1920s computing machines.

For a 1926 aerial view of Columbia University. For a 1925 Columbia University map. (1902-1971) joins Columbia's Astronomy faculty, specializing in celestial mechanics and most especially the moon. In pursuit of these interests, Eckert is to become a true computer pioneer.

(1894-1986), head of the University Bureau of Collegiate Educational Research [], proposes to Thomas J. Watson Sr., president of IBM, a method for automated scoring of examination papers in large-scale testing programs (which previously involved 'acres of girls trying to tabulate. Test results' []). After some discussion, Watson sent three truckloads of tabulating, card-punching, sorting, and accessory equipment to the basement of Hamilton Hall [,].

1928: Meanwhile in England, (1893-1950), Superintendant of H.M. Nautical Almanac Office, begins a project to calculate future positions of the moon using punched cards, a sorter, a tabulator, and a duplicating punch, in what is probably the first use of these machines for scientific calculation []. This work would shortly inspire Columbia's to take the next historic step: automating these calculations. As we will see, much of the impetus towards automated scientific computation (and therefore modern computers) came from astronomers, and its primary application was in navigation. The same impetus brought us accurate, portable timepieces in the previous century. 1928: Columbia's medical school, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, moves from 10th Avenue and 55th-60th Streets to Washington Heights between Broadway and Fort Washington Avenue, 165th-168th Streets, the former site of (1903-1912), the baseball stadium of the New York Yankees (known as the New York Highlanders until 1912).

Jun 1929: Prof. Wood's operation became the Columbia University Statistical Bureau (). In addition to tabulating test results, it served as a 'computer center' for other academic departments, particularly the Dept of Astronomy, which used the equipment for 'interpolating astronomical tables' [,]. [ ] [ ] [ 1930 ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] 1930-31: Previously, Professor Wood had convinced Watson to build special, which IBM called 'Columbia machines' and delivered in 1930-31.

These machines could process 150 cards per minute and were unique in their ability to rapidly accumulate sums of products or squares []. The Statistical Bureau soon became a service provider to outside organizations like the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton []. (So how much did we charge?:-) 1931: Walter S. Lemmon, a Columbia University Electrical Engineering graduate and president of the Radio Industries Corporation, demonstrated the first working, an electric typewriter coupled with radio transmitting and receiving apparatus. Watson's contacts at Columbia put him in touch with Lemmon and IBM hired him.

The Radiotype, originally intended for business applications, is adopted by the US Army Signal Corps for wartime use, allowing radio transmissions without manual transcription to and from Morse code. Before the war was over, Radiotype machines had been outfitted with encryption equipment to provide almost instant transmission and receipt of secure messages []. In recognition of his interest in Columbia University and his large equipment donations, IBM Chairman is appointed Columbia Trustee.

In return, Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler is appointed to IBM's Board of Directors []. Eckert () of the Astronomy Department, a user of the Statistical Bureau, proposed modifications to IBM machines for advanced astronomical calculations, and within a few weeks the machines, including an (modified to Eckert's specifications under the supervision of IBM's G.W. Baehne [] and dubbed the 'Astronomical Calculator' []) were delivered to the Rutherford Observatory in the attic of.

Until 1937 () this facility was variously known as the Rutherford Laboratory, the Astronomical Laboratory, and the Hollerith Computing Bureau (the minutes of the 61st meeting of the American Astronomical Society, 29-30 Dec 1938, refer to a visit 'to the Hollerith Computing Bureau, where vast computing projects are being carried out under the Direction of Dr. It was the first permanent IBM installation in the world to do scientific work (Comrie's Greenwich setup had not been permanent). For his work, Eckert designed a to interconnect the new equipment, eventually incorporating methods to solve differential equations by numerical integration []. The Astronomical Laboratory was the first to perform general scientific calculations automatically []. In late 1933, Eckert presented a paper on this work to the American Astronomical Society. Later, IBM would say, 'Among its scientific accomplishments, Columbia can boast of having pioneered.

The use of automatic computing machines for research work' []. A seemingly mundane but significant aspect of this work was the new ability to feed the result of one computation into the next and print the results of these calculations directly, thus eliminating the transcription errors that were common in astronomical and lunar tables []. To illustrate with a 1946 quote from Kay Antonelli, University of Pennsylvania, referring to her wartime work [], 'We did have desk calculators at that time, mechanical and driven with electric motors, that could do simple arithmetic.

You'd do a multiplication and when the answer appeared, you had to write it down to reenter it into the machine to do the next calculation. We were preparing a firing table for each gun, with maybe 1,800 simple trajectories.

To hand-compute just one of these trajectories took 30 or 40 hours of sitting at a desk with paper and a calculator.' Imagine the effect of a transcription error early in the 30-40 hour procedure. Ben Wood and his Statistical Bureau work with IBM to develop mark-sense technology to improve the efficiency of processing standardized tests []. The result was the, marketed beginning in 1937 []. Wood is remembered at Columbia through the, and at the, which dedicated its largest building to him in 1965. 1935: Practical Applications of the Punched Card Method in Colleges and Universities, edited by George W.

Baehne of IBM, published by Columbia University Press; hardbound, 442 pages, 257 figures. Contains articles by Ben Wood and Wallace Eckert, among many others. Most of the applications described are straighforward tabulating and bookkeeping operations; Eckert's is the exception. For a more detailed discussion of this book. Wallace Eckert hires Lillian Feinstein [Hausman] as computing lab manager, placing her at or very near the head of the class of Women Pioneers of Computing []. In Eckert's Lab, she programmed and performed scientific computations on the,, and other machines.

She stayed with Eckert until 1948, on loan for a time to the [], and then from 1945 on the Watson Lab technical staff. In the early Watson Lab days she (and others such as ) trained computing newcomers such as and. From the early Astronomical Lab equipment, she moved on to the (and 602-A),, the, and the, and when Columbia began to hold academic computing courses in 1946, she ran Grosch's lab sessions. Much more about Lillian in 's book COMPUTER [] (in which Herb refers to her as 'the senior full-time scientific punched card expert in the whole world' in 1946). Other Women Pioneers of Computing at Columbia include 1940s-era Watson Lab members Marjorie Severy [Herrick],, and., though by no means a Columbian, was present at the (ACM), held at Columbia in 1947.

The roster of Watson Lab technical staff (1945-70) is listed in Brennan []. Out of 207 professional staff members, 35 are definitely women. Many more are listed with only initials; some others by Romanized Chinese name (which generally does not indicate gender). But at least 17% of the technical staff were women, which isn't bad for the postwar years, in which women were discouraged from working (or worse, laid off from their wartime jobs). Professor Eckert's astronomical lab in Pupin Hall's Rutherford Observatory becomes the Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau (), jointly sponsored by IBM, the American Astronomical Society, and the Columbia Department of Astronomy [,,], to serve as a resource for the entire world astronomical community [], making it the world's first center for scientific computation [].

'The initial equipment of the Bureau consists of that which has been used by the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University during the past few years. Modified to make them more efficient for scientific work. Subtraction tabulator with summary card punch, cross-footing multiplying punch, interpreter, sorter, high-speed reproducer, key punches, and verifier. 'Some possibiliies of the machines can be gained from the program now in progress. This consists primarily of (1) numerical integration of the equations of planetary motion; (2) complete checking of the lunar theory; (3) computation of precession and rectangular co-ordinates for the Yale University Zone Catalogues; (4) the photometric program of the Rutherford Observatory; and (5) problems of stellar statistics.' Users of the Bureau were charged only for labor and materials (a tremendous bargain, since the equipment was donated). The Astronomical Computing Bureau would serve as a model for many of the wartime computing centers, such as those at Los Alamos, the Naval Observatory, and the Aberdeen Proving Grounds [].

In 1938, Soviet astronomer Boris Numerov visits Eckert's lab to learn how punched card equipment might be applied to 'stellar research' in his own lab at St. Petersburg University in Moscow.: The of the Tosno Museum of Local History and Tradition (Leningrad Region) says (as of 12 Sep 2003) 'An exhibit section is devoted to Boris Numerov (1891-1941) - a prominent astronomer, land-surveyor and geophysicist, a creator of various astronomic instruments and means of minerals exploring. His family has lived in the town of Lyuban' not far from Tosno since 1922.

In the times of Stalinist repressions Boris Numerov was arrested and executed in 1941. In 1957 he was rehabilitated.' Numerov is known today for the various algorithms and methods that bear his name. In June 1940, a letter arrives for Eckert from V.N. Riazankin on behalf of the Astronomical Institute of the USSR Academy of the Sciences, asking to visit Eckert's Lab., now in charge of the Lab, forwards it to Eckert in Washington. In August 1940, I.S. Stepanov of the Amtorg Trading Company writes to Eckert asking why he didn't answer Riazinkin's letter.

Here's the final paragraph of Eckert's reply (cc'd to Schilt): May I take the opportunity to state that one of your eminent scientists, the late Dr. Numerov, corresponded with me several years ago concerning this very problem [machine construction of astronomical tables for navigation]. It was his intention to secure a similar installation, and had one in operation.

I sincerely hope that his interest in my machines was not construed by his government as treason, and that Mr. Riazankin will not meet the same fate as Dr. Schilt writes to Eckert from Columbia on August 9th: Concerning the letter of Mr. Stepanov I am shivering a little bit.

Your reply to him is extremely strong and clear, so much so that I would not be surprised if I wouldn't hear from them at all, and frankly I just soon would not. If there is any danger that [the machine] room may prove a death trap to Russian scientists I think I am in favor of not talking to these people. []. (Note: the correspondence places Numerov's death prior to 1941.) According to David Alan Grier [], the Amtorg Trading Company was a spy agency; the proposed visit from Riazinkin, which never actually took place, is thought to have been an attempted first case of computer espionage []. In fact, Amtorg was not just a front; it handled the bulk of Soviet-American trade for many years, but it was also an ideal spot for the placement of spies. Was Riazankin a spy? We'll never know. In any case he was never heard from again.

That Soviet astronomers continued to pay occasional visits to Watson Lab after the War, e.g. In connection with taking over production of the annual listing of asteroid positions from Watson Lab, which did the work in 1946 after the German was destroyed in the War. Fall 1938:, a Harvard graduate student who was working on plans for a machine to solve differential equations as part of his thesis, visits Professor Eckert's Lab; IBM engineer Clair D. Lake (who built Eckert's ) is also present. Eckert demonstrates the capabilities of his setup and suggests that he try to interest IBM in the project [].

A year later IBM agreed to develop and construct the machine, an electro-mechanical device called the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, ASCC (), the first automated general-purpose (but not electronic or stored-program) computer. The ASCC was built by Lake and his staff at IBM's Endicott NY facility and presented in 1944 to Harvard, where it did war work, and eventually became known as the Harvard Mark 1 [].

The Mark 1 was soon outpaced by IBM's (also built by Lake) and later the US Army's, the first electronic automatic general-purpose (but still not stored-program) computer.,,,, and others begin work on nuclear fission in Columbia's. Within a few months this work would become the Manhattan Project, funded by President Roosevelt () in response to warning of Nazi research in this area. After Pearl Harbor, the project moved to the University of Chicago (supposedly to make it less vulnerable to German attack) and spread to the University of California, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Hanford, and other locations. Fermi's lab was in the same building as Professor Eckert's.

I don't know to what degree, if any, Eckert's computing machines were employed in the early Manhattan Project, but they played a key role in 1945 in the final preparations for the first A-bombs []. A number of other Columbia scientists worked on the project, including,, (who identified U-235 as the fissionable uranium isotope using the Pupin cyclotron in Feb 1940), (who later left the project on moral grounds), and (who assembled the original Manhattan Project team), as well as junior faculty who would later become well-known physicists, such as and Bill Havens (both of whom I worked for in my student days),, Eugene Booth, and Richard Present.

The following is taken from a narrative, on the website (May 2003): Calculations at Los Alamos were originally done on manually operated mechanical calculators, which was not only laborious and time-consuming, but the machines broke down frequently under heavy use. The only one who could fix them promptly was (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1965), which some thought was not the best use of his time. 'Dana Mitchell, whom Laboratory Director J. Robert Oppenheimer had recruited from Columbia University to oversee procurement for Los Alamos, recognized that the calculators were not adequate for the heavy computational chores and suggested the use of IBM punched-card machines. He had seen them used successfully by Wallace Eckert at Columbia to calculate the orbits of planets and persuaded [Stanley] Frankel and [Eldred] Nelson to order a complement of them. 'The new IBM punched-card machines were devoted to calculations to simulate implosion, and Metropolis and Feynman organized a race between them and the hand-computing group.

'We set up a room with girls in it. Each one had a. But one was the multiplier, and another was the adder, and this one cubed, and all she did was cube this number and send it to the next one,' said Feynmann. For one day, the hand computers kept up: 'The only difference was that the IBM machines didn't get tired and could work three shifts.

But the girls got tired after a while.' ' May 1939: Columbia University's Baker Field (at 215th Street in upper Manhattan) was the site of the, a baseball game between Columbia and Princeton universities, May 17, 1939, broadcast by NBC. (The first televised sports event in the world was the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.) ]. [ ] [ ] [ ] [ 1940 ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Prof.

Eckert publishes [], the first computer book. The book '.covers nearly a decade of work by W.J. Eckert on astronomical calculations by machine processes. Based on firsthand experience, it describes a gamut of large calculations that could best be carried out by machines able to process numbers in machine-readable form. These calculations include the construction of mathematical tables, the numerical integration of differential equations, numerical harmonic analysis and synthesis, and the solution of simultaneous equations. Often known as the 'Orange Book' on account of the vividly colored covers of its original printing, Eckert's book was the bible of many workers engaged in punched card computing at the IBM Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University and elsewhere.

The process of carrying out the integration of the differential equations is explained in detail. It involves the use of the multiplier, tabulator, and summary punch in concert, guided by the setting of a calculation control switch, which acts as a master controller advancing automatically. Through twelve positions (). This control switch. Was a precursor of sequential control in electronic computers' [].

'Some of the better-known builders of the early computers, like at MIT, J. Presper Eckert of the, and at Harvard, got their first introduction in the famous orange book' []. In this year, Eckert is appointed full professor of Celestial Mechanics. Eckert leaves Columbia for an assignment with the, which he rapidly 'computerizes' to create accurate air and sea navigation tables for the US Air Corps and Navy using the techniques he devised at Columbia [], which allowed design and production of the in record time (the first issue of the Air Almanac appeared December 1st, 1940, produced entirely by machine methods). The in Pupin, now directed by (but with Eckert still running the show from Washington), was assigned to tasks for the looming war, such as ballistic firing tables, and trajectory calculations, and later, design calculations for the [] — 'Mathematics Goes to War' []. Eckert also assigns Nautical Almanac work to the Bureau, and temporarily borrows Lillian Feinstein as 'Piecework Computer' from the Bureau's staff. The Bureau existed until 1951, but by 1948 most of its work had migrated to [].

IBM played a large part in the Allied war effort, supplying all of its products to the US government at 1% over cost, and taking on new jobs as well, including manufacture of nearly six percent of all M1 rifles [] [] [] (other non-weapons companies made M1s too, including National Postal Meter Company, General Motors, Underwood [typewriters], and Rock-Ola, a maker of juke boxes). IBM also evacuated the families of employees in England to Toronto [] and assisted the families of US employees who had gone off to war and held jobs open for all its returning veterans []. According to allegations in 2001 [] (having nothing to do with Columbia), IBM might also have played a part in, in which widespread use was made of punched-card technology manufactured by IBM's German subsidiary, [], which had been taken over by the Nazi government in 1940.

The degree of IBM's involvement with Dehomag after that is or was at issue []. The Bureau of Radio Research (founded at Princeton University in 1937), headed by Paul Lazarsfeld, moves to Columbia University, with quarters at 15 Amsterdam Avenue. In 1949 it would move to 427 West 117th Street, and about 1953 to 605 West 115th Street, the other half of the former, across from the. Its name would change to the Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR) in 1944, and it would live on until 1977, when it was replaced by the Center for Social Sciences (later, the Lazarsfeld Center for Social Sciences, and still later the ).

BASR produced a great many quantitative studies and in fact pioneered quantitative sociology [,]. From its inception in 1940, the Bureau was in possession of IBM.

'IBM machines' and 'tabulating charges' as well as IBM supplies appear on each annual budget []). The BASR's 1954-56 budgets show $6000 per month for IBM equipment rental, which suggests a rather massive capacity (compare with the of 1957). The BASR Report on the Year 1957-58 says 'The Bureau also maintains its own IBM data processing laboratory in University Hall, and other IBM equipment for use by students in Fayerweather Hall. The machine facilities of the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory are available for certain highly technical problems not readily solved by the Bureau's own equipment' []. Pnina Stern, who worked at the Bureau until its demise, says 'When I got there in 1966 BASR had [at 605 W 115th Street], an, an, and a that could be wired to produce cross tabulations and other good stuff. Fred Meier was a whiz at wiring up this machine. You had to wire it for each thing you wanted to do.

It printed out cross tabulations and maybe even some other statistics. Some of the IBM machines looked like pieces of with intricately carved wrought iron legs. Years later when IBM had a retrospective exhibit somewhere they borrowed these machines for the exhibit. Maybe Fred M. Owned them at that time.

As for computing, someone at Columbia -- possibly at BASR -- wrote the very first computer cross tabulation program. I believe it was written in IBM 7090 machine language and you had to give it numerical coded instructions. It was not very user friendly. I think it may have been written by Peter Graham.' As noted, much of BASR's quantitative work was done in-house on its tabulating and EAM equipment, but more demanding tasks were carried out. By 1961, BASR was (with Physics and Chemistry) one of Columbia's leading users of computing, and one of the reasons the was created []. After 1963, BASR was a major user of the Computer Center mainframes, sending work-study students with massive decks of cards to the on campus on a regular basis to run jobs.

'We always duplicated the cards before we sent them over because we had visions of the students dropping the IBM card boxes and the cards floating across Broadway.' In the 1970s, were installed for interactive access to mainframe applications like SAS and SPSS. The Directors of BASR were Paul Lazarsfeld (1940-1951), Charles Glock (1951-1957), David Sills (1957-1960), Bernard Berelson (1960-61), and Allen Barton (1962-1977). Since the 1930s, Columbia had been IBM's main contact with scientific computing and the academic community [], and to carry forward this relationship,, a Columbia Trustee since 1933, wrote to Columbia Provost (and Acting President 1945-47) Frank Diehl Fackenthal [] agreeing to establish a computing research laboratory at Columbia University as soon as space can be secured: 'I am confident that this laboratory will be another major forward step in the long and productive cooperation between the [ sic] IBM and Columbia University.' The US Naval Observatory produces the 1946 edition of the in what is arguably the first instance of 'computer'-driven typesetting, using the newly delivered programmable card-driven that had been specified by Professor Eckert in 1941, but whose production was delayed by the War.

'To give all possible aid to the war effort and to promote peace through scientific development, a computing laboratory has been established at Columbia University by International Business Machines Corporation. The new laboratory, to be known as the Thomas J. Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University, will serve as a world center for the treatment of problems in the various fields of science, whose solution depends on the effective use of applied mathematics and mechanical calculations' []. Columbia Professor, now head of IBM's new Pure Research Department, is appointed to head the laboratory.

Temporarily housed on the tenth floor of Pupin Hall, staffed and paid for by IBM, with the staff holding faculty appointments and teaching credit courses in math, physics, astronomy, and other fields. The new lab attracted attention all over the scientific world; visitors included,, and [,,, ]. The lab was named for IBM's Thomas J. Watson (Senior), a Columbia Trustee (it is said that Watson is the one who nominated Eisenhower as Columbia President in 1948, but he meant Milton! []). Within a year, Watson Lab would become the third most powerful computing facility in the world, after the US Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground and, and would remain so for some years. Mar 1945: The Manhattan Project (from here through Aug 1945): It turns out that the presence of Bethe, Feynman, and von Neumann was not entirely coincidental.

Writes that in May 1945, calculations at Los Alamos were falling behind. Eckert (who had just hired him to work at the new Watson Lab) explained, 'They came to IBM for help. Watson and [IBM engineering director]. Thought immediately of the at Columbia, but it is heavily engaged in fairly high priority work for another part of the Army*, and really has no room for physical expansion anyhow. It has only two and an old, and there is hardly any room to move.'

New space was needed, and found, for Watson Lab's first task: solution of temperature-pressure equations for completion of the A-bombs at Los Alamos [] (more about this and much more in of Dr. Grosch's book) Now that Germany's defeat was imminent, Leo Szilard — who, with Enrico Fermi, had initiated the Manhattan Project at Columbia in — did not believe the A-bomb should be used on Japan. He obtained a to President Roosevelt from Albert Einstein so he could present his case against dropping the bomb. A preliminary meeting with Eleanor Roosevelt was set up for May 8th, but the President died on April 12th and Szilard was blocked from contacting President Truman.

________________________________ * The Army work referred to was for the Army Air Force: test data reduction for a GE aerial fire control system that later went into production for the []. 8 May 1945: VE Day, Germany surrenders, the war in Europe ends.

Szilard wrote and circulated a among his fellow scientists at the University of Chicago against the use of atomic weapons and asking President Truman not to use them on Japan. He also sent copies to Oak Ridge and Los Alamos for circulation (the Los Alamos copy was buried by Groves and Oppenheimer). Szilard's petition went through several drafts; the first one (July 3rd) included the following text: Atomic bombs are primarily a means for the ruthless annihilation of cities. Once they were introduced as an instrument of war it would be difficult to resist for long the temptation of putting them to such use. The last few years show a marked tendency toward increasing ruthlessness. At present our Air Forces, striking at the Japanese cities, are using the same methods of warfare which were condemned by American public opinion only a few years ago when applied by the Germans to the cities of England.

Our use of atomic bombs in this war would carry the world a long way further on this path of ruthlessness. Subsequent drafts were toned down a bit but made the same recommendations. The urged that 'before this weapon be used without restriction in the present conflict, its powers should be adequately described and demonstrated, and the Japanese nation should be given the opportunity to consider the consequences of further refusal to surrender'. Watson Lab staff who were performing calculations for Los Alamos were unaware of the petitions or, indeed (with only two exceptions, Eckert and Grosch, the only ones with security clearances), that the calculations were for a bomb []. In any event, the petitions never reached the President.

Hiroshima: 'Now we knew what we had been working on' []. A second A-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki August 9th. More than 200,000 people died from the two blasts. Was the atomic bomb needed to end the war with Japan? The US Strategic Bombing Survey [] says, 'Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945 [the earliest possible date for an invasion], Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war in the East, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.' It was known by the Allies [] that since May 1945, Japan had been making peace overtures to the Soviet Union, both in Tokyo and Moscow.

This was done at the direction of the Emperor, who had told his envoy, Prince Konoye, to 'secure peace at any price, notwithstanding its severity' []. All indications (e.g. In *) are that the US deliberately prolonged the war, first by delaying the Potsdam Conference and then by striking the 'Emperor can stay' clause from the Potsdam Declaration, until the bombs could be dropped, and that this was done to intimidate the Soviet Union. Former President, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, and Supreme Commander of NATO Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in his memoir,, (Doubleday 1963), “The incident took place in 1945 when Secretary of War Stimson visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan.

I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act... But the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'.” FDR's and Truman's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and of the Combined US and British Chiefs of Staff Admiral William D. Leahy wrote in his book (Whittlesey House, 1950), “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan.

The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.” _____________________________ * Note: The link to the Stimson diaries seems to go stale from time to time, and the selection of entries seems to change; as of mid-August 2005, some independent copies can be found and. For further detail and analysis see: ' by Gar Alperovitz, Foreign Policy (Summer 1995) No.

99: 15-34, esp. 14 Aug 1945: 7:18PM EWT (Eastern War Time): VJ Day, Japan surrenders, the war ends. The formal surrender was signed September 2.

(The US and many other countries were on permanent daylight savings time throughout the war; in the US this was called War Time -- Eastern War Time, Central War Time, etc.) Oct 1945: Watson Laboratory establishes itself as the cataloger of mathematical tables on punched cards, meaning that any scientist who needed to obtain machine-readable tables of mathematical functions such as sin, cos, tan, log, squares, cubes, inverses, roots, Bessel functions, Lagrangean interpolation coefficients, spheroid functions, grid coordinates, and so forth, could find out from Watson Lab where to get them []. Of course Watson Lab itself was a major producer of such tables. As these card decks were freely shared, they might be regarded as an early form of freeware. Watson Laboratory moves from Pupin Hall (where it had been since ) into 612 West 116th Street () (), a former fraternity house vacated by the War, purchased by IBM and renovated as a laboratory () with offices and teaching facility [,]. A 'simple bronze plaque' was affixed to the building reading 'WATSON SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING LABORATORY at COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY' [] (WHERE IS THE PLAQUE NOW?). Watson Lab's early equipment included two experimental one-of-a-kind relay calculators, two, plus conventional and inherited from the Astronomy Lab, and within a couple years would grow to include a and the first. Read more about renovation and equipping of this building in of the.

This building is now Casa Hispanica, home of Columbia's. Herb Grosch confirms that Chock Full O' Nuts was open for business on the southwest corner of 116th and Broadway in 1945, where it remained a fixture for decades. Chock Full O' Nuts sightings go back as far as. When did it close? Mid-1980s I think. A few other establishments that were here in 1945 are still open in 2004: The West End (1915), Tom's Restaurant (1936), Columbia Hardware (1939), and Mondel's Chocolates (1943). Eckert describes Watson Lab to an IBM Research Forum [].

'It is the intention of the Laboratory to make these facilities available to any scientist from any place in this country or abroad, regardless of whether he is connected with a university or a laboratory. This is our fundamental principle: problems will be accepted because of scientific interest and not for any other considerations. Scientific interest can be of two kinds: the problem may interest us because of the complexity of the calculation, or it may be considered on the basis of scientific merit of the result rather than the means. While routine computation is not the aim of the Laboratory, a considerable amount of it will be done on worthy causes.' Later he describes some experimental machines: 'Among the digital machines which have been developed over the years, there are several based on the relay network; we now have two of these at the Laboratory [ note: he is not referring to the, which had not yet been delivered].

The first one was developed with the idea of seeing how few relays it is possible to use to produce a calculating machine. This machine is built on the standard IBM key punch. The control is very convenient. A combination of control panel and master card or program card. Thus, instead of having twenty control panels for a complicated job, you can set it up to use one control panel and twenty master cards.'

This might very well be the birth of software. The control panel, which stays in place for the duration of the job, defines the 'instructions' of the machine, in a sense its 'microprogram'. The sequence of operations (invoking instructions from the control panel) is on a deck of cards.

It is a PROGRAM. A few years later, IBM would build a, and from there it is a short step to the first general-purpose stored-program computer, which, arguably, was IBM's, built under Eckert's direction (in fact the SSEC was completed before the CPC). The significance of card programming can't be overstated. A deck of control cards (along with the specifications for the corresponding control-panel wiring, at least in these early days) documents the program. It can be printed, read, modified, duplicated, mailed, kept for future use, and run again on different data sets. Much of this might be said of plugboards too, provided you don't have to recycle them, thus destroying the program. But most important, a program deck can be any length at all, thus allowing extremely complex problems to be run -- problems that might have required a thousand plugboards.

(Trust me, nobody had 1000 plugboards; and they cost serious money.) 1946: Watson Lab produces (formerly Kleine Planeten), the annual asteroid listing for the year 1947, about 100 pages of tables showing the position of each body at 8-day intervals, calculated on the Watson Lab, the world's fastest computing devices at the time. Watson Laboratory courses first appear in the University Bulletin.

These are graduate-level credit courses. Among them are courses in computing machinery and numerical analysis taught by and believed to be the first computer science courses offered by any university [] or, more precisely, 'the first such courses in the world fully integrated into a university curriculum and continuing year after year' []. Eckert taught Machine Methods of Scientific Calculation (Astronomy 111-112); Grosch taught Numerical Methods (, a graduate course I took some 30 years later. The next year added Numerical Solution of Differential Equations (Physics 228).

By 1951, the curriculum also included EE 275 (Electrical and Electronic Components of Digital Computers, taught by Watson Lab's Robert M. Walker) and Physics 255 (Separation of Variables in Mathematical Physics, L.H.

Most of these courses included hands-on laboratory sessions with the Watson Lab machines or (later) the downtown. Graduate-level hard-science courses used the Watson Lab machines too, including some taught by regular Columbia faculty such as (Chemistry), among whose students were (Columbia Ph.D.

1948, the founder of computational biochemistry), (Columbia B.Sc 1939, M.A. 1948), and (Oceanography), the founder of, whose students included (Columbia M.A. 1949), who went on to become President of the US National Academy of Sciences and Chairman of the National Research Council.

More about these courses in the entry. 1946-47: It was also during this period that Watson Laboratory began to provide computer time to Columbia researchers at no charge. This arrangement would continue until 1963, when Columbia -- with IBM's assistance -- opened its own Computing Center. Perhaps the first non-Watson-Lab Columbia researcher to use the Watson Lab machines was, who used the for astronomical calculations []., the Columbia Physics department's primary center for study of high-energy and nuclear physics, founded in Irvington, New York.

There is a long history of computing here too, which needs to be told, including the many and varied connection methods to Columbia's Morningside Heights campus. The (ACM) is born at a meeting of sixty computer enthusiasts at Columbia University's Havemeyer Hall []. Originally calling itself the Eastern Association for Computing Machinery, attendees of its first meeting included Columbia Professor (who arranged the space), Professor (Thomas-Fermi Model), Byron Havens of Watson Lab (chief engineer, ), of Watson Lab (designer of the first '), Watson Lab's, and 'everybody's favorite computer person',. The meeting was convened by computer pioneer and antiwar activist. ( to view documents from the first ACM meeting.) The ' Watson Laboratory Three-Week Course on Computing', taught by Eric Hankam, the first hands-on computer course (), in which scientists from all over the world learned how to apply computing machines to problems in their disciplines.

The course was given here eleven times a year until 1957 -- by which time it had been attended by 1600 people from 20 countries -- when it was moved to IBM education centers around the world []. 24 Dec 1947: First successful test of the. The IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) () was designed and built by IBM in 1946-47 under the direction of Columbia Professsor Wallace Eckert and then installed in IBM HQ at 590 Madison Ave in January 1948. This is one of the first large-scale electronic computers, and the first machine to combine electronic computation with a stored program and capable of operating on its own instructions as data. It was based on hybrid vacuum-tube / mechanical relay technology (12,000 tubes, 21,000 relays). Fully assembled, it was 140 feet long (60 + 20 + 60 U-shape) (some sources cite different dimensions) and was used initially for calculating lunar coordinates.

Reporters called it a Robot Brain. Its massive size and configuration established the public image of computers for decades to come (as in this 1961 New Yorker cover by Charles Addams).

Aside from solving important scientific problems, it was used by students of Columbia's pioneering graduate course -- part of the world's first computer science curriculum, initiated here in 1946. Popular descriptions of computers as 'brains' and analogies with the human nervous system were so rampant in the late 1940s and early 50s, that, developer of the wartime, was prompted to write an article cautioning against such wild tales as the one in the Feb 18, 1950, Saturday Evening Post, which said that computers were subject to psychopathic states which engineers cure by 'shock treatments' consisting of the application of excessively large voltages []. The SSEC was programmed from Watson Lab on standard IBM cards converted to input tapes on a special punch called the []. Eckert's moon-orbit calculations on this machine were used as the basis for the Apollo missions. It was dismantled in 1952.

One of the SSEC's programmers was John Backus (), who had two Columbia degrees and was at Watson Lab in 1950-52 [], and who went on to design FORTRAN, the first high-level machine-independent programming language, and, the first block-structured language, and is also known for (BNF), a meta-language for describing computer languages. Before FORTRAN, almost every computer program was written in machine or assembly language, and therefore was not portable to any other kind of machine. The idea of a high-level programming language was the second step on the road to user friendliness. The first step was the assembler. Such notions were not without controversy. John von Neumann, when he first heard about FORTRAN in 1954, was unimpressed and asked 'why would you want more than machine language?'

One of von Neumann's students at Princeton recalled that graduate students were being used to hand assemble programs into binary for their early machine. This student took time out to build an assembler, but when von Neumann found out about it he was very angry, saying that it was a waste of a valuable scientific computing instrument to use it to do clerical work. (These anecdotes from a biographical sketch of von Neumann by, Dept of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnical Institute.) Another SSEC programmer was, originator of the relational database model [] ( Communications of the ACM, Vol. 6, June 1970, pp.377-387), who was at Watson Lab from 1949 to 1952 [] and died. The IBM Personal Automatic Calculator was designed by John Lentz and built between 1948 and 1954 on the. Among its innovations was a for auxilliary storage, automatic positioning of the decimal point, and. When it was finally announced in 1956 as the, it was the first 'personal computer'. [,,] 1949:, Columbia's earth science facility, founded in Palisades, New York, by Professor Maurice Ewing, a user of the Watson Lab equipment.

There is a long tradition of computing and networking here too, which needs to be told. See [] for an excellent history (albeit with nothing on computing) of what is now called the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.

Quantity Machine Description Monthly Rental 3 with Alternate Program 129.00 1 with Alternate Program 106.00 2 with Card Counting Device 215.00 2 110.00 1 w/Emitter 123.00 2 with Digit Selector 950.00 1 1.00 Less 20% educational discount, plus supplies of cards, coding sheets, control (plugboard) panels, trays, and brackets totalling another $1810.25. Note: the links for some of these items are to later (but similar) models. Required personnel are one supervisor/programmer, two machine operators, and three key punch operators. Source: AIS archives. This arrangement characterizes the nature of administrative data processing at the time. There is no true computer, only unit record equipment and capable of rudimentary statistics (sums) and report generation.

According to letters of Charles Hurd, 1957-1960 [], the funding was found from 'the expected decline in enrollment of Public Law 550 [Korean War] veterans' (Veterans Readjustment Act of 1952); in his proposal to Provost John Krout (29 Oct 1957), Hurd says 'I am sure that you are aware that IBM equipment has been used in the Registrars' Offices in colleges and universities. Large and small, public and private, for many years and has proven to be a most valuable and efficient tool. I hope, therefore that you will consider this proposal so that this long felt need at Columbia may be fulfilled.'

In other words, registration was still completely manual in 1957. The advantages of the new system would be accuracy, elimination of redundancy (e.g. Each student writing the same information on many different forms, up to 23 of them) and transcription errors, and the ability to generate reports, including class lists, plus ID cards and mailing labels, not to mention 'keeping up with the Joneses', e.g.. The new equipment was installed in 307 University Hall and the new system phased in from 1959 to 1961 (with an installed rather than a 403 at an extra $250/month). Computerized registration was seen by some as a step towards dehumanization of students and turning universities into factories, a major factor in the rise of the at the University of California at Berkeley, which set the stage for campus activism, protest, and rebellion throughout the 1960s, including: 'There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop.' Of the Smithsonian Institution, this sentiment, although directed primarily at the economy and war machinery, extended to the punched-card equipment in the registrar's office: 'Berkeley protestors used punch cards as metaphor, both as a symbol of the 'system'--first the registration system and then bureaucratic systems more generally--and as a symbol of alienation. 'I am a UC student.

Please don't bend, fold, spindle or mutilate me.' ' The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (CPEMC) is founded by Professors Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

It is the first center for electroacoustic music in the USA and has a long association with Columbia computing. Located in on West 125th Street, its name was changed to in 1996. Some tales have been collected and contributed by of Bell Labs, a Columbia graduate and former faculty member with a long association with the Electronic Music Center; to read them. Sep 1958: The equipment of Columbia University IBM Watson Scientific Computing laboratory is listed [] as: Standard punched card equipment A comprehensive selection of basic punched card machines, with many special devices. The equipment includes keypunch, sorter, reproducer, and printer.

Wired-program calculators The group of electro-mechanical and electronic calculators include the Type, the Type, and the. The 607 is an automatic electronic calculator with pluggable program control and 146-digit storage capacity, capable of performing most programs at the rate of 100 cards per minute. Stored-program calculator The type is a stored-program calculator [i.e. Computer] which can store 2000 ten-digit words, read 200 cards a minute, punch 100 cards a minute, and perform approximately 100 multiplications a second. The memory capacity can be used interchangeably for numerical data and operating instructions, which permits complete flexibility in the elaboration of instructions by the machine itself. Plus special-purpose devices such as a card-driven lithography printer, a card-controlled astronomical photograph analyzer, as well as a machine shop and physics and chemistry laboratories, a highly specialized library, and access to the big IBM 700 series computers downtown. Although FORTRAN -- the first high-level, machine-independent programming language -- marked a great leap forward in user friendliness, and was probably available for the 650 by this time, it's worth remembering how one ran a FORTRAN job in the early days.

First you punched your FORTRAN program on a, along with any data and control cards. But since the 650 had no disk, the FORTRAN compiler was not resident. So to compile your program, you fed the FORTRAN compiler deck into the card reader, followed by your FORTRAN source program as data. After some time, the machine would punch the resulting object deck. Then you fed the FORTRAN run-time library object deck and your program's object deck into the card reader, followed by any data cards for your program. Your program would run and results would be punched onto yet another deck of cards. To see the results, you would feed the result deck into another machine, such as an, to have it printed on paper.

The computer itself had no printer. By the early 60s a certain division of labor had become the rule, in which 'system analysts' would make a flow chart, programmers would translate it to code, which was written by hand on ' that were given to key punch operators to be punched on cards. The coding forms and card decks were passed on to 'verifiers' who repunched the source code to catch and correct any mistakes, signed off on the job, sent the deck to the operator to await its turn at the computer. Hours later the results would be delivered to the programmer in the form of a printout and the cycle would continue. 1959:, by Watson Lab's Joachim Jeenel, is published by McGraw-Hill. From the Preface: 'The contents of this book were developed from material presented to courses on programming for stored-programming calculators held at Columbia University.

Eckert, Director of the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University, initiated the writing of the book and suggested the scope of the text.' Jeenel also taught Columbia graduate courses such as Astronomy 111-112: Machine Methods of Scientific Calculation (with Eric Hankam). 1959: An is installed in Watson Lab to supplement the 650s, and is used in Columbia research projects. 1959: The Provost's office commissions a study to develop a plan for the future of computing at Columbia. In view of the failure in 1957 to produce the space needed for a, the study concluded that a new computer center building was needed [].

The central administration concurs and begins to seek sources of funding. Dean Ralph S. Halford, a Chemistry professor, Dean of Graduate Faculties, and (perhaps most to the point) Vice Provost for Projects and Grants is in charge. Dean Halford and the University Committee on Cooperation with Watson Laboratory, which then included Professors Wallace Eckert (Astronomy and Watson Lab), Samuel Eilenberg (Mathematics), Richard Garwin (Physics and Watson Lab), and Polykarp Kusch (Physics, Nobel Prize 1955), plan the future Computer Center. [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ 1960 ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] 1960: developed by CU-and-Watson-Lab-alumnus and others.

This was to be the most influential computer language of all time, the parent of all other block-structured languages, including (among many others) Java, C, C++, Pascal, PL/I, and Ada, but not including such lovable mavericks as LISP, APL, Snobol, and Forth. 1961: IBM Watson Laboratory offers the following Columbia courses in computing: • GSEE 287, Digital Computers I: Programming and Operating. • Astronomy 111-112: The use of High-Speed Digital Computers for Scientific Calculation. •: Numerical Analysis for Research Students in Science and Engineering.

• Physics 288: Numerical Solution of Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations. • Management Games (Industrial Engineering): Market simulations. Plus short courses in IBM 650 and Fortran programming and the Share Operating System (SOS) [,].

Besides the Watson Lab courses, the Electrical Engineering Department offers: • EE 104: Electric Circuits IV: Digital Circuits and Computing Systems. • GSEE 267: Digital Systems and Automata. • GSEE 269: Information Theory.

• GSEE 274: Electrical Analogue Computers. • GSEE 275-276: Logical Design of Digital Circuits.

• GSEE 288-289: Digital Computers II and III: System Analysis and Synthesis. • EE 277-278-279: Pulse and Digital Circuits. May 1961: Dean Halford writes a Proposal to the National Science Foundation for Support of a Computing Center to be Established at Columbia University [], and shortly afterwards the NSF approves $200,000 over the first two years []. IBM pledges $125,000 for fellowships, and another $500,000 is obtained from an anonymous donor [] (who might have been Thomas J Watson Sr or another Columbia Trustee). Two IBM 7090 mainframe computers are to be acquired at an education discount, which requires Columbia to devote at least 88 hours per month for purposes of instruction and unsponsored academic research. With funding lined up, Dean Halford proposes the new Computer Center to the University Committee on Finance.

The need for a Computer Center was clear. By this point, about 220 University research projects were being handled on IBM's computers in Watson Lab and the demands had long since exceeded the Lab's capacity, resulting in the rental of IBM computers by the following university sites: • An at Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory. • An at the Nevis Cyclotron Laboratory. • An IBM 650 at Hudson Lab. • An IBM 650 at the Electronics Research Lab of the Engineering School.

The primary needs were in high-energy physics (then accounting about 200 hours of IBM 650 time per month), sociology (50 hours/month), geophysics (100 hours of time per month), biochemistry, and chemistry. 'A school of computer science will evolve gradually at the Computing Center, with an independent line of administration as an educational organ of the University'. The IBM Watson Lab courses would be taken over by the Computing Center.

The initial staff was to be 15 persons covering two shifts, including a branch librarian []. The Computing Center was to serve 'those whose research is sponsored and those whose research is not. It has been created with the aim of serving all of the needs of both groups without preference toward either one, with the expectation that its cost would have to be met in substantial part by the University' []. Sep 1961: The Columbia Committee on Finance approves Dean Halford's proposal to create a Computer Center, based on funding pledges from IBM and NSF []. 1961-63: Construction of the Computer Center building.

Total cost: $800,000 [] (PHOTOS, STORIES NEEDED). Columbia University Computer Center (CUCC) opens.

King, who received his Columbia Ph.D. In Physics as a Watson Fellow under Prof.

[] and had managed Watson Lab's computing facility [], was the first Director, with a joint appointment to the faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science [V5#3]. The original location was (the first Watson Lab), which still housed the IBM teaching facility as well as Casa Hispanica, but the new between Havemeyer and Uris halls was soon ready with machine rooms for equipment and offices for staff ('more space than we'll ever need'). The Computer Center initially housed the following equipment []: IBM 7090 () with 32768 (32K) 36-bit words of storage. This was the first commercial computer based on transistor, rather than, logic (a vacuum-tube was originally planned [], but the 7090 appeared just in time). It is in the direct line of descent from Watson Lab's. The price was $1,205,000.00 after 60% IBM educational allowance, amortized over 5 years (Letter of John A.

Krout, VP of the University, 4 Oct 1961, AcIS archives). Included: • Two data channels.

• Two Model 2 disks, total capacity: 9320000 36-bit words. • Six IBM 729VI 7-track tape drives. • an IBM, reads 800 cards/minute, punches 250. • Two chain printers, 132 cols/line, 1100 lines/minute = 3 secs/page. • 7040 Console Typewriter. • 1014 Remote Inquiry Unit. • Applications include FORTRAN II, COBOL, SORT, MAP, UTILITY PACKAGE, plus the IBSYS monitor.

With: • 4000 characters of memory. • Two 729V tape drives. • One 600 LPM printer. • Advanced Programming Package Unit Record Equipment • 5, one of which is an express punch (on stilts so the operator has to stand up). • 1 Access to computing was batch only.

Users brought decks or boxes of to the operators and came back the next day to retrieve their cards and the resulting listings from the output bins. Jobs were paid for out of grants or funny money. There were no user terminals and there was no user access to the, which was staffed around the clock by operators and a shift supervisor.

'During the first six months of the Center's operation, [the 7090] logged 907.55 hours on 158 projects for 101 members of our academic staff. Downtime ran to thirty hours or so monthly during the first two months, as expected in a new installation, but fell to acceptable levels for the remainder of the period. About forty-five percent of the time used was furnished to projects sponsored by government contracts.'

[] Aug 1963: An was added, shared by the Registrar's Office, and ran until 1973. Nov 1963: The IBM 7090 was replaced by an.

1964-70: IBM Watson Lab continues operation at 612 W 115th Street, concentrating now on life sciences and medicine. Among many results from this period was improved analysis of Pap smears, and there was an alliance with the Urban League Street Academy program, educating community kids in science. Of the Columbia Computer Center in 1965: The IBM 7094/7040 Coupled System, the Hough-Powell Device (HPD), Tape Library, Key Punch / EAM room. In 1965 the Computer Center had 25 employees, all housed in the Computer Center building: the director (Ken King), 8 operators, a librarian, and 15 technical people. Besides the IBM 7094/7040 system there was also an and a computer in the machine room, as well as the unit record equipment listed in the January 1963 entry.

[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ 1980 ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] 1980 Photo Gallery: •. 1980: Instructional computing capacity badly needs expansion. At this point, CUCCA has three instructional systems: the IBM 360/91 Open Batch system (soon to be retired), the PDP-11/50 (fully saturated), and a single DECSYSTEM-20, CU20A, which is in constant demand and heavily overburdened. There is much gathering of statistics to understand usage patterns. In response to student and faculty demands, the Collery Committee (Arnold Collery was Dean of Columbia College) was appointed to make recommendations. The instructional computers were overloaded, but why? Was the new usage real or frivolous?

A witch-hunt was launched against 'text processing' (preparing papers on the computer, sending e-mail, etc). Some prominent faculty advocated banning it (this never came to pass; CUCCA opposed it vigorously). CPU and connect-time limits were to be instituted.

Fees were to be increased. Various disincentives would be established against using the computers during 'prime time.' The tug of war between demand and resources is a persistent theme in academic computing. There has never been, and probably never will be, a clear linkage between demand and supply. Whenever resources (such as computer time, disk space, modems, network bandwidth) become scarce, as they always do, funding for expansion does not flow automatically (nor should it). First there is a demand for a precise accounting of how, for what, and by whom the current resources are being consumed, the gathering of which in turn taxes the resources still futher. Once the information is obtained, demands to flush out inappropriate use -- whose definition varies with the times (e.g.

Network capacity versus Napster in 2000) -- quickly follow. Of course instructional computing on the DEC-20s was true to this pattern. CU20A drove itself near to melting by accounting for itself. And then complicated limits were imposed on CPU time, connect time, and every other imaginable resource (using locally written software) until the interactive computing experience was surpassingly unpleasant for everyone: students, faculty, and staff alike. Relief was still more than a year away. One of the measures taken to alleviate the load on CU20A was to abolish the free perpetual student user IDs and replace them with class-related IDs that lasted only for the duration of each course. While this ensured that the DEC-20 was used only for 'legitimate' purposes, it also made it impossible for students to build up a corpus of tools and information they could use throughout their Columbia experience.

A series of discussions took place throughout 1980 exploring different possibilites for providing students with some form of self-service, inexpensive, removeable media. The result was. Jan 1980: CUCCA announces its intention to connect to ARPANET, V12#1 (but without any firm prospects of doing so, since in those days the only entree was a big Defense Department grant, which we didn't have and didn't want). In the meantime, however, staff (but not end-users) had access through our DECnet link to COLUMBIA-20.ARPA, the Computer Science DEC-20 (July 1983), and prior to that by dialup to the NYU Elf and guest accounts at Rutgers, Harvard, Stanford, CMU and elsewhere. The ARPANET was important, among other reaons, because it was how DECsystem-10 and DECSYSTEM-20 software developers could work together (by email) and share code (by FTP), and this was the beginning of the open software movement.

It is important to recall that in those days we were paid to develop and share software. Nowadays most open ('free') software is created by unpaid volunteers. Feb 1980: DECnet first operational (between CU20A and the DN200 in Mudd). Feb 1980: The DEC-20 MM (Mail Manager) e-mail program becomes popular (V12#2). This is a good example of software created by professional staff or graduate students at PDP-10 and DEC-20 sites on the ARPANET (Stanford in this case) and freely shared with other sites. Other examples of the era included the ISPELL spelling checker and corrector (also from Stanford), the EMACS text editor from MIT, the SCRIBE text formatting and typesetting system from CMU (which later became commercial) and TeX from Stanford, the Bliss-10 programming language from CMU, the SAIL programming language from Stanford, the PASCAL compiler from Rutgers, the SITGO instructional FORTRAN package from Stevens Institute of Technology, various LISP systems from different places, and KERMIT communications software from Columbia.

In fact, each place contributed bits and pieces to most of these packages so most of them were truly cooperative efforts. MM was used almost universally at Columbia for E-mail from 1980 until about 1995, with usage trailing off thereafter as Windows and the Web took over from text-based computer access. When the DEC-20 line was cancelled, we wrote a new MM program in C for Unix which again, in the sharing spirit, was made available on the ARPANET (later Internet) and adopted by many other sites worldwide as they migrated from TOPS-20 to Unix. MM survives even into the 2010s (). Jun 1980: We were considering joining TELENET and TYMNET (commercial X.3/X.25 based networks) but never did; it was way too expensive []. These were strictly terminal-to-host networks, but would have allowed travellers to dial up with a local call from almost anywhere in the USA or Canada, and conceivably could have taken the place of in-house modem pools.

Sep 1980: visits Columbia and gives a series of lectures on T EX, his. Oct 1980: Second DEC-20 installed, CU20B, for use by funded researchers and staff only; to be paid for out of income, since the budget request for a second instructional DEC-20 had been denied, again, even though the first one was seriously overloaded, and despite vocal support from students and faculty (and us of course). CU20B removed considerable load from CU20A and bought us some time until we finally were able to expand the instructional resources a year later with CU20C. (In fact, for a short period, we were able to put some students on CU20B, in their own 'partition', isolated from the paying users.) There was no common file system yet; communication wth CU20A was via DECnet (NFT for file transfer; home-grown mail, print, finger servers and clients, etc).

The IBM 360/91/75 is retired, replaced by two IBM 4331s (), CUVMA and CUVMB. These are featureless boxes that are (as you might expect) more compact and cheaper to run than the 360/91 (and lower too, so you can use them as coffee tables), and they had a new operating system, VM/CMS, which allowed Virtual Machines (VM) to run other operating systems on the same machine, thus keeping our old applications afloat. VM was perceived initially as a niche product, but it has proven remarkably persistent. The 360/91 was so big it had to be cut up with chainsaws to get it out of the building. The Gordian knot of cabling under the floor was unceremoniously disposed of with giant cable snippers the size of posthole diggers. The computer chunks were trucked away and thrown into acid baths to extract the gold.

Only the 360/91 console was spared. We had it moved to the lobby of Watson Laboratory and arranged to donate it to the now-defunct in Massachusetts, but it took a year and a half for them to pick it up. In the interim, bits and pieces were removed by passersby as souvenirs. (More about this in the entry.) 1981-82 ADP takes over the remaining pockets of decentralized administrative computing: the student systems in Philosophy Hall and the financial and payroll systems in Hogan Hall, and to some extent also the Health Sciences campus.

Superbrains arrive. The had been chosen as the first microcomputer we would deploy publicly, despite its embarrassing name, because its solid single-piece construction made it virtually user-proof, and it did indeed stand up to years of (ab)use. It ran CP/M 2.2, an 8-bit (64K) operating system. And I design the basic Kermit protocol. The first Kermit protocol transfer took place on April 29th on a loopback connection between two serial ports on CU20B. For more about the history of Kermit, and to visit the Kermit website, where provides an overview.

• Kermit Project Oral History Transcripts at the Computer History Museum and. May 1981: I talk J. Ray Scott of (CMU) in Pittsburgh, PA, into installing a leased line between Columbia and CMU and joining our two campuses by DECnet (at least that's how I remember it). CU and CMU informally but effectively merge their DEC-20 systems staffs and run common customized applications and subsystems (esp. The GALAXY spooling system, which we modified to allow printer sharing among multiple DEC-20s and spooling to the Xerox 9700).

Soon the network, called CCNET, expanded to several other universities, notably in Hoboken, NJ, which played an important role in the development of Kermit protocol and software until 1987, and produced Kermit programs for DEC's VMS, TOPS-10, and P/OS operating systems. Jun 1981: for the 8-bit Superbrain: Bill Catchings (later, in 1983, Bill also wrote CP/M-86 Kermit for the 16-bit version of CP/M). Shortly after this, the Superbrain was deployed in Mudd. It had no applications to speak of besides Kermit, which was used by students to archive their DEC-20 files onto floppy disks (the purpose for which was Kermit developed). Floppy disks (the then-modern 5.25' ones, not the frisbee-sized ones used on other CP/M micros) for the Superbrain were sold in SSIO, $6.00 each (!).

Later, but before 16-bit micros like the IBM PC appeared, we set up (in Watson Lab) a 'network' of Superbrains sharing a hard disk, with an EMACS-like editor called MINCE and a Scribe-like text formatter called Sribble. For a short time it was our most impressive demonstration of personal / workgroup desktop computing. (MINCE later became Epsilon and was popular for some years on DOS PCs.) The 16-bit was announced; the Columbia Computer Center orders 20 of them on Day One, sight unseen. The IBM logo makes all the difference.

About half of them go to high-profile faculty (who immediately want them to be able to communicate with our central IBM and DEC mainframes; hence ). The original PC had a monochrome monitor (color optional), one or two 160K floppy disks, a small amount of memory (anywhere from 16K to 256K), two RS-232 serial interfaces, no hard disk, no networking. It ran at 4.77MHz, had BASIC built into its ROM (which could be used without an OS or disk), and ran DOS 1.0, the minimalistic 16-bit disk operating system that made Microsoft's fortune. Within a short amount of time, it had become the computer that would dominate the rest of the century and beyond, and spread over the campus like wildfire. But it still took some years for the PC to wipe out the VAXes and PDP-11s in the departments.

Up through the early 90s there were still dozens of VAX/VMS installations; entire departments and schools (such as Columbia College) ran on them, with terminals or DEC word processors (PDP-8 based ) on their desktops. The PC has been a mixed blessing. Untold numbers of people-hours have been lost forever to tinkering -- this slot, that bus; expanded memory, enhanced memory, extended memory... Blue Screens Of Death, rebooting, reinstalling the operating system, searching for adapters, hunting for drivers, installing OS and driver upgrades, resolving interrupt conflicts, partitioning disks, backing up disks, adding new devices, configuring networks, fighting application and OS bugs, hunting for patches, fighting viruses, and on and on. Previously this kind of thing was done by a small central full-time professional staff but now it is done by everybody, all the time, at incalculable cost to productivity and progress. Plus how many PC users really back up their hard disks? Not many in my experience, and it is not uncommon for important un-backed-up files to be lost in a disk crash or similar disaster, thus negating weeks, months, or years of work.

ON THE PLUS SIDE, however,... (???) My personal theory is that IBM never expected the PC to be so successful. It was thrown together in a rush by a small group (not at Watson Laboratory!) from off-the-shelf components in an effort to get a foothold in the fast-growing microcomputer market.. Besides the 1956 ('personal' but by no means desktop), IBM had also tried and failed with the and the in the 1970s and early 80s, both personal desktop models (we had some 5100s here; the CS-9000 was targeted at chemical engineering applications as I recall, and had a special control panel and interfaces for instruments, but included a 32-bit CPU and modern programming languages like Pascal, and could easily have been the high-end workstation of the early 1980s). According to a reliable source, IBM originally wanted the PC to have a Motorola 68000 CPU (which had a simple, flat 32-bit address space) like the CS-9000, but could not get such a product to market in time, so settled for the Intel 8088, a 16-bit segmented architecture with 8-bit data paths. Worse, it had a primitive 16-line interrupt controller, which severely limited the number of devices that could be on the bus. The rest is history.

I believe that if IBM had known that the PC would dominate the next two, three, four, or more decades, it would have invested more time, money, and thought in the original design. (Obviously the situation is better in the 21st Century. Most of the early kinks have been ironed out. PCs are cheap and reliable. Any quirks of the architecture are well-hidden from end users, and USB makes life immeasurably better when devices need to be attached. With Windows the dominant operating system, the main problems now are performance – bloated OS and applications – and security.

And stability.) Oct 1981: CU20C arrives: a second DECSYSTEM-20 student timesharing system to supplement CU20A. Still no common file system; each DEC-20 was a relatively separate world, but at least they were connected by DECnet. If you had a student user ID, it was on one or the other, not both.

Dec 1981: HP plotter supplies (personal ink cartridges, etc) were a hot topic in the newsletter. The HP pen plotters installed in Mudd (and SSIO?) came in 4- and 8-color models, and there was a wide variety of software for them, including DISSPLA/TEL-A-GRAF on the DEC-20s and SAS/GRAPH and SPSS on the IBM mainframes that could make 3D plots with hidden-line elimination, fancy fonts, etc. They were totally mechanical: pen and ink on paper, and could produce beautiful line drawings. Ray Scott, Director of the Carnegie-Mellon University Computation Center, writes an article in the CUCCA Newsletter (V14#1) describing the CCNET connection between Columbia and CMU, and CMU's facilities (including an ARPANET gateeway and various compilers and applications that had not been licensed at Columbia). In the first example of network-based inter-university resource sharing at Columbia, CU users were invited to apply for user IDs on the CMU systems. The (MSS) was installed (for the 1980 Census) - 102.2 GB.

The MSS was gigantic in every sense, covering most of the South wall of the machine room. Essentially it was a big honeycomb, each cell holding a cartridge () that resembles an M-79 rifle grenade () containing a winding of 2.7-inch-wide magtape with a capacity of 50MB. A mechanical hand comes and extracts the cartridge and carries it to a reader, which removes the shell, and unwinds the tape and copies it to one of four staging disks; then the tape is re-wound, the shell replaced, and the cartridge returned to its cell. All this was transparent to the user; the MSS looked like a 3330 disk drive to user-mode software. The disks acted as a cache, so if your file was already on the disk, the little mechanical man didn't need to go get the cartridge. (Before the MSS, we had an, which worked in a similar way, except instead of cartridges, it used flat strips of tape that were much harder for the little men to handle, so the tape strips were easily mangled.) Like the 360/91, there were only a few MSS devices in the world. The MSS cost about a million dollars, but Columbia got its MSS in an IBM grant.

In return, Columbia would add support for it to IBM's VM operating system (in particular, it would add windowing and lookahead features to reduce 'cylinder faults' and redundant cartridge fetches, and thus speed up sequential access; this was done by Bob Resnikoff of the Computer Center and Ates Dagli of the Center for Social Sciences (CSS)). CSS was responsible for loading the census data (which came on endless reels of ) and for arranging access to it from within Columbia and from outside (V14#16). When the grant expired, Columbia was able to purchase the MSS at a steep discount. Hot Newsletter topic: submitting IBM batch jobs from the DEC-20 via HASP/RJE.

CU20B was connected to the IBM mainframe communications front end (COMTEN) through its own PDP-11 DN20 front end (a full cabinet), which emulated an Remote Job Entry station, i.e. A card reader for sending data to the mainframe in form of card images, and a line printer for receiving data from the mainframe in the form of print jobs, but using DEC-20 disk files instead of cards and paper. The CUCCA systems group developed user-friendly programs for submitting batch jobs to the VM systems from the DEC-20 and retrieving the results. These were later to form the basis of the DEC-20/BITNET mail gateway.

Mar 1982: RSTS/E retired; RSTS users migrated to DEC-20s, V14#1. The was traded for another badly needed disk drive for our DEC-20s []. The PDP-11 with RSTS/E was our first experiment in campuswide public timesharing and it was an unqualified success. BITNET announced (Vace, V14#5).

This was a network of IBM mainframes based on RSCS (basically, card reader / line printer simulation) protocols, originating with Ira Fuchs at, formerly of Watson Lab, and rapidly spreading to universities all over the world, lasting through the late 1990s, now remembered mainly for LISTSERV (a distributed automated mailing-list management system). Underground Vibes Rarity on this page. Early members included CUNY, Columbia, Yale, Brown, Princeton, the U of Maine, Penn State, the NJ Educational Network, Boston U, and Cornell University (). Columbia got the CU prefix (CUVMA, CUVMB), much to the chagrin of Cornell University (CORNELLA.) Would this be the first instance of domain name hijacking?:-) (Twenty years later, the Cornell and Columbia teaching hospitals would merge to form New York Presbyterian Hospital; evidently 'Cornell' and 'Columbia' were omitted from the name so that neither one would have to follow the other.) Apr 1982: (Daphne Tzoar). This passed through a number a hands since the initial release, some of which prefer to remain anonymous, and has been cared for by Dr. John Chandler at the since about 1990; John made it portable to the other important IBM mainframe OS's: MVS/TSO, CICS, and MUSIC, and added support for conversion between the many IBM EBCDIC Country Extended Code Pages and ISO standard character sets, allowing cross-platform transfer of text in many languages.

Support was added to our e-mail client and server software to take advantage of our new CCNET and BITNET connections, and the first inter-campus e-mail began to flow, limited at first to just a handful of universities, but growing rapidly as CCNET and BITNET nodes are added, and gateways from them to ARPANET, CSNET, and other networks. CCNET mail delivery was accomplished by direct real-time DECnet connections; BITNET mail was transported via our. Our three DEC-20s used their DECnet connections for mail amongst themselves, as well as with other campus machines and the wider CCNET.

CU20A and CU20C and other campus DECnet nodes sent BITNET mail by relaying it over DECnet to CU20B's RJE system. In those days, e-mail addresses had to include a 'top-level domain' that indicated the network, e.g. USER@HOST.ARPA, USER@HOST.BITNET, USER@HOST.CCNET, etc. Even trickier was the 'source routing' used in Usenet (in those days, a 'network' of UNIX machines that dialed each other up with UUCP periodically to exchange files and mail) and some others, and/or to mail to somebody who was on a network that your host wasn't on, through a relay that was on both nets. In such cases you had to know the entire route and the syntax tricks to traverse each branch of it, and often multiple relays. Here are some examples from the 1980s Kermit mailing list archive. MOON@SCRC@MIT-MC decwrl!rhea!vax4!arson!roberts@SU-Shasta 'INFO-KERMIT@COLUMBIA-20.ARPA'@su-shasta info-kermit%columbia-20.arpa.mulga.UUCP@Berkeley decvax!mulga!nemeth.uacomsci@UCB-VAX.ARPA Ken Poulton 'ETD1::LABOVITZ' ames!tis.llnl.gov!lll-tis!lll-crg!lll-winken!uunet!convex!- otto!jimi!unsvax.uucp!bartlett@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU The last one is broken into two lines for readability; it's really one line.

To get a good feel for the proliferation of networks and the tricks of navigating amongst them in the days before the Internet swept all else away, see John Quarterman's book, The Matrix [] Jun 1982: CU20D, our third and final instructional DEC-20, was installed. Our goes to the Computer Museum at DEC's MR-01 (or MR-02?) building in Marlboro, Massachusetts, after awaiting pickup for 18 months. It was displayed prominently inside the main entrance in a big, tastefully illuminated glass case near the. Shortly thereafter, the collection was transferred to the Boston Science Museum (now the ), which changed its focus. Most of the computing artifacts went to the, temporarily located at Moffett Field, California (an Air Force base, where the 360/91 console sat in 'deep storage' for many years before being transferred in about 2001 to deep storage at the Computer History Museum's new site in Mountain View, California). Jul 1982: An Imagen laser printer was installed in Watson; our first laser printer and our first printer capable of true typesetting. Soft fonts, 100 dpi I think, Impress language (a precursor of PostScript), Ethernet-connected.

It was only for internal CUCCA use (production of Newsletter and handouts, etc). Aug 1982: The Xerox 9700 () [announced by Xerox in 1977] arrived, replacing the Xerox 1200 after some overlap (V15#1). The 9700 offered the first typesetting to the Columbia community at large, as well as high-volume, high-speed plain-text printing. This room-sized 300dpi Xerographic laser printer was installed in the back of the first floor of Watson Lab (the present mail and network rooms) due to lack of space in the Computer Center, and it definitely needed the space. It printed 2 pages per second, could handle duplex, portrait/landscape, 2-up, 4-up, etc, had Courier (fixed) and Helvetica and Times Roman (proportional) fonts, with italic and bold styles and selectable sizes. Formatting was done by Scribe and other packages and spooled to 9-track magnetic tapes that were delivered to Watson every evening and printed overnight.

Xerox 9700 printing was available to all users (students, faculty, staff, outside paid accounts) on all the DEC-20s and IBM mainframe systems. The DEC-20 Xerox 9700 spooling software ('PRINT /UNIT:X9700') was developed jointly by the combined CUCCA-CMU Systems Groups over CCNET. Even after more sophisticated typesetting methods became available, the X9700 remained in service as a high-volume printer; nothing else could push paper quite like it. To this day, I think Controllers and Rolmphone statements are still printed on a 9700 at a service bureau.) Sep 1982: VMM announced (e-mail for the IBM mainframe: MM for VM, Joel and then Vace). Sep 1982: First campus network between academic departments (not counting stations): CUCCA-Chemistry, DECnet over synchronous modems (V14#12).

By this time Chemistry had a VAX-11/780 and some smaller VAXes. Sep 1982: TOPS-20 V5 installed on the CUCCA DEC-20s, featuring extended addressing (32 256KW sections = 36MB, instead of only one section), a new multiforking Exec (what we would now call 'job control'), and a programming language for the Exec (CMU's PCL, what we would now call 'shell scripts'. Oct 1982: About here we were looking into getting the AP Newswire online. Columbia's School of Journalism had a with news stories coming out continuously. The plan was to feed this into one of our DEC-20s and make a BBoard out of it, with a rather rapid expiration of articles given the limited disk storage. Sony Vegas Pro 8 Codecanyon more. But there were licensing and bureaucratic impediments so it never came to pass.

About 1990, Columbia bought a subscription to ClariNews (in which the various news services are funneled to Usenet newsgroups). This lasted until 2003, by which time the Web had long since rendered it redundant. Nov 1982: The CUCCA Terminal and Plotter User Manual [] was published, full of photos and detailed instructions on using the equipment in our public areas. To see a sampling of video terminals; note the accompanying PACX boxes.

In searchable PDF format. This was printed on our new Xerox 9700, one of the first laser printers capable of typesetting; it had two fonts, Helvetica and Courier. The manual itself should interesting to those who harbor a burning curiosity over every minute detail in the life of President Obama, since the equipment described here is what he must have used when he was a Columbia student 1981-83, because there wasn't anything else. Check, for example, he wrote in Sundial Magazine, March 10, 1983.

I suspect he composed it on the DEC-20, perhaps in EMACS, seated at one of the terminals in our terminal rooms; for example, the. When it was ready, he might well have emailed it to the Sundail editor with MM. Just a guess! Nov 1982: (click for PDF of the whole thing). The DEC-20 was an enormously powerful and useful computing system, yet it was simple enought that we could publish an accordion-fold pocket guide to just about all that it had to offer. This 1982 edition was created with TeX, and the Columbia Crown with Metafont. The master was printed on our new and the printing and folding done at the Columbia print shop.

It was given out free to all comers (thousands of them). Dec 1982: The Teachers College DEC-20 connects to the campus DECnet. 1983-1986: Every Newsletter issue announces new BITNET and DECnet nodes. Jan 1983 20th Anniversary of the Computer Center. To see a collage of machine-room items prepared for the commemorative poster.

The is at 1 Jan 1983:. Prior to TCP/IP, the ARPANET was a private club with membership restricted defense contractors. The fact that some of the defense contractors were also some of the top engineering and computer science universities (MIT, Stanford, CMU, etc) led to a lot of pressure from the non-military segment for more open access, and to a new design for the network itself. TCP/IP (Transport Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) was the result. Where ARPANET was a network of computers, TCP/IP provided for a network of networks; that is, an Internet.

Thus when the cutover took place, all the computers at a given university (say, MIT), could be on the net, not just the ones used for defense research. In this way the network was opened up, and the requirement for a defense contract for membership no longer made sense. Numerous networks such CSNET, NSFNET, and SPAN, were connected. Columbia University as a whole got on the net in 1984 by virtue of its and over the next 15 years, the network grew to cover the entire planet and membership was open to all. Jan 1983 The Purchasing Office moves out of the Watson building and the space is occupied by ADP; now, 13 years after IBM left it, the Watson Lab building is 100% Computer Center and would remain that way until 1991. ADP begins to offer office automation services, including PC and LAN installations for administrative use.

IBM PC Kermit. Originally by Daphne Tzoar, adapted from Bill Catchings' CP/M-80 Kermit (actually, if I recall correctly, Bill did the original translation from 8080 MASM to 8088 Microsoft assembler in a single EMACS session, and then Daphne made it work and added features). Later it passed to Jeff Damens. We did versions 1.00 to 2.28 here, with various pieces contributed from elsewhere. Professor Joe Doupnik of Utah State University took it over in 1985, and stuck with until the end ( at the Computer History Museum). We were actually ordered to write this program because several prominent professors (Herb Goldstein, Bob Pollack, and Jonathan Gross) were using their new PCs to write a book, The Scientific Experience, that would be used in a new course, Science C1001-1002,, in Columbia's (the jewel in the crown of the Columbia College ) and wanted to be able to collaborate by uploading chapters to CU20B, where they could be shared. And they did.

MS-DOS Kermit was a fixture on the Columbia computing landscape until the Web took over in 1994-95, and popular all over the world. It's still remarkably popular today, providing VT320, Wyse, DG, ANSI, and Tektronix terminal emulation for Linux under dosemu, as well as data transfer for many DOS-based embedded and experimental devices, such as in the International Space Station. To visit the MS-DOS Kermit website. Jan 1983: Amdahl UTS installed on the IBM mainframe as a virtual machine under VM (Alan); this was the first UNIX on the central systems.

But CS, Biology, and P&S had been running other forms of UNIX for some time on departmental minicomputers such as PDP-11s and VAX-11/750s. ( were big in these days, but every kind of computer used a different format: ANSI, DUMPER, BACKUP, MAGSAV, IBM OS SL, tar, cpio, etc, so writing was a regular cottage industry.) Mar 1983: CCNET included CU, CMU, CWRU, CS, TC. Mar 1983: All but two key punches removed due to lack of use (V15#4). The is now a mainly a public terminal area, CUCCA business office, and consulting facility.

Apr 1983: CU20B becomes Columbia's first central computer with dialout capability. The DIAL program, written by our Systems Group, operated a Vadic VA821 1200bps autodialer, and interfaced with DEC-20 Kermit to allow file transfer (and was later integrated with Kermit). 18 May 1983: DECSYSTEM-20 (and DECsystem-10) 36-bit computer line canceled by DEC due to their failed attempts to produce a faster and cheaper followon product (Jupiter). This was a huge blow to Columbia and most other US universities, which until this point were like a big (but increasingly anxious) DEC-10/20 club. The ARPANET had been built mainly on DEC-10s and -20s, and most computer science research and tools ran there.

Big changes would come. Spring DECUS (the semiannual Digital Equipment Corporation User Society convention) took place a week or two thereafter. At the event at the, Roseanne Giordano, DEC's LCG [DEC-10 and DEC-20] product line manager at the time of the cancellation, recalled that DECUS organizers, fearing violence from the crowd, installed plainclothes police in the front row to protect the speakers. Jun 1983: Snapshot: Public terminal, printer, and graphics equipment. Terminals: (6), (10), (66), (28), (8), (1), (1), (20), (2), (4) (), (5). Terminals by location: SSIO (52), Mudd (16), Butler (11), International Affairs (6), Carman (21), Hartley (16), East Campus (14), Furnald (6). The Superbrain is still the only desktop computer in a public area; it remained in service until at least 1986.

Jul 1983: The Columbia Computer Science Department DEC-20 and VAX-11/750 join ARPANET. The CS DEC-20 is connected to CU20B with DECnet, thus providing the first ARPANET access from CUCCA machines (staff only). Nov 1983: We attend nondisclosure presentations of the Macintosh, which as to be the first mass-market personal computer with a graphical user interface, modeled on that of the and the (the Star was commercially available in 1981 but it was too expensive for the popular market).

I recommend early adoption of the Macintosh by CU; this was done and Columbia became one of the first members of the Apple University Consortium, buying them in bulk and reselling them to students. Nov 1983: We (I) take on responsibility of approving campus microcomputer purchases, since in those days there were countless different incompatible ones. Every requisition had to come across my desk; if it was for something weird I'd call the person who ordered it and talk about communications and compatibility, either changing their mind or rubber stamping it after they swore they didn't care and never would. Dec 1983: announced. 1983-84: It is in approximately this time frame that Alan Crosswell becomes Lead Unix Systems Programmer and also assumes management responsibility for the DEC-20s, as I move on to something called 'Systems Integration', meaning finding ways of hooking Columbia's many disparate micro-, mini-, and mainframe computers together.

Was one way; others included various forms of networking including DECnet, TCP/IP (brand new in 1983), who-knows-how-many forms of PC networking, and so on. Alan is formally appointed Systems Manager in 1990. I was the CUCCA member of an Engineering Dean's committee, chaired by Dean Gross, to set up a 'graphics lab' in the Engineering School. Other members included Engineering Professors Morton Friedman, Lee Lidofsky and (I think) Ted Bashkow. Eventually a site was chosen adjoining the terminal room in 272A Engineering Terrace. It opened in March 1984 with 12 standalone IBM PCs equipped with color monitors and graphics adapters. This was almost certainly Columbia's first PC lab.

The graphics lab was turned over to CUCCA in October 1989, combined with the original lab in room 272A, and renamed Gussman Lab. CLIO (Columbia Library Information Online) debuts as a text-based inquiry system accessible via PACX terminal and Telnet. It is based on BLIS software from Bibliotechniques (a spinoff of the University of Washington), and runs on our IBM 3083 mainframe. ('clustered PC project'): a 3-million-dollar equipment grant from DEC, proposed by us (me and Howard Eskin) in March 1983, to build a distributed environment of Macs, PCs, and UNIX workstations clustered around MicroVAX hubs which, in turn, were connected to the central DEC-20 mainframes for file / identity / e-mail service. Included were dozens of and Pro-380 (PDP-11) workstations, several MicroVAX-IIs, a VAX 11/730, a VAX 11/750, a VAXstation, an LN03 laser printer, Ethernet, and the Common File System (shared disk) hardware for our DEC-20s including a then-massive amount of central storage.

This was to be a stunning example of 'systems integration;' the primary objective was to provide users transparent native-mode access to their central files and identities from all different kinds of desktop workstations (PC, Mac, UNIX). I was the PI, my boss was Howard Eskin, the programmers were (at various times) Bill Catchings,, Melissa Metz, Jeff Damens, Andy Lowry, Delores Ng, Howie Kaye, Fuat Baran. (V16#2, V16#6, V18#2; Columbia Daily Spectator, 23 Apr 1984). Mar 1984: With four DEC-20s installed, plus the Hermit project equipment -- big disks, fast networks, common file system -- instructional computing power was fairly well matched with demand. Now access was the bottleneck. A study by the Academic Advisory Committee of the Engineering Advisory Council, Computers in Columbia Engineering Education, March 1984, complained of 'the Sleeping Bag Syndrome: students should not be forced to line up for terminal time at graveyard shift hours.'

Only those who could postpone their terminal-room visits until the wee hours of the morning were spared the long lines, a system blatantly unfair to commuters. Obtaining space for terminal rooms (or anything else) on the Columbia campus was (and is) even more difficult than obtaining the money to build them. Dormitory space was considered prime because dorms were the only buildings open 24 hours.

Mar 1984: First demo at CU, numerous Macintosh/Lisa seminars and presentations from Apple. Apr 1984: announced by CUCCA for resale.

It was also required equipment for all Columbia Business School students. Apr-May 1984: Macintosh mania. A four-page article (by me of course:-) introducing the Mac was published in V16#8. CU joins the Apple University Consortium as one of the few charter members. AUC membership required us to buy Macs in bulk for resale on campus. 2000 were ordered right away. Within a short while, we had written the first version of for it (Bill Catchings, Bill Schilit, and me).

Mac (and PC) sales continue in one form or another until turned over to J&R, which opened a Columbia-only branch in the basement of Philosophy Hall in the late 1990s but then jumped ship about 2001. Of DEC-20 machine room by of the Systems Group, showing the size and placement of the various components (3 DEC-20s, their disk drives, and communications front ends are shown; not shown is the fourth DEC-20, the tape drives, or the system consoles). OK, this is not really the floor plan. It's a template for making floor plans. The idea was to gather up all the discarded copies of the newsletter that had this diagram on the cover, cut out the pieces, and then make a real floor plan out of them (Tom De Bellis points out this diagram was made before all the Hermit grant stuff had arrived, thus was used to lay out how to make everything fit). Jun-Jul 1984: The, by me and Bill Catchings, published (in two parts) in BYTE Magazine. See for more Kermit-related publications.

CU20B joins ARPANET (now called the Internet). Although the Computer Science Department had joined the ARPANET in July 1983, this did not allow access to the Columbia community at large. Putting CU20B on the ARPANET was the first step in this direction (researchers from all schools and departments and CUCCA staff only, not students). CU20B's ARPANET hostname was COLUMBIA.ARPA. No other Columbia computers (except the ones in the CS department) were on the ARPANET, but of course CU20B had network connections to the other DEC-20s, some internal CUCCA machines, the campus DECnet and the external DECnet-based CCNET, and to BITNET.

Thus to send mail into the Columbia network from outside required ', e.g. For some years, CU20B was to serve as a mail gateway among these networks, using locally written software. Over the next year or two, CUCCA would purchase a VAX-11/750, called the Gateway VAX, and install it in the CS department, where it was connected to the CS ARPANET IMP and back to the CUCCA hosts via Ethernet. The Gateway VAX ran 4.2BSD UNIX and it made Internet e-mail available to the whole Columbia community, including students, for the first time. For some reason I can't explain, the didn't arrive until two years later.

IBM PC/AT announced, the first IBM PC with memory protection. Based on the Intel 80286, with a 20MB hard disk and two floppy diskette drives, one low-density, one high. Battery powered BIOS configuration memory and clock. Up to 16MB memory.

This was the first in the IBM PC line fully capable of running multitasking operating systems, and soon was host to a number of them (some companies had managed to produce Unix variants such as Xenix for the original IBM PC or XT on 8086 but these were not 'sustainable'.) Of course this machine was of great interest to the Columbia Computer Center, which was looking for ways to deploy desktop networked UNIX workstations for academic use, and we had some internally running different UNIX versions such as SCO Xenix/286. But it would turn out that our first public UNIX workstations would come from a. Sep 1984: Three MS-DOS microcomputers and one Macintosh were installed in the 272A Engineering Terrace terminal room. They were not on any kind of network and had to be reserved by sign-up sheet. The HP-150s were an equipment grant from HP, along with some color pen plotters that were attached to them.

They had touch-screens and integrated thermal printers. A version of Kermit was written to allow them to communicate with the central computers through PACX lines and transfer files to and from their 3.5-inch diskettes (the HP-150 was one of the first, if not the first PC to use the 3.5-inch rigid diskette).

Graphic images where generated by software on the mainframes (such as DISSPLA/TELEGRAF on the DEC-20s and SASGRAPH on the IBMs), downloaded with Kermit, and sent to the plotters. 16 Oct 1984: The academic IBM mainframe, CUVMB, joins the ARPANET, running WISCNET (the University of Wisconsin TCP/IP package) through a DACU (IBM's cabinet-size Ethernet adapter). This machine was for researchers and staff only, so there is still no ARPANET access for students. Nov 1984: Project Aurora, a 6.5-million dollar IBM grant administered by CUCCA, a 'campus-wide move in information and instruction toward the electronic university.' Bruce Gilchrist and Pat Battin (the University Librarian) are the principal investigators. Aurora paid for an IBM 3083 mainframe to support the Columbia Libraries Information Online (CLIO) system, and also funded some 30 research projects in the schools and departments. 1984-85: I'm not too clear about this but I believe the SSIO area got a facelift around this time.

1985: Low-cost Apple Laserwriter PostScript printers proliferate and suddenly typesetting becomes commonplace as LaserWriters are set up as spooled printers so they can be controlled not only by Macintoshes but also DEC-20 and UNIX systems with Scribe and T EX. 1985-1989: The Columbia Physics department consructs a series of ('supercomputers made from Radio Shack parts'). 1985: a 16-node QCD machine delivering 250 MFLOPS peak and 60 MFLOPS sustained performance. 1987: A second-generation QCD machine containing 64 nodes, delivering 1 GFLOPS peak and 300 MFLOPS sustained performance. 1989: A third-generation QCD machine containing 256 nodes delivering 16 GFLOPS peak and 6.4 GFLOPS sustained performance []. This work would continue into the. Jan 1985: CUVMA (IBM VM/CMS academic mainframe) gets Ethernet (DACU) and TCP/IP (WISCNET) (Vace).

Jan 1985: Internet Domain Name registration begins. Some of the first registered domains are: symbolics.com, cmu.edu, bbn.com, ucla.edu, mit.edu, mitre.org, dec.com, stanford.edu, sri.com, sun.com, ibm.com, att.com, nsf.net, apple.com, cisco.com. Feb 1985: First version of C-Kermit (4.0) released.

(Previous versions were called UNIX Kermit; C-Kermit was modularized to allow easy adaptation to other platforms, and eventually was ported to over 700 of them, across 10 major operating system families.) Hundreds of people all over the world have contributed code, including Andy Tanenbaum () and Linus Torvalds (). C-Kermit was part of Hewlett-Packard's UNIX operating system HP-UX (by contract) from 1996 until 2011 (when Columbia U canceled the Kermit Project), and has since been inco.