A Half Century of Computing

I just realized the other day that not only is 2016 the 50^th anniversary of my high school graduation, but it is also 50 years since the word “computer” became part of my vocabulary when I took my first programming course in college. Since few people these days have that much computer history in their memory I thought that I’d take a look back at what the technology was like 50 years ago and give some perspective on what the early days of computing was like. I had a lot of different topics floating around in my head last night, so I think I will put this in my blog as a series of entries, each focusing on a different aspect of computing.

As a bit of background, when I graduated from high school in June 1966 I didn’t know what a computer was. I went to Michigan State University planning on majoring in Electrical Engineering – to take advantage of my strengths in both mathematics and science. A required course for all engineers was an introductory FORTRAN class which used the university’s supercomputer, a CDC 3600. I very much enjoyed this class and decided to take as many computer courses as I could, but still majoring in engineering as there was no degree being offered in computer science.

But in the fall of my senior year (1968-1969), they made computer science a major and I immediately changed my majors, becoming one of the first graduates with that major in 1969. I then stayed on and got an MS in computer science as well as an MBA, completing all three degrees in a total of five years.

Meanwhile, I worked for the summer of 1968 and 1969 for Uniroyal at their Eastern Management Information Center, then for the summer of 1970 a friend and I set up a company and bid on a project for Cascade Data in Grand Rapids. Then in 1971 I began working full-time in the computing field – first for Uniroyal, then Olin Corporation, then Air Products.

Most of the topics in this blog series are from my learnings in those first early years before 1971, with the exception of the last one which compares my early experiences on the IBM PC in the early 1980s.