Fifty Years of Computing at the University of Cincinnati

My alma mater, the University of Cincinnati College of Applied Science, is hosting a special event “celebrating UC’s innovation, achievement, and leadership in computing” on November 10 & 11, 2008. To see the agenda and list of speakers, visit the University of Cincinnati’s Computing History blog.

The first computer at the University of Cincinnati was an IBM-650, acquired in 1958. My first computer at the University of Cincinnati was an Intel 80286 with 1 MB of RAM and a 40 MB hard drive running Microsoft MS-DOS. It had 2 5 1/4 inch floppy drives: a low-capacity 360 KB floppy drive as well as a high-capacity 1.2 MB floppy drive. Oh, and let’s not forget the 1200 baud modem so I could telnet into the University of Cincinnati DEC VAX and DEC Ultrix (Unix) systems and write Fortran and SAS code. It’s pretty humbling that twenty years later my old college PC is severely underpowered compared to the Apple iPhone that fits into a shirt pocket. I can’t even imagine what pocket-sized computing power my daughters will take to college.

Fortunately, I am composing this post on a Dell Precision M4300 with 4 GB of RAM (that Microsoft Windows XP cannot fully use, but I digress).

Dallas Marks

Dallas Marks

I am an analytics and cloud architect, author, and trainer. An AWS certified blogger, SAP Mentor Alumni and co-author of the SAP Press book SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence: The Comprehensive Guide, I prefer piano keyboards over computer keyboards when not blogging or tweeting.

2 thoughts on “Fifty Years of Computing at the University of Cincinnati

  1. 64 bit! 64 bit!

    i’m using Vista Business 64bit with 4GB RAM and it’s beautiful 🙂

  2. but if you look at it relatively; your old pc had more potential. that apple ipod is dead in the water – a never changing extension of apple’s hand. it is in fact as good as it’s ever going to get. eventually regulated to a stack of similar disposable cameras.

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