Computing at Columbia Timeline

A Chronology of Computing at Columbia University

Frank da Cruz
Academic Information Systems (AcIS)
Watson Laboratory, Columbia University
612 West 115th Street, New York City
fdc@columbia.edu

Last update: Sun Oct 12 11:42:47 2003

[ Introduction ] [ Timeline ] [ Epilog ] [ Tables ] [ Acronyms ] [ Glossary ] [ Sources ] [ Links ]

Now Online (Oct 2003) - NEW

The IBM Watson Laboratory at Columbia University - A History   by Jean Ford Brennan (1971). 76 pages, 25 photos. The history of IBM-sponsored computing research and laboratories at Columbia University, 1928 though 1970.

Now Online (May 2003):

Computer: Bit Slices from a Life   by Dr. Herb Grosch (2003), 500+ pages, including several chapters on IBM's Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University in the 1940s and 50s.

Popular Sub-Pages:

[ Jacquard Loom ] [ Herman Hollerith ] [ CU 1926 ] [ Old IBM Key Punches ] [ Later IBM Key Punches ] [ CU Punch Card ] [ IBM 285 ] [ IBM 407 ] [ IBM SSEC ] [ IBM NORC ] [ The First "PC" ] [ 1965 Gallery ] [ IBM 7094 ] [ IBM 1403 ] [ IBM 360/91 ] [ IBM Data Cell ] [ IBM MSS ] [ 1968 Student Uprising ] [ Teletypes ] [ DEC PDP-11 ] [ DEC-20 ] [ SSIO Gallery ] [ Watson Lab #1 ] [ Watson Lab #2 ]

New / Recent / Updated Sub-Pages:

[ Ta-Kome (UFM) ] [ Wallace Eckert ] [ L.J. Comrie ] [ L.H. Thomas ] [ Herb Grosch ] [ Lou Gehrig ] [ MNRAS Plate Scans 1928-32 ] [ The 1935 Baehne Book ] [ IBM Aberdeen ] [ IBM CPC ] [ IBM 602 ] [ IBM 603 ] [ IBM 604 ] [ IBM 607 ] [ IBM 650 ] [ IBM 701 ] [ ENIAC ] [ Pupin Hall ] [ IBM 1401 ] [ Brunsviga Calculator ] [ Old CU Home Page ] [ Smooth Sailing Thru the 80s ]

Making History:
[ Herman Hollerith EM 1879 PhD 1890 ] [ 1934: The First Automatic Scientific Calculations ] [ 1937: The First Scientific Computing Center ] [ 1939: The Manhattan Project (Part I) ] [ 1940: The First Computer Book ] [ 1945: The Manhattan Project (Part II) ] [ 1946: The First Computer Typesetting ]	[ 1946: The First Computer Science Course ] [ 1947: ACM Founded Here ] [ 1947: The First Commercial Computer Course ] [ 1948: The IBM SSEC ] [ 1948: IBM 610: The First "Personal Computer" ] [ 1954: Invention: of the Cursor ] [ 1954: NORC: The First Supercomputer ]
Local Milestones:
[ 1955: IBM 650: Columbia's First  "Real" Computer ] [ 1963: The Computer Center ] [ 1968: IBM 360/91: The Biggest Iron ] [ 1973: Self-Service Computing ] [ 1975: First Timesharing ] [ 1976: First E-Mail ] [ 1976: First Hackers ] [ 1977: DEC-20s ]	[ 1982: IBM MSS ] [ 1982: BITNET ] [ 1983: First PC Lab ] [ 1984: CLIO (Library Online) ] [ 1984: ARPANET ] [ 1984: Campus Ethernet ] [ 1986: UNIX ] [ 1994: Columbia Website ]

If you came here looking for the history of the Kermit protocol, Kermit software, or the Kermit Project, you can find some of it below in the 1980-82 timeframe, and a bit more HERE.

Who am I and why did I write this? People pop into my office all the time and ask "when did such-and-such happen?" -- the first e-mail, the first typesetting, the first networking, the first PC lab, the first hacker breakins, etc -- since I was there for most of it. So I took some time and wrote it down, and in so doing became fascinated with the earlier history. I was a user of the Columbia Computer Center from 1967 until 1977 in my various jobs and as a Columbia student, and I've been on staff since 1974. Brief bio: After some early programming experience in the Army (mid-1960s), the Engineering School and Physics Dept (late 1960s, early 70s), and Mount Sinai Hospital (early 70s), I came to work at the Computer Center Systems Group in 1974, hired by Howard Eskin (its manager) out of his graduate Computer Science classes. After a year of OS/360 programming, I was manager of the PDP-11/50 and the DEC-20s (first e-mail, early networking, arguably the first academic timesharing), then manager of "Systems Integration" (first microcomputers, PCs, Kermit), principal investigator of the "Hermit" distributed computing research project, then manager of Network Planning (campus network) and chair of the University-wide Network Planning Group, before "retiring" to the Kermit Project, which has less (well, zero) meetings and is way more fun.

Columbia University's nonprofit Kermit Project pays for itself AND for the work on this history page (and several other public-service websites such as THIS ONE and THIS ONE) entirely out of revenue from software licenses. No revenue, no history. Please consider Kermit software when searching for cross-platform, transport-independent, secure, Unicode-aware, automatable communications solutions.

Disclaimers

1. Obviously this is written from my perspective; others might have different recollections or views (if so, don't be shy about expressing them). In particular, at least after 1963, this turns out to be more a history of centralized academic computing, rather than all computing, at Columbia, giving short shrift to the departments, administrative computing, the libraries, and the outlying campuses; a more complete history needs these perspectives too (so if you can supply missing information I'll be happy to add it, with attribution). I've made every attempt to check the facts; any remaining errors are mine -- please feel free to point them out.

2. Computers are value-neutral tools that can be used for good or evil, and it is clear that they have been used for both. This document does not aim to extol the virtues of computers in general, nor of any particular company that makes them, but only to chronicle their use at Columbia University.

Acknowledgements

Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University

Herb Grosch (1945-51), Eric Hankam (1945-59), Ken Schreiner (1951-60), Seymour Koenig (1952-70, Director 1967-70), Harry F. Smith (1956-1967), Joe Traub (Watson Fellow 1956-59), Ken King (Watson Fellow 1955-56, technical staff 1957-62), Mike Radow (High School Science Honors Program, late 1950s), Peter Capek (High School Science Honors Program, early 1960s).

Columbia Computer Center Directors

Ken King (1963-71), Jessica Gordon (1971-73), Bruce Gilchrist (1973-85), Howard Eskin (1985-86), Vace Kundakci (1989-).

Columbia Computer Center (Academic, current and former)

Bob Resnikoff, Walter Bourne, Maurice Matiz, Joe Brennan, Rob Cartolano, Joel Rosenblatt, Christine Gianone, Terry Thompson, Kristine Kavanaugh, Peter Kaiser (1967-69), Mike Radow (1960s), Andy Koenig (1970s), Janet Asteroff (1980s), Steve Jensen (1980s).

Columbia Computer Center (Administrative/Operations, current and former)

Nuala Hallinan, Stew Feuerstein, Joe Sulsona (1957-2001), Raphael Ramirez (1968-199?), Alan Rice (1960s), Peter Humanik, Ben García.

Columbia Faculty

Joe Traub (Computer Science Department faculty and previously Chair), Andrew Dolkart (School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation), Bob McCaughey (Barnard College History Department).

US Naval Observatory

Kenneth Seidelman (former Director of Astronomy), George Kaplan (former acting chief, Nautical Almanac Office), Brenda G. Corbin (Librarian).

IBM

Paul Lasewicz and Dawn Stanford (IBM Archive), Peter Capek (CU 1965-69, now at IBM Watson Laboratory), Gary Eheman.

And...

Pnina Stern (formerly Pnina Grinberg of BASR), Annette Lopes (CU Associate Registrar, now Associate Director of Student Services), Bill Santin (CU Student Services), Steve Urgola and Mae Pan (Columbia University Archives and Columbiana), Mary Louise McKee (NORC programmer, US Naval Proving Ground Dahlgren VA), Ellen Alers (Smithsonian Institution), Garry Tee (Dept of Math, University of Auckland NZ).

I was inspired by Bruce's Forty Years of Computing article from 1981 [3] (so that makes it sixty years!) (no, wait, eighty!)

Special thanks to Bruce Gilchrist and Nuala Hallinan, each of whom contributed valuable archive material and considerable time, effort, and miles to this project; to Herb Grosch for his amazing book as well as tons of new information, corrections, and insights; and to Bob Resnikoff who unearthed his long-lost cache of 1980 machine-room and MSS photos.

And thanks to the editors of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing for an announcement and abstract of this site in their April-June 2002 issue, and for announcing the online version of Herb Grosch's book in the July-September 2003 issue.

Please report any broken links directly to the author.

[ Top ] [ Introduction ] [ Timeline ] [ Epilog ] [ Tables ] [ Acronyms ] [ Glossary ] [ Sources ] [ Links ]

Introduction

A case can be made that the computer industry got its start at Columbia University in the late 1920s and early 1930s when Professors Wood and Eckert, to advance their respective sciences, began to send designs and specifications for computing machines to IBM Corporation, which until then had been a maker of mechanical calculators and tabulating machines for the business market. From those days through the 1980s, the relationship of Columbia with companies like IBM was symbiotic and fruitful (and continues on a smaller scale to this day, mainly in the Physics department with the construction of massively parallel supercomputers -- who else would know how to connect 512 processors in a 6-dimension mesh with the topology of a torus?) IBM Corporation itself was the child of Herman Hollerith.

The early days of invention and innovation are past. Computers and networks are now well established in the daily lives of vast numbers of people in the wealthier nations, and certainly at Columbia University. Today's computers are off-the-shelf mass-market consumer appliances, which was perhaps inevitable and is no doubt a good thing in some ways. How this came about is a story told elsewhere but as you'll see below, some important parts of it happened right here.

[ Top ] [ Introduction ] [ Timeline ] [ Epilog ] [ Tables ] [ Acronyms ] [ Glossary ] [ Sources ] [ Links ]

Timeline

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.

1754-1897:

Columbia University was established by King George II of England 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 (MAP) (PICTURES).

1879-1924:

In 1879, Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) received his Engineer of Mines (EM) degree from the Columbia University School of Mines [48]. 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 tabulating machine and sorter that were used to process the 1890 Census [40]. Hollerith wrote up his invention and submitted it to the Columbia School of Mines, which granted him a PhD in 1890 [48]. In 1896 Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company, which was to become (after several mergers and name changes) International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation in 1924. Because of Hollerith's Columbia background and Columbia's recognition of his census work, I suspect there must have been some tabulating equipment in the Statistics Department involving the 1900 or 1910 USA census, but have not been able to locate evidence of it.

1900-1920:

Prof. Harold Jacoby, Chair of the Astronomy Department, in a memo dated 4 December 1909, refers to "Miss Harpham (our chief computer)" [28] "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). 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 University of Amsterdam Computing Museum). 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 Vermont granite ball 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 [54].

1924-26:

The Columbia University Statistical Laboratory (location unknown) includes Hollerith tabulating, punching, and sorting machines, Burroughs adding machines, Brunsviga and Millionaire calculators (the latter was the first device to perform direct multiplication), plus reference works such as math and statistical tables. Prof. Robert E. Chaddock (Statistics Dept) was in charge. The Astronomy department (Prof. H. Jacoby) still has the "five computing machines" [5]. Wallace Eckert joins the Astronomy faculty in 1926. CLICK HERE for a gallery of late-1920s computing machines. CLICK HERE for a 1926 aerial view of Columbia University. CLICK HERE for a 1925 Columbia University map.

1928:

Prof. Benjamin Wood (1894-1986), head of the University Bureau of Collegiate Educational Research [5], 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" [42]). After some discussion, Watson sent three truckloads of tabulating, card-punching, sorting, and accessory equipment to the basement of Hamilton Hall [9,40].

1928:

Meanwhile in England, L.J. Comrie, Superintendant of H.M. Nautical Almanac Office, began a project to calculate future positions of the moon using punched cards, a sorter, a tabulator, and a duplicating punch, in what was probably the first use of these machines for scientific calculation [72]. This work would shortly inspire Columbia's Wallace Eckert to take the next historic step: automating these calculations.

As we will see, much of the impetus towards automated scientific computation came from astronomers, and its primary application was in navigation. The same impetus brought us accurate, portable timepieces in the previous century.

Jun 1929:

Prof. Wood's operation became the Columbia University Statistical Bureau (PHOTOS). 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" [9,40].

1930-31:

Prof Wood convinced Watson to build special Difference Tabulators, which IBM called "Columbia machines"; these could process 150 cards per minute and could accumulate statistics like sums of squares [9]; later they were called Statistical Calculators [81]. The Bureau soon became a service provider to outside organizations like the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton [9]. (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 Radiotype machine, an electric typewriter coupled with radio transmitting and receiving apparatus. Thomas J. 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 [40].

1933:

In recognition of his interest in Columbia University and his large equipment donations, IBM Chairman Thomas J. Watson is appointed Columbia Trustee. In return, Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler is appointed to IBM's Board of Directors [90].

1933-34:

Prof. Wallace J. Eckert (PHOTOS AND BIOGRAPHY) 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 IBM 601 Multiplying Punch (modified to Eckert's specifications under the supervision of IBM's G.W. Baehne [82] and dubbed the "Astronomical Calculator" [81]) were delivered to the Rutherford Observatory in the attic of Pupin Hall. Until 1937 (q.v.) this facility was variously known as the Rutherford Laboratory, and 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. Eckert"). 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 control system based on plugboards and rotating drums to interconnect the new equipment, eventually incorporating methods to solve differential equations by numerical integration [9]. The Astronomical Laboratory was the first to perform general scientific calculations automatically [30]. 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" [37]. 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 [17].

To illustrate with a 1946 quote from Kay Antonelli, University of Pennsylvania, referring to her wartime work [34], "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.

1934-37:

Ben Wood and his Statistical Bureau work with IBM to develop mark-sense technology to improve the efficiency of processing standardized tests [9]. The result was the IBM 805 International Test Scoring Machine, marketed beginning in 1937 [38]. Dr. Wood is remembered at Columbia through the Ben D. Wood Graduate Fellowships in Learning Technologies, and at the Educational Testing Service, 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. CLICK HERE for a more detailed discussion of this book.

1937:

Professor Eckert's astronomical lab in Pupin Hall's Rutherford Observatory becomes the Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau (PHOTO), jointly sponsored by IBM, the American Astronomical Society, and the Columbia Department of Astronomy [3,9,86], to serve as a resource for the entire world astronomical community [38], making it the world's first center for scientific computation [84].

    "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." [86].

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 [30,90].

1938-40:

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.

Numerov, Boris Vasilyevich: The website 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. Jan Schilt, 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. Numerov. [88].

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. [88].

(Note: the correspondence places Numerov's death prior to 1941.) According to David Alan Grier [45], 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 [45]. 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.

Herb Grosch reports that Soviet astronomers continued to pay occasional visits to Watson Lab after the War, e.g. in connection with taking over the production of the annual Kleine Planeten listing of asteroid positions from Watson Lab, which did the work in 1946-47 after the German Astronomisches Rechen-Institut was crippled in the War.

Fall 1938:

Howard Aiken, 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. Eckert shows him around, listens to his ideas, and suggests that he try to interest IBM in the project [9]. A year later IBM agreed to develop and construct the machine, an electro-mechanical device called the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, ASCC (PHOTO), the first automatic general-purpose (but not stored-program) computer. The ASCC was built by IBM at Endicott NY and presented in 1944 to Harvard, where it did war work, and eventually became known as the Harvard Mark I [9]. (A 1945 Columbia news release [23] cites "cooperation with Harvard University in the development of the ASCC)". The Mark 1 was soon outpaced by the US Army's ENIAC, the first electronic automatic general-purpose (but still not stored-program) computer.

Jan 1939:

Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Walter Zinn, Herbert Anderson, and others begin work on nuclear fission in Columbia's Pupin Hall. Within a few months this work would become the Manhattan Project, funded by President Roosevelt (Columbia Law, 1905-07) in response to Albert Einstein's letter 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 Astronomical Computing Bureau. I don't know to what degree, if any, Eckert's computing machines were employed in the early Manhattan Project, but as noted below they played a key role in 1945 in the final preparations for the first A-bombs [57]. A number of other Columbia scientists worked on the project, including I.I. Rabi, Edward Teller, John Dunning (who identified U-235 as the fissionable uranium isotope using the Pupin cyclotron in Feb 1940), Harold Urey, and George Pegram (who assembled the original Manhattan Project team), as well as junior faculty who would later become well-known physicists, such as C.S. Wu and Bill Havens (both of whom I worked for in my student days), James Rainwater, Eugene Booth, and Richard Present. The following is taken from a narrative, Evolving from Calculators to Computers on the Los Alamos National Laboratory History 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 Richard Feynman (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 Marchant. 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 nation's first televised sports event, a baseball game between Columbia and Princeton universities, May 17, 1939, broadcast by NBC.

1940:

Prof. Eckert publishes Punched Card Methods in Scientific Calculation [50], 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 (Figure 2). This control switch ... was a precursor of sequential control in electronic computers" [78]. "Some of the better-known builders of the early computers, like Vannevar Bush at MIT, J. Presper Eckert of the ENIAC, and Howard Aiken at Harvard, got their first introduction in the famous orange book". [90] In this year, Eckert is appointed full professor of Celestial Mechanics.

March 1940:

Eckert leaves Watson Lab for an assignment with the US Naval Observatory, 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 [17], which allowed design and production of the Air Almanac in record time (the first issue of the Air Almanac appeared December 1st, 1940, produced entirely by machine methods). The Astronomical Computing Bureau in Pupin, now directed by Jan Schilt (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 — "Mathematics Goes to War" [9]. 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 Watson Lab [88].

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 and Rock-Ola, a maker of juke boxes). IBM also evacuated the families of employees in England to Toronto [85] and assisted the families of US employees who had gone off to war and held jobs open for all its returning veterans [57]. According to recent allegations [47] (having nothing to do with Columbia University), IBM might also have played a part in Germany's war effort, in which widespread use was made of punched-card technology manufactured by IBM's German subsidiary, Dehomag, which had been taken over by the Nazi government in 1940 (the degree of IBM's involvement Dehomag after that is currently at issue).

1940:

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 Parnassus Club, across from the present Watson Laboratory. 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 Institute for Social and Economic Theory and Research). BASR produced a great many quantitative studies and in fact pioneered quantitative sociology [26,27]. From its inception in 1940, the Bureau was in possession of IBM tabulating equipment. "IBM machines" and "tabulating charges" as well as IBM supplies appear on each annual budget [28]). The BASR's 1954-56 budgets show $6000 per month for IBM equipment rental, which suggests a rather massive capacity (compare with the Registrar Proposal 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" [28]. Pnina Stern, who worked at the Bureau until its demise, says "When I got there in 1966 BASR had [at 605 W 115th Street] IBM 024 card punches, an 085 Collator, an 082 Sorter, and a 403 Accounting Machine 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 Victorian furniture 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 at IBM Watson Lab. By 1961, BASR was (with Physics and Chemistry) one of Columbia's leading users of computing, and one of the reasons the Columbia Computer Center was created [29]. After 1963, BASR was a major user of the Computer Center mainframes, sending work-study students with massive decks of cards to the SSIO Area 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, HP terminals 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).

1941-46:

Professor Eckert, now at the US Naval Observatory in charge of the Air Almanac, is under great pressure to produce accurate tables quickly for the war effort, where they are needed for aircraft navigation:

"For a great many years, the Naval Observatory has published a nautical almanac and for about five years an air almanac. The purpose of either of these publications is to just give this information -- what is the longitude and the latitude of any celestial object at any time. One of the reasons they vary is that the in the past the nautical almanac was designed for the earth and the air almanac was designed for the air. They have plenty of time to use the nautical map while for aircraft navigation, a minute will take you a long ways... There are two pages per day of this information, thus 730 some pages [1.5 million figures] a year... They must be printed and there can be no error. If one of these figures is wrong, the navigator ... may lose himself and his plane." [84]

Eckert decides that in order to achieve both beauty (clarity, compactness, and elegance) and perfect accuracy (by eliminating the copying, hand typesetting, proofreading, and correction steps), a form of computer-driven typesetting is required, in which tables of numbers calculated by computing machines are input directly to a composing typewriter capable of creating publication-quality masters. As a stopgap, existing punch-card printing devices were modified and improved (producing accurate and readable Air Almanacs for 1942-45); meanwhile, a special programmable card-driven composing typewriter was specified by Eckert and built by IBM, capable of proportional spacing, boldface, superscripts and subscripts, letters, numbers, punctuation, and special symbols, with layout and other details programmed by plugboard; it was delivered in 1945 and produced its first Air Almanac in 1946 [77].

Although composing typewriters already existed, they were operated by keyboard, a source of error. Linotype machines were available that were driven by punched paper tape, but the tape punch was operated by keyboard too, so the probability of error was not reduced. Mathematical tables had previously been published as photographic reproductions of printouts from standard unmodified computing-machine printers, but these were bulky and unclear. Feeding numbers calculated by computing machines and punched onto cards directly to the typesetting apparatus solved both these problems and it was almost certainly the first instance of computer-driven typesetting -- an idea first posited by Babbage and realized by Eckert more than 100 years later, due to the exigencies of war, in which errors or illegible numbers could result in death or loss of aircraft. Millions of Eckert's Air Almanacs were printed and used by the Army, Navy, and commercial flyers without a complaint as to legibility or accuracy [84]. (For more on this topic see Grosch, pages 62-65).

20 December 1944:

Since the 1930s, Columbia had been IBM's main contact with scientific computing and the academic community [38], and to carry forward this relationship, Thomas J Watson, a Columbia Trustee since 1933, wrote to Columbia Provost (and Acting President 1945-47) Frank Diehl Fackenthal [28] 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."

6 February 1945:

"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" [23]. Prof. Wallace J. Eckert, 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 John von Neumann, Hans Bethe, and Richard Feynman [3,4,9, 57]. 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! [17]).

It turns out that the presence of Bethe, Feynman, and von Neumann was not entirely coincidental. Herb Grosch writes that in May 1945, calculations at Los Alamos were falling behind. As Dr. Eckert (who had just hired him to work at the new Watson Lab) explained, "They came to IBM for help. Mr. Watson and John McPherson [IBM engineering director] ... thought immediately of the Astronomical Bureau 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 601s and an old 285 fixed-plugboard tabulator, 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 [57] (more about this HERE and much more in Chapter 03 of Dr. Grosch's book)

Herb Grosch recalls that the Army work referred to was for the Army Air Force, doing test data reduction for a GE aerial fire control system that later went into production B-29 bombers.

Mar 1945:

Now that Germany's defeat was imminent, Leo Szilard — who, with Enrico Fermi, had initiated the Manhattan Project at Columbia in 1939 — did not believe the A-bomb should be used on Japan. He obtained a letter of introduction 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.

8 May 1945:

VE Day, Germany surrenders, the war in Europe ends.

Jul 1945:

Szilard wrote and circulated a petition 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 Oak Ridge petition 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 [59]. In any event, the petitions never reached the President.

6 Aug 1945:

Hiroshima: "Now we knew what we had been working on" [57]. A second A-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki August 9th. More than 200,000 people died from the two bombs.

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, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated." [94] It was known by the Allies [95] 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" [93]. All indications (e.g. in Henry L. Stimson's diaries) 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 and keep it out of Japan.

14 Aug 1945:

7:18PM EWT (Eastern War Time): 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 scientistic 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 [28]. 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.

Nov 1945:

Watson Laboratory moves from Pupin Hall into 612 West 116th Street (PHOTO) (MAP), a former fraternity house vacated by the War, purchased by IBM and renovated as a laboratory (PHOTOS) with offices and teaching facility [4,9]. A "simple bronze plaque" was affixed to the building reading "WATSON SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING LABORATORY at COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY" [28] (WHERE IS THE PLAQUE NOW?). Watson Lab's early equipment included two experimental one-of-a-kind relay calculators, two Aberdeen relay calculators, plus conventional calculators and tabulators inherited from the Astronomy Lab, and within a couple years would grow to include a IBM 602 and the first IBM 604. Read more about renovation and equipping of this building in Chapter 09 of the Grosch book. This building is now Casa Hispanica, home of Columbia's Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

Aug 1946:

Eckert describes Watson Lab to an IBM Research Forum [89]. "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 Aberdeens, 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 Card Programmed Calculator, and from there it is a short step to the first general-purpose stored-program computer, which, arguably, was IBM's SSEC, 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 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; they're big and they cost serious money.)

1946-47:

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 Wallace Eckert, Herb Grosch, and Hilleth Thomas, believed to be the first computer science courses offered by any university [40]. These included hands-on lab sessions with Eric Hankam and others [57], using the IBM 60x calculating machines. Graduate-level hard-science courses used the Watson Lab machines too, including some taught by regular Columbia faculty such as George Kimball (Chemistry), among whose students was Isaac Asimov (Columbia B.Sc 1939, M.A. 1941, Ph.D. 1948), and Maurice Ewing (Oceanography), the founder of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, whose students included Frank Press (Columbia M.A. 1946, Ph.D. 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 1951 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 Martin Schwarzschild, who used the "Aberdeen machines" (IBM Pluggable Sequence Relay Calculators) for astronomical calculations [57].

1947:

Nevis Laboratory, 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.

Sep 1947:

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is born at a meeting of sixty computer enthusiasts at Columbia University's Havemeyer Hall [57]. Originally calling itself the Eastern Association for Computing Machinery, attendees of its first meeting included Columbia Professor Wallace Eckert (who arranged the space), Professor Hilleth Thomas (Thomas-Fermi Model), Byron Havens of Watson Lab (chief engineer, NORC), John Lentz of Watson Lab (designer of the first "personal computer"), Watson Lab's Herb Grosch, and "everybody's favorite computer person", Grace Hopper. The meeting was convened by computer pioneer and antiwar activist Edmund Berkeley. (CLICK HERE to view documents from the first ACM meeting.)

Nov 1947:

The "Watson Laboratory Three-Week Course on Computing", taught by Eric Hankam, the first commercial computer course (PHOTO). 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 [9].

Jan 1948:

The IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) (PHOTOS AND DETAILS) 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.

Popular descriptions of computers as "brains" and analogies with the human nervous system were so rampant in the late 1940s and early 50s, that George Stibitz, developer of the wartime Bell Relay Calculators, 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 [79].

The SSEC was programmed from Watson Lab on standard IBM cards converted to input tapes on a special punch called the Prancing Stallion [57]. Its calculations were used as the basis for the Apollo moon missions. It was dismantled in 1952. One of the SSEC's programmers was John Backus (PHOTO AND DETAILS), who had two Columbia degrees and was at Watson Lab in 1950-52 [9], and who went on to design FORTRAN, the first high-level machine-independent programming language, and Algol, the first block-structured language, and is also known for Backus Normal Form (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 John A.N. Lee, Dept of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnical Institute.)

Another SSEC programmer was Edgar F. Codd, originator of the relational database model [40] (Communications of the ACM, Vol. 13, No. 6, June 1970, pp.377-387), who was at Watson Lab from 1949 to 1952 [9] and died April 18, 2003.

1948-54:

The IBM Personal Automatic Calculator was designed by John Lentz and built between 1948 and 1954 on the top floor of Watson Lab. Among its innovations was a magnetic drum for auxilliary storage, automatic positioning of the decimal point, and the first video terminal. When it was finally announced in 1956 as the IBM 610 Autopoint Computer, it was the first "personal computer". [4,9,17]

1948:

Computer Science instruction gets off to a rocky start. While the 610 Auto-Point was in development, the following Watson Lab equipment was available for use by Columbia graduate students and faculty: Two Pluggable Sequence Relay Calculators ("Aberdeen machines") capable of 24,000 6x6 multiplications per hour, each with 28 counters and a control panel allowing up to 2000 different connections, plus key punches, sorters, collators, and reproducers; 25 machines in all, consuming 20KW of electricity per hour [21]. A one-year Columbia-only course on computing is offered but, as Watson Lab's Dr. Herbert Grosch complained, "the whole field of computing is definitely wide open and yet we hardly ever get any students interested in the machines for their own sake. Most of them are chemists, or engineers, or physicists who want to learn how to use them as an aid in their work. But we are still hoping" [22]. Btw, 55 years later, Dr. Grosch says this quote is "a complete fabrication. I never said such an asinine thing. And I liked having chemists or engineers or astronomers [no physicists, but I would have welcomed them]. We were set up exactly to help such, and not to teach machine design (which neither Eckert nor I were qualified to do --- Lentz and Havens could have, but didn't)." [59] Anyway, by 1951 things were looking up.

1949:

Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, 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 [39] for an excellent history (albeit with nothing on computing) of what is now called the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.

[ Top ] [ Early ] [ 1920 ] [ 1930 ] [ 1940 ] [ 1950 ] [ 1960 ] [ 1970 ] [ 1980 ] [ 1990 ] [ 2000 ]

1950:

Herb Grosch devises Grosch's Law "Computing power increases as the square of the cost" in Watson Lab [57,p.131]. Dr. Grosch leaves Watson in 1951 to start an IBM bureau in Washington DC.

May 1950:

Edmund Berkeley (who had founded the ACM at Columbia University in 1947, and who had written the first book about computers for the general audience [62] in 1949), William Porter (a West Medford MA mechanic), and two Columbia graduate students, Robert Jensen and Andrew Vall, build Simon [63], a simple "model electronic brain" (PHOTO), costing about $600 to construct. Of Simon, Berkeley said:

• It is the smallest complete mechanical brain in existence.
• It knows not more than four numbers; it can express only the number 0, 1, 2 and 3.
• It is "guaranteed to make every member of an audience feel superior to it."
• It is a mechanical brain that has cost less than $1,000.
• It can be carried around in one hand (and the power supply in the other hand).
• It can be completely understood by one man.
• It is an excellent device for teaching, lecturing and explaining.

1951:

CLICK HERE to view some 1951 Watson Lab Astronomy, Engineering, and Physics course listings from the 1951 Columbia Catalog. Herb Grosch recalls [57]: "... a little about the courses we gave - that is, at Columbia. These were all part of the regular university curriculum, listed in the appropriate catalogs - we had our own special one also - and open to any student with the prerequisites and the money. We did however encourage our own juniors on 116th Street and at the SSEC to attend as auditors if they did not want to sign up for credit. ... Most of our offerings were unusual. [Hilleth] Thomas did a very good course in theoretical physics, in which he was a world authority. I did a celestial mechanics course one year; it was really a mélange of spherical trig, practical and theoretical astronomy (meaning time and position determination, and orbit computing), and brief mentions of planetary and satellite mechanics. ... None of my subtopics were taught anywhere else at Columbia; the astronomy department was solid astrophysics. And they were what was needed for astronomy calculations. ... Most of our value as teachers, however, came from the computing courses. Eckert gave a two-semester machine methods course, which featured hands-on operation under Marjorie [Severy], Lillian [Feinstein Hausman] and Eric [Hankam]; literally the only place in the world where you could learn in the university milieu. ... I did numerical methods - classical interpolation and matrix arithmetic and integration of differential equations. Most of my examples, and assigned exercises, were at desk calculator level, but I lectured from the point of view of machine operation ... This was one semester, once a year, and Hilleth did an advanced course featuring partial differential equation solutions and error propagation, every other year. ... My classes were small; this was a very esoteric discipline indeed in the Forties. But I had interesting students .. like [Stan] Rothman and [Bill] McClelland and [John] Backus and Don Quarles. ... So it was my side of the house that carried the teaching. It went on into the Fifties, always as part - but a small part - of the Columbia offerings. The hands-on side of the Machine Methods course was unique, not just because of the equipment but because real use-'em-every-day men and women were running it."

1952-3:

When construction of the NORC (see Dec 1954 entry) exhausted available space in the petite 116th street building (and because still more space was required by Watson Lab's new physics program), IBM purchased the building at 612 West 115th Street (PHOTO) (MAP), formerly a "women's residence club", gutted and renovated it, equipped it with physics laboratories, and relocated to it, leaving the previous location for Columbia [4,9] but also retaining part of it as a teaching facility [17]. The new Watson Lab was occupied in September 1953. A time clock was installed (you can still see its mounting today) but nobody on the professional staff used it (as a corporation, IBM was obsessed with efficiency but the Watson Lab scientists were notorious noncomformists). The time clock and all wall clocks were controlled centrally and set automatically by an IBM master clock (like the one in the first Watson Lab); the IBM wall clocks in Watson Lab kept on ticking until about 1999. The Penthouse was outfitted as a lunchroom with a small kitchen, where coffee and tea could be made and soup or beans heated up; it had the atmosphere of a World War II canteen, and was the favorite place for people in different groups or floors to talk and thesis advisors to meet with their students [17].

Some space was retained in in the 116th Street building: the offices of Professors Eckert and Thomas, offices for PhD students, classroom space, and a machine room. The vacated portions were turned over to Columbia's Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

The former women's residence on 115th Street was in fact the Parnassus Club, a boarding house for young women -- students at the Julliard School of Music, which was then only a couple blocks away on the current Manhattan School of Music site (MAP) or at Barnard College, a block north (MAP), or semi-professional performers. It was run by Miss Florence Macmillan, who enforced an 11:00pm curfew. On the first floor was a parlour where young gentlemen callers would wait for their young ladies. The 8th floor had six practice rooms, each with a piano. The front of the 2nd floor was the Music Room, where recitals were given on Sundays in a setting of ornate furniture and oriental rugs. Tea parties were given on the roof. A May 1950 recital program is headed "The Parnassus Club, 605 and 612 West 115th Street, New York City" [11], indicating a second building across the street on the site of the present Schapiro Residence Hall (1987, and before that a vacant lot for many years, offering inhabitants of Watson Lab #2 a view of the rear of Watson Lab #1). Parnassus Club residents included author Carson McCullers (Reference [13] includes an account of her 1934 stay at the Parnassus Club) and poet Sara Henderson Hay (late 1920s). Frank Damrosch (Julliard founder and namesake of Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center) was a visitor and patron.

The original Watson Lab at 612 West 116th Street was built in 1906 as the Delta Phi fraternity house and designed by Thomas Nash. The current Watson building at 612 West 115th Street was originally an apartment building called Duncan Hall, designed in 1905 by the prolific firm of Neville & Bagge, originally built and owned by a Frank Woytisek. The building across the street, No. 605, was also an apartment building by Neville & Bagge, called the Bellemore, built in 1903 and originally owned by Moses Crystal [12]. It was home to the Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR) from 1953 until it was demolished about 1970.

1954:

Invention of the cursor: As part of his work on the first "personal computer" (the IBM 610), Watson Lab's John Lentz designs a small video terminal -- keyboard and tiny screen -- for control and data entry. in which the "current position" was indicated visually by what came to be known as a cursor. Lentz applied for a patent on this concept; the patent was finally granted in the early 1970s. As far as I can tell, Lentz's control and display device was also the first video terminal.

Dec 1954:

The Naval Ordnance Research Calculator (NORC) (PHOTOS AND DETAILS), the first supercomputer and the most powerful computer in existence at the time (and for the next ten years), becomes operational. It was designed here beginning in 1950 and built in Watson Lab #2, 612 West 115th Street. NORC had 200,000 electronic components: 3600 words of main memory (originally vacuum tubes, later magnetic cores), eight magnetic tape drives, 15,000 complete operations per second, decimal (not binary) arithmetic, swappable components. Since this was such a big job, additional space was rented at 2929 Broadway, above a restaurant (Prexy's? Home of the Educated Hamburger?) for building some of the parts, which were brought to Watson Lab for assembly and eventual startup and operation. John von Neumann was a team member and gave the inaugural address on December 2, 1954. NORC was moved to the Naval Proving Ground, Dahlgren, Virginia, in 1955 and remained operational until 1968 [4,12,17].

30 Aug 1955:

The first of two IBM 650 computers is installed in the new Watson Lab building at 115th Street to replace NORC. The 650 was a vacuum-tube-logic decimal computer with 2000 words of ten decimal digits each plus sign [31] stored on drum memory. Each had a 511 card reader and a 403 printer. They ran for two shifts a day, eventually supporting over 200 Columbia research projects [29]. A 17 Nov 1955 memo from Dr. Eckert to J.C. McPherson states that the 650 was installed on August 30 and "much of the work of the computing group has been concerned with its incorporation into the Laboratory program of research and instruction." The second 650 was installed in the West 116th Street building. The 650s were soon used in a series of intensive courses on computing, with [31] as a text; these courses later resulted in a book: Joachim Jeenel, Programming for Digital Computers, McGraw-Hill, 1959 [64]. Initally, all programming was in assembly language punched on cards; eventually languages such as FORTRAN were available. The legendary SOAP assembler for the 650 was written at Watson Lab by Stan Poley.

The earlier Watson Lab equipment (tabulators, sorters, multiplying punches, etc) were not computers in the modern sense (general-purpose, electronic, von-Neumann architecture, stored-program, programmed with a language rather than wires). NORC had been the first such computer at Columbia but, although it was used in one Columbia PhD dissertation [65], it was not open to the Columbia community for general use [61]. Thus the IBM 650 was the first computer available to Columbia researchers and we have a 50th anniversary coming up in 2005.

Eric Hankam points out [66] that this was not as dramatic a turning point as it might seem, since the same types of problems had been solved on non-stored-program calculators at Columbia over the preceding two or three decades; at the time, the 650 was seen as just another incremental step in calculator design. However, the 650's power, flexibility, and ease of use relative to the wire- and card-programmed machines (601, Aberdeen, 602, 604, CPC, 607) attracted a flood of Columbia research projects. By 1961, 650s were also installed at Nevis Lab, Hudson Lab, and ERL. As demand oustripped capacity, it became increasingly clear that Columbia would need a computing facility of its own, big enough to serve the entire university.

Sep 1956:

Watson Lab begins to award fellowships to Columbia graduate students [9], including Ken King, who would become the first Director of the Columbia Computer Center, and Joe Traub, who, after obtaining his Columbia PhD in 1959, and a distinguished career at Bell Labs and heading the Carnegie-Mellon CS Department, would become first Chair of Columbia's Computer Science Department [9, 21]. Watson Fellows had their own offices at 612 West 116th Street, that were "appointed with fireplaces and leather sofas, a good stipend, and unlimited computing time" [38]. Approximately 15 percent of Columbia physics graduate students in the 1950s did their thesis work at Watson Lab [38].

1956-70:

Watson Lab concentrates on solid state physics. This not-insignificant period, resulting in many publications, patents, and a Nobel Prize, is described at length in [4] and [9]. (Richard L. Garwin of Watson Lab conducted experiments with Leon Lederman of the CU Physics Department confirming the suggestion by C.N. Yang of Princeton and T.D. Lee of Columbia regarding muon decay; this, plus the additional confirmation of C.S. Wu in the CU Physics Department, resulted in the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for Lee and Yang.) Also in this period, Seymour Koenig's research on low-temperature breakdown of germanium and its application to semiconductors; Triebwasser's research on microscopic and thermodynamic properties of ferroelectric crystals; Tucker's research on semiconductors at liquid helium temperatures with application to biomedical instrumentation [38].

1957:

A proposal was submitted by Columbia University to the National Science Foundation to install an IBM 701 in Watson Laboratory, since many of Columbia's research projects now demanded more power than was offered by the 650s (the sub-microsecond circuits used in the 701 were designed at Watson Lab [37]). While the proposal was under consideration the 701 was superseded by the Model 704, so the proposal was changed to ask for a 704. $145,000 was awarded, but it turned out the 704 was larger than the 701 originally proposed and would not fit in Watson Lab, so the money had to be returned unused [28] and IBM Watson Lab continued to cater to all of Columbia's academic computing needs at its own expense. Projects that couldn't be accommodated by Watson Lab's Model 650s are allowed to use the more powerful IBM 700-series computers downtown at IBM headquarters [36].

Oct 1957:

IBM proposes the following arrangement to Charles Hurd, University Registrar, for student statistics, course registration, permanent records, and fee accounting:

Quantity   Machine  Description                       Monthly Rental
   3       024 Card Punch with Alternate Program          129.00
   1       056 Verifier with Alternate Program            106.00
   2       085 Collator with Card Counting Device         215.00
   2       082 Sorter                                     110.00
   1       519 Document Originating Machine w/Emitter     123.00
   2       403 Accounting Machine with Digit Selector     950.00
   1       548 Interpreter                                110.00
                                                         1743.00

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 tabulating machines capable of rudimentary statistics (sums) and report generation. According to letters of Charles Hurd, 1957-1960 [28], 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. NYU, where punch-card registration had been in use since at least 1933. The new equipment was installed in 307 University Hall and the new system phased in from 1959 to 1961 (with an IBM 407 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 Free Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley, which set the stage for campus activism, protest, and rebellion throughout the 1960s, including Columbia in 1968: "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." According to Steven Lubar 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.'"

1958:

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 Prentis Hall on West 125th Street, its name was changed to Computer Music Center in 1996. Some tales have been collected and contributed by Peter Mauzey of Bell Labs, a Columbia graduate and former faculty member with a long association with the Electronic Music Center; CLICK HERE to read them.

Sep 1958:

The equipment of Columbia University IBM Watson Scientific Computing laboratory is listed [21] 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 602-A Calculating Punch, the Type 607 Electronic Calculating Punch, and the Card-Programmed Electronic Calculator. 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 650 Magnetic Drum Data Processing Machine 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 key punch machine, 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 IBM 407, 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 "coding forms" 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:

Programming for Digital Computers, 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. Prof. W.J. Eckert, Director of the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University, initiated the writing of the book and suggested the scope of the text."

1959:

An IBM 1620 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 state-of-the art computer that NSF was willing to pay for, the study concluded that a new computer center building was needed [28]. 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:

Algol-60 developed by CU-and-Watson-Lab-alumnus John Backus 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.
• Engineering 281: 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) [29,31].

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 [29], 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 [30] (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 IBM 1620 at Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory.
• An IBM 650 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 IBM 709 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 [29]. 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" [36].

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 [28].

1961-63:

Construction of the Computer Center building. Total cost: $800,000 [30] (PHOTOS, STORIES NEEDED).

2 Jan 1963:

Columbia University Computer Center (CUCC) opens. Dr. Kenneth M. King, who received his Columbia Ph.D. in Physics as a Watson Fellow under Prof. L.H. Thomas [17] and had managed Watson Lab's computing facility [20], was the first Director, with a joint appointment to the faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science [V5#3]. The original location was 612 W 116th Street (the first Watson Lab), which still housed the IBM teaching facility as well as Casa Hispanica, but the new underground Computer Center building 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 [10]:

IBM 7090 (PHOTOS AND STORIES) with 32768 (32K) 36-bit words of magnetic core storage. This was the first commercial computer based on transistor, rather than vacuum tube, logic (a vacuum-tube 709 was originally planned [29], but the 7090 appeared just in time). It is in the direct line of descent from Watson Lab's NORC. 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 IBM 1301 Model 2 disks, total capacity: 9320000 36-bit words.
• Six IBM 729VI 7-track tape drives.
• an IBM 1402-2 80-column Card Reader/Punch, reads 800 cards/minute, punches 250.
• Two IBM 1403 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.

IBM 1401 (PHOTO) with:

• 4000 characters of memory.
• Two 729V tape drives.
• One 600 LPM printer.
• Advanced Programming Package

Unit Record Equipment

• 5 IBM 026 key punches, one of which is an express punch (on stilts so the operator has to stand up).
• 1 IBM 407 accounting machine.
• 1 IBM 519 Model 1 Reproducing Punch.
• 1 IBM 085 Collator.
• 1 IBM 082 Sorter.
• 1 IBM 557 Alphabetic interpreter

Access to computing was batch only. Users brought decks or boxes of punch cards 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 machine room, 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." [36]

Aug 1963:

An IBM 1410 was added, shared by the Registrar's Office, and ran until 1973.

Nov 1963:

The IBM 7090 was replaced by an IBM 7094-I.

1964-70:

IBM Watson Lab continues operation at 612 W 115th Street, concentrating now on life sciences and medicine. There seem to have been an IBM 1130 and an IBM 360/50 in the Watson building during this period [9]. 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.

1965:

Photo gallery 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 IBM 1401 and a 1410 computer in the machine room, as well as the unit record equipment listed in the January 1963 entry.

1965-67:

Professor Eckert and his Columbia thesis student in Celestial Mechanics, Harry F. Smith (who was also on the Watson Lab technical staff as lab manager in the 116th Street building, helping students (often of Eric Hankam) debug their IBM 650 programs, assisting students in other ways with other computers in the building, and responsible for closing up the lab at 11pm each evening) refine the theory of the moon -- the equations that describe and predict its motion -- to unheard-of accuracy, improving upon the calculations performed by Eckert in 1948-52 on the SSEC [78] by adding additional terms: 10,000 equations in 10,000 unknowns, 100,000,000 possible coefficients. The calculations were programmed in assembly language by Smith, who devised efficient methods for solving these sparse equations with so many small-divisor terms that were a potential source of instability, and run on the Computer Center's IBM 7094 over a period of three years [65,87], resulting in 220 pages of lunar position tables published in Astronomical Papers of the American Ephemeris, plus several papers in astronomical journals (see Eckert's bibliography). This was the culmination of Eckert's life's work. Smith is now on the Computer Science faculty at University of North Carolina.

1965: (Month?)

The Administrative Data Processing Center (ADPC) was established. The newly established Computer Center was primarily for academic computing (in those days, research and very little instruction). Administrative computing was done independently by individual departments such as the Registrar's Office and the Controller's Office. The new, separate ADPC drew programmers from the Registrar's and Conroller's offices as well as the Computer Center, including York Wong, previously the Computer Center programming supervisor, who became director of the new administrative group. The equipment (IBM 1401s and IBM 1410s) was in the Controller's office in Hogan Hall on Broadway and in Prentis Hall, 632 West 125th Street, with applications written in AUTOCODER [20].

(The story of administrative computing prior to 1965 is still largely a mystery. Dorothy Marshall, VP for ADP, upon her retirement in 1988, wrote a reminiscence in the ADP Newsletter [11], where she recalls that "ADP actually originated in the Controller's Office, the first [administrative] department to use a punch-card system. The first large system ADP acquired is still with us -- the Alumni Records and Gift Information System (ARGIS) -- and I recall very clearly the accusations that we were using all the tape drives and all the system resources at the expense of the University researchers." (This was to be a recurring theme.) Unfortunately Dorothy did not mention dates or places.)

(Coincidentally, some clue was provided on the front page of the Columbia University website, 18 Jan 2001, and subsequent University Record article [18] announcing the retirement of Joe Sulsona, shift supervisor of the Computer Center machine room, after 42 years: "Sulsona, a New York City native, went from high school directly to the military. When he returned from Korea in 1957 at the age of 23, he studied the latest in computing, gaining experience as a board programmer, which involved the manipulation of wires and plugs on a computer board, much like the original telephone operating systems. He was hired at Columbia's alumni faculty records office as a machine operator and spent his time punching out data cards using a small keypunch machine.")

May 1965:

An IBM 7040 was installed to form the IBM 7094/7040 Directly Coupled System (DCS) with 2x32K 36-bit words memory [6,19]. The 7040 freed the 7090 from mundane input/output and scheduling tasks so its power could be focussed on computation.

May 1965:

Even though IBM 7000 series computers were to be the mainstay of Columbia computing for the next several years, the handwriting was on the wall; their capacity would soon be overwhelmed by increasing demand. IBM proposes the new System/360 architecture for the Computer Center on May 21. This was to be the basis for IBM's mainframe line into the next millenium. Unlike previous IBM mainframes, the 360 was available in a range of compatible models, from small slow machines such as the Model 20 (suitable mainly for printing decks of cards) to the Model 92 supercomputer that they proposed to Columbia, with many in between (IBM's proposal was for a coupled Model 92 and Model 75). Each model could use the same peripherals, and 360-series computers could also be connected to each other in various ways and even share main memory. The 360/92 that IBM proposed, with its thin-film memory technology, turned out to be too expensive. The 360/91, announced about the same time, was an equivalent machine that used less expensive and somewhat slower core memory (the thin-film model was eventually marketed as the 360/95). To achieve supercomputer speeds, the 360/9x models pioneered new concepts such as instruction pipelining and lookahead, branch prediction, cache memory, overlap, and parallelism. The 360/9x series is optimized for scientific calculation and lacks a hardware decimal arithmetic capability (which is simulated in software). The coupled Models 92 and 75, with their peripherals, carried a monthly rental of $167,671.00 (after a 36% educational discount), which works out to over two million dollars a year, and about 22 million over what would be the 11-year lifetime of the system. [32]

Nov 1965:

The blackout of 1965. The lights went out for about 12 hours in Manhattan, most of the US northeast, and large parts of Canada. Interestingly, I can't unearth any stories about the blackout's impact on computing at Columbia. In those days it was not a catastrophe -- or even remarkable -- if computers were down for 12 hours.

1965-69:

Of the Columbia University Teachers College IBM 1130, Peter Kaiser recalls, "The Teacher's College computing center had what may have been the world's most over-configured 1130. It had not only a 2250 but also the additional hardware to make an 1130 into a 1500, the special version designed for interactive instruction; and therefore it could also drive multiple 2260-like terminals. The then director of the TCCC had ambitions use the 1130/1500 for research to improve on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory by timing the responses to the test administered through one of these terminals. When I left to take a real-world job in 1969 that project was in abeyance."

1966-67:

Ken King offers a course in "computer appreciation". Demand was high and half of the 60 students who tried to enroll had to be turned away. Popular computer courses are also offered this year in Engineering, Mathematics, and Sociology [38].

1966:

Watson Lab gets one of the first APL terminals (an IBM 1050), hooked to the M44/44X system in Y