In the beginning

The time sheet, shown above, reveals that the first digital computer at Cornell, an IBM Card Programmed Calculator (CPC), was first powered up for customer use 50 years ago on Dec. 15, 1953. The inaugural customer was Professor Lyman G. Parratt from the Department of Physics. At that time, the CPC was located on the third floor of Rand Hall. The machine was programmed with a combination of punched cards and wiring a main control board, so that making changes was a daunting procedure. More information about the CPC can be found on the "Oral Histories -- Cornell Computing and Information Technology" Web site -- http://www.cit.cornell.edu/computer/history/ -- in the personal history by Richard C. Lesser, first director of the Cornell Computing Center. More personal stories and oral histories about the early days of student, research and business-systems computing at Cornell also are at that site. "The History of Computing at Cornell University" is being written by John W. Rudan, director emeritus of Cornell's Office of Information Technologies, and more articles about that history will appear in next semester's Cornell Chronicle. Courtesy of John W. Rudan