My early computers and programming career began in the late 1960s. That very first computer was an IBM System/360. A small but efficient computer programmed with keypunch cards. It was housed in the basement of the Census Bureau’s building in Suitland, Maryland. My office was in Alexandria, VA some 30 miles away. And some of my users were in the Pentagon.
This formed a nice triangle of travel for me over a period of five years. I lived in Maryland in a neighboring city to Suitland, so I became somewhat of a courier for things going back forth from my office to the computer and back.
IBM S/360 – My first of the Early Computers
I became very familiar with the computer room and this S/360. This picture is pretty much like the one we had but there was a card reader as well as the teletype input and tape drives. Truthfully, I was so green that I really don’t remember much detail about the machine. Except for its fateful demise one weekend.
Fortunately, we were in the process of upgrading that computer room. And we had new computer hardware being installed. My new assignment was on a CDC-6400 which totally dwarfed the S/360. We were in the process of converting the programs to run on the new computer. Probably about half-way through the conversion process when I received a call from my supervisor one weekend. He was asking if I could go “live” with certain programs on the following Monday. Seems there had been a little mishap in that computer room.
CDC-6400 – My second of the Early Computers
Remember that Photo Lab I mentioned in my previous funny story? Well as I mentioned above, the computer room was in the basement of a building directly below that photographic lab. And there had been a disaster in the photo lab right above our beloved S/360. A water overflow. And everyone knows that water and electrical devices do not mix. Our S/360 was beyond repair and we were on a crash course.
Our system was much larger than the one shown above with a dozen tape drives and a half-dozen disk drives that look like washing machines. And a huge flat-bed card reader which gives me another funny story.
My Learning Curve on the Early Computers
I practically took up residence with the new CDC-6400 over the next months, hand-holding technicians in running the new computer systems on the new computer. Our computer techs were young Navy enlisted men as green as I was. But together we pulled it off.
It was a grueling six months or more, with long hours, but one funny memory stays with me. As mentioned above, we had a huge flat-bed card reader. And one night, I was helping the tech load several boxes of data into one of those washing machines, errr Disk drives. The input drive to the reader was longer than the output area. And when the output area filled up, the machine would stop until we cleared the cards.
Restarting the process every few minutes was taking a lot of time and it was midnight. So my young Navy tech decided that he was quick-handed enough that he could grab the cards out of the output trough quick enough to keep it going. All was going well until — whoops a card slipped and then another. The cards were flying all over the room. We lost the load and had to hand-sort the cards before we could start again. It was a mess. But we had a good laugh before we went back to work.
And One More Funny Story
Computer rooms are always built on a raised floor. All the cables for all the machines are run under the sub-flooring. This keeps the area nice and neat and safe. No wires laying around to trip over.
Well a friend of mine was a tech and he was part of a crew installing a new computer at the CIA. Yes, a very secure place. Well, one day he had the job of pulling some of those cables under the flooring. Rather than removing the various tiles, he was slithering under them (a skinny guy), when he lost track of where he was. To get his bearings, he raised up a flooring tile.
Whoops!!!! He had crawled beyond the perimeter of the computer room and into an area of a secure conference room. And as luck would have it there was a Top Secret briefing going on in this conference room. There were a lot of startled people because my friend certainly didn’t have clearance to be in that room. And there was a lot of work done afterward to secure the area beyond the perimeter of the computer room.
My friend was a bit of a comedian and he always said that if he had realized where he was, he would have had a pen and tablet in his hand when he popped up. And he would have said something like “what was that last part, I didn’t get it”.
Conclusions:
I have three – One never put a computer room in the basement under other equipment that can malfunction. And two, follow the rules and let the machine do the work. Finally, three – LOL – keep your head down when crawling under a floor.
