A Chronology of Computing at Columbia University

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/index.html?#intro

by okaya • 11 years ago

44 15 11 years ago

jdalgetty• 11 years ago

I'm always amazed by how much computer technology existed before the late 70's and early 80's personal computer market exploded.

marincounty• 11 years ago

In college, I didn't tell anyone I had an Atari St someting? I wrote all my papers/homework on it, but felt like I was cheating?

All the other students were typing away, or paying a service to type their papers. This was the 80's. I tried to get my girlfriend into it at the time, but she wanted no part of it.

I think my presentation of the computer was the problem? I saw that she didn't see the value in word processing, so I drew a slightly erotic cartoon with paint/illustrator? She looked down at me and said, "If you want the real thing, put that computer away?" I put my homemade cover on it, and had a great night! I remember her telling me in bed, "I don't think computers will ever take off?" I actually agreed with her. I never thought they would be so commonplace. I was still trying to impress her, so I didn't tell her everything I wrote since high school was on this Atari. Anyways, she was a great girlfriend, and I miss her. She is now head of technology at some company. Ingrid, you were the best! I wish I was a better boyfriend. I never experienced the relationship I had with you--with anyone else. I tried, but never found that chemistry.

Anyway, I once had a English teacher accuse me of plagiarism. I wrote a research paper on The Amygdala; the efficy of Psychosurgery on Violent Individuals. He said he needed to ask his wife what an Amygdala was, and 'She's a Psychologist?'. 'And the type on this paper looks weird?' He kept tuning over the pages and looking for typewritten impressions? I was beyond an introvert, and had no self-esteem at the time. I remember just listening to him, and my only response was, I wrote this. My references are in the library? I walked out of his office, and felt; I don't trust this older generation of people? To appease this English teacher, I dumbed down all my papers. The irony was I am, and was a horrid writer. The only words of wisdom in that little English department I overheard while sweltering in Mr. Taylor's class was in Mr. Robinson's class. His class was next door. He told his class to never use clichés in your writing! He then quipped "even in verbal conversation?". I always thought that was great advise. He also stressed funneling thoughts, and paragraphs.

I sometimes wonder why I wrote that Engish paper on that subject. I remember, at the time, I had some weird thoughts, and thought someting was wrong with my brain? I look back and had so much acne--everywhere? I noticed, as my acne cleared up, so did my weird thoughts.(I bring this up because no one told us what to expect in the latter stages of puberty. I honestly fell the natural testosterone made me feel like I was going crazy? As I got older, the violent thoughts went away. I always wondered if it was just hormones that make me feel like such a wako in college?

Anyway, my Atari St was a dirty secret back in the 80's, but I loved it. I don't recall that dot matrix ribbon ever needing replacing? Could any of you imagine--never buying any extra ink cartridges in four years of college?

I don't miss college, and really didn't learn much. I miss Ingrid, and my classmates though. I do miss the simplicity of computing back then. I don't miss needing to go to the library though. I do miss seeing people out in public with nothing in their hands. I miss that most? No--still miss the college girlfriend; the grass was not greener in my little life. Sorry, about rambling on!

china• 11 years ago

Always love to see my Alma Mater on front page HN :)

gotoblob• 11 years ago

gtani• 11 years ago

i was flipping thru vintage vinyl the other day (dunno why, i don't have a turntable) and saw this (actually, Boone had at least a couple album covers on campus: https://longfade.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/pat-boone-randy-wo...

santaclaus2• 11 years ago

Whenever CNN has some piece on college, their stock footage is always Columbia.

santaclaus2• 11 years ago

Back when I was at Columbia I once tried to walk into the Columbia University Computer Center stairway across from the gym thinking it was a computer lab, and some surly old lady got super pissed at me.

krat0sprakhar• 11 years ago

I'm starting the graduate program in CS this fall at Columbia! This excites me to no end :D

okaya• 11 years ago

Some interesting parts:

Sep 1947: ACM first meeting

Jan 1948: John von Neumann's thoughts on high-level languages(FORTRAN)

Oct 1957: Students' reaction to computerized registration

1 Oct 1969: First ARPANET transmission

1 May 1978: First spam email

12 Aug 1981: 16-bit IBM PC

1985-1989: Supercomputers made from Radio Shack parts

1993: The era of the search engine begins

1994-95: Windows and the Web take over. The diverse, rich, idiosyncratic history of computing stops here

bgilroy26• 11 years ago

I was very surprised to read of John Vincent Atanasoff out at Iowa State this morning. He had a tremendous impact and I hadn't ever heard of him.

http://www.columbia.edu/~td2177/JVAtanasoff/JVAtanasoff.html

A US District Judge ruled in the 70s that the ENIAC was largely derivative of the computer Atanasoff had developed with his student Clifford Berry. Berry would continue on to work for Remington Rand and Burroughs on the BatComputer

http://tjsawyer.com/B205Home.htm

agumonkey• 11 years ago

Tiny web-archived link http://web.archive.org/web/20130420132055/http://www.scl.ame...

a-dub• 11 years ago

Also interesting is his writeup on the 1968 riots:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/1968/

Interesting trivia: He was the maintainer of C-KERMIT up until just a few years ago, when the bastards that run the place laid him off...

schuyler2d• 11 years ago

wow, I'm also surprised to see my alma mater on the front of Hacker News. I actually worked at Columbia AcIS from 1996- for quite a while (and now live in the area, posting this from the Hungarian Pastry Shop).

I'd say most of the historic stuff was before my time, but being there in the 90s definitely had its moments.

Frank's history is a little biased since he worked embedded in AcIS and developed Kermit software -- obviously that's fair, since it's his history! Some interesting (though possibly a little too inside-baseball-y) addendums that he doesn't mention:

* The Electrical Engineering department had installed Ethernet itself very early. So when everything else was wired, there was a period of time when the EE department had the slowest and worst Ethernet capabilities since it was so old.

* One of the people that worked right next to Frank's office was also a volunteer fireman. On 9/11/01, he rushed down to help at the World Trade Center site, and ended up helping to establish wireless networking and other communications on the ground, since he found a lot of the police/fire department were unable to communicate with antennas down, etc.

* Before web mail, students and faculty logged in to 'CUNIX' the Columbia unix timeshare to use Pine (or whatever program, etc you wanted). Way after the transition, Cunix still had a lot of people logging in and using unix to manage their ~username web accounts and, yes, continue to use Pine (which was so much better :-)

* I remember the day that we hit 65536 Columbia affiliates and our login system was down for a while, as people realized (and then fixed) the problem.

* The lore was that AcIS (Academic Information Systems) split-off/was born from a cantankerous English professor that was upset that central IT wasn't doing anything for faculty -- that ended up being the organization that provided Email and Internet connectivity along with most other services for Columbia students and faculty.

* He alludes to funding/reputations between AcIS and AIS. AIS was allowed to bill departments for their services, and provided services only to departments that could afford it. AcIS got central funding but then budgets directly protracted what was possible. An interesting early lesson for me in business models!

* Columbia was especially decentralized. Frank's story is mostly from the perspective of central university IT. The medical campus, business school, law school and many other departments all had their own IT departments that did varying amounts of services.

* Frank doesn't tell the story of computing in education at Columbia. Mike Crow (who now makes headlines as the President of Arizona State University) was Provost and during the 90's tech boom funded several organizations that were going to "make millions in online education." Many of the first attempts at proto-MOOCs were through organizations like EPIC (publishing), 'Digital Knowledge Ventures,' Fathom, and the Center for New Media Teaching and Learning. All but the latter lost funding after a few years after being unable to profit. Was it an idea that was too early for its time? In some ways, a big reason that Columbia is behind other places wrt MOOCs is because the organization was burnt out from those previous investments.

Anyway, a lot of the folks there introduced me to things like Emacs and all the obscure unix commands. Thanks to all of them.

jxramos• 11 years ago

A goofy connection here but wow, this gives new perspective on Eric Fensler's line in Fenslerfilm GI Joe PSA 15 - computer, "I'm a computer" (https://youtu.be/7g__E2z3kBA?t=14)

"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 Computer, Bit Slices of a Life, e.g. on page 4).

cpr• 11 years ago

Good ol' Frank. He kindly mentions me in relation to the assembler manual...

A Chronology of Computing at Columbia University

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