You've come a long way, baby
When I first showed up at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1983, the only computer for most of the campus was a single IBM mainframe running MTS, the Michigan Terminal System. Access to the computer was metered by time logged in and CPU seconds used. My first programming course used FORTRAN. There was still an operational card punch machine attached to the mainframe, but I didn’t know of anyone using it.
But, today, they’re America’s most connected campus, according to Forbes.
Hey, I used that card punch. :-)
I even used to know how to make a tab drum for it to make it easy to keypunch FORTRAN.
Posted by Mike Jones on November 8 2004 19:44
Even in the early-to-mid-80s, when the nmainframe still ruled the campus, you could see the seeds of something good. One of the things I liked even during my freshman year was the issuing of personal accounts, which allowed any student to play around to their satisfaction on the mainframe. And if you got an appetite for more, there was always the RPI-ACM.
Although I had a lot of negative things to say about RPI while I was there, one good thing was always apparent. Any student, whether they were an engineering, science, management, or even philosophy major, could get access to some very impressive computing power, and could take advantage of the resources of the Internet. It provided a lot of people, including myself, with stepping stones to interesting and lucrative work in the 21st century economy. I'm glad to see they're still strong in this area.
By the way, for another interesting MTS reference, see this site:
http://www.clock.org/~jss/work/mts/
Posted by Jimcat on November 9 2004 07:00