Covid-19 restrictions are rolling back (possibly temporarily) for the summer, and a vast wave of yard sales that have been held back from their traditional seasonal opening in May is being unleashed upon the world. My wife is always cruising for surprise luxury secondhand goods with good resale value, but as she is well aware of my interests and proclivities, will sometimes snag me materials pertaining to old technology if and when she stumbles across them.
So here we have the "Computer Systems 81-82" book. (I love the cover art, which dates to the era of "art made ABOUT computers, not made with the assistance of computers." If you wanted to make art for a computer book in 1982, you needed a straight edge to draw lots of perspective lines, and some ziptone to apply for shaded texture. Don't forget your binary digits for flavour!) Apparently people were studying computers locally back at that early date, and just what we might learn about them and their field at that time depends a lot on just what kind of book this is. Is it a syllabus? It is not. Instead... it is a yearbook! Lots of photos of people with unfashionable haircuts being young! I would be very interested in the nuts and bolts of the curriculum, but if, as it seems, I'll be learning about this class as a social history, that's OK also!
(I can't imagine trying to sell a yearbook -- a printed volume only of any interest or value to those in it, who already have a copy of it -- at a yard sale and expecting anyone to pay even one dollar for it, but I guess I'm the exception that proves the rule.)
There it is, the office of the BCIT Computer Systems Department Head. You can't tell from the angle, but I rather suspect that he (I would say "they", but in 1982, as computing wages had risen and pushed out the rooms full of math whiz ladies formerly known as computers, I think we could quite safely assume that this department head was a "he" ... despite which, you can see the pendulum temporarily swinging the other way, with lots of women appearing in the student body documented here!) doesn't even have anything we would recognize as a computer in his office!
Please excuse the image quality -- not only are my scans weak, it's not like my source images are the original negatives... these were developed into photo prints, then adapted for paper print. (Then, as with this photo, laid out directly adjacent to the book's gutter, the black hole in the middle of the book where the pages are bound together. The only way to get a good scan there would be to undo the binding, and even if I could overcome the shock at book destruction sacrilege (because let's face it, this is a book that no one, even myself, is ever going to want to read again) ... it's a bit too much like work, isn't it? (Anyhow, this is a solved problem. Clearly I should just send this book to the Internet Archive to be processed there.)
I admittedly don't have a great deal to offer with this post. I don't know anything about the people in the pictures and I don't know anything about the machines seen populating the background here. I don't know if they are word processors, terminals, or stand-alone microcomputers, but despite radiating nostalgia, they sure as heck don't look at all familiar. Nonetheless I've included every photo from the yearbook -- conspicuously few, all things considered -- including any of the computer technology these students were working on 40 years ago, and if anyone is able to identify any pieces of it, so much the better! Sometimes all I have to offer is the raw data, and we need to crowdsource the expertise.
That awkward photo splice isn't of hardware, but I suspect it is a locker stuffed with crumpled up wads of either paper punch cards or tractor-feed dot matrix printer paper. Either way, a righteous sign of the times -- and a hilarious alternative to shredding or a more secure filing system.
No people or hardware in this photo, but those have got to be some variation on paper punch cards, right? At least, strongly reminiscent of the Scantron forms of my school days. Also, I appreciate the caffeine pills for period flavour. It seems that "crunch time" has been with this industry since its early days!
I had a chilling "middle-aged" moment receiving this book, because Jen reported that when she bought this book the sale had a distinct "estate sale" ambiance to it. This book dates back to when I was newly born, and my entire lifespan thus far has turned out to be the remainder of someone else's natural lifespan. Were I to enrol in today's equivalent of this course, and it to yield a similar yearbook, by the time my analogue got around to stumbling across and documenting the volume, I would almost most likely be deceased. (This is a problem, because I can't die, as I have far too many more blog posts to write that no one else is going to get around to. Also, it would be a source of great sadness to my family.)
Anyhow, by cross-referencing the friendly dedications written inside the front covers of this book, I was able to positively identify it as belonging to Mark Hujanen, pictured above. With that information, I was able to confirm our grim hypothesis -- he didn't leave a huge online footprint (eg. a Twitter account with no posts, likes or follows), but he did leave in his wake the following tribute from his longtime employers at the BC Supreme Court:
The Court would also like to acknowledge the passing of Mark Hujanen,service delivery manager for the Superior Courts Judiciary’s IT department,in December 2020. Mr. Hujanen provided his expertise to the Court for morethan 20 years, developing and supporting the creation of many systems thathave become crucial to the Court’s day-to-day operations.
As a millennial who struggled for decades in finding even the most meagre employment (pro tip: if you stop looking, it won't find you), I briefly boggled at the perceived generational injustice of this guy taking one computer class in 1981 and getting set on the gravy train until he died, working in his field the entire time. Of course, I have no real reason to believe things went so smoothly for him -- his life is a timeline to me that only reveals an early point and an end point, leaving me to extrapolate everything that elapsed in between. I see that he only worked for the BC Supreme Court for >20 years, leaving nearly another couple of decades during which he could have been lost in the wilderness as I was, or at least taking other computer classes and picking up unrelated side gigs. That boggling isn't informed by realtiy at all, but my own career PTSD. Anyway, Mark, this post is dedicated to you! I hope you're refactoring your legacy code in that great mainframe up in the sky!
Do you mind? I'm trying to keypunch this payroll algorithm here, but I can't focus with this camera in my face!
You'll never need to wait in line with a box full of your program -- this state of the art school ensures prompt student access to punch card machines by having rooms full of them.
What's he working on there? Who knows, but check out the obscured swag behind him in the Control Data Corporation box in the corner! "[O]ne of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s", where Seymour Cray cut his teeth before, for a time, making the world's fastest supercomputers.
It's a room full of big iron, but -- correct me if I'm wrong -- isn't he just typing on an electric typewriter there? Or is that some sort ot TTY terminal with keyboard input and printer output?
Finally, Big Blue shows itself! Ironically, I understand that this is the yearbook commitee meeting, and I believe that the 3800 model they are celebrating the arrival of there is just a laser printer component, possibly used in the printing of this very yearbook!
After a buch of other group photos, here's a fun filler photo occupying leftover space at the bottom of the page, tagged with a computing joke I had a hard time scanning: "the 'Empty' set".
Nice work, Computer Operations! Finally, a machine clearly recognizable to me as a computer! There's... buttons! There's a display! There's... well, presumably other components tucked away or outsourced elsewhere. IBM rides again!
So many of the photos of women in this yearbook have an implied atmosphere of "... do you mind? I'm trying to get work done, here!" to them. Something something male gaze.
I have no idea what this wall full of machinery is, but it's everything I could have ever hoped to find in this book: right this way to das blinkenlights. (One reader from the Chilliwack Retro-Computing Club weighs in: "The pic with 3 hp2100 in racks 2 7970 tape drives 2 7906 harddrive and 2 2748 papertape readers, nice". Another one notes, "I was there from 1992-1994. My Cobol class might have used some of this same hardware as it was ancient even back then
Some kind of terminals running off a mainframe. I'm actually curious what we were using, if I knew then, I don't remember now 
")
Again, still another a portrait of a young lady at her terminal with a "Gotcha!" quality to it. Makes me wonder if each one of these photos wasn't immediately preceded with a blast from an air horn.
Gentlemen. You know how expensive it is when you knock ofer a can of soda and it spills a puddle around your smartphone? This must have been much, much, worse -- we can't stick these minicomputers in a giant sack of rice to dry them out! Eat in the cafeteria. Don't slurp your soup and sprinkle your crumbs into these electronic marvels. If I was the instructor, that would have been the first rule of my lab!
If you look carefully at the floor between the rows of machines, you can spot either a technician making some adjustments to the equipment or a student having a nap. (Or, possibly, both.)
Haven't we all visited this place in our programming preparation at some point? You know what, burn it all down and start over. It's a sentiment that, it turns out, is timeless.
You don't hear too much about it anymore, and I bet LCD screens have a lot to do with it, but I have vivid memories a bit before the turn of the century, at about the midpoint between the publication of this book and the present day, of people having significant concerns about the hazards of prolonged exposure to video display terminals. I remember a family friend had their desktop computer setup featuring a seat at one end of the room and the largest CRT money could buy at the other end, with a bowling lane of a desk between them, so as to maximise the view while minimising exposure to the harmful rays. The memory is kind of apropos of nothing, but c'mon, I bet that display is just about big enough for a grown man to crawl down in a music video or horror movie.
Are they wearing a party hat? And well why should they not be, anytime the numbers crunch as intended is a great moment in history, it should be roundly celebrated. Those barrels off to the left... are they for spoiled (folded, spindled or mutilated) punch cards?
OK, so I have more photos of old computers from this yearbook than I do insightful observations to make about their contents. I don't know which ones are significant and which ones aren't so I'm just aiming to share all the ones including vintage hardware and hopefully my audience finds them interesting enough on their own that I don't need to ice every cupcake with my sparkling commentary.
Another all-nighter?
Giving a bit of "deer in the headlights" expression, as though he'd been caught in the act computing during someone else's booked time... or just having been discovered staying after hours to play Colossal Cave Adventure.
I'm satisfied, the machines-to-student ratio at this school, as documented in these photos, seems to have achieved pretty good parity.
The satisfaction of a routine well invoked. (Almost a little too satisfied, if you ask me. Just what kind of nefarious purpose is this program for, anyhow? Did he just discover "salami slicing" before Superman III mainstreamed it?) (One more comment from the Chilliwack Retro-Computing Club: "I'm really curious about the terminal here. It looks like the "Lanpar" terminals I used at UBC around the same time. I think they were Canadian made(?) but I can't find any information about them.")
Crunch time! Too busy to mug for the camera, busy tyring to figure out why 30 isn't GOTOing 10!
No time off for good behavior! I don't care if it is a holiday, you're coming in and crunching numbers! I'm guessing that this photo was taken sometime around Hallowe'en, but wouldn't it be more interesting if it was just another regular day in computer class?
Due to my literary background, I couldn't resist the inclusion of this computer-school-themed poem found at the back of the yearbook. It's no "The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed", but it'll have to do. Here, I transcribed it for you:
BCIT BLUES, by Rob Brown. Ten happy little programmers, Coding in a line; One missed a due date, Then there were nine. Nine tired little programmers, Hacking away till late; One failed Org Bev, Then there were eight. Eight scared little programmers, Working past eleven; One crashed the system, Then there were seven. Seven worried little programmers, Coding cobol pics; One dropped a cad deck, Then there were six. Six frantic little programmers, Feeling barely alive; One fell asleep in systems, Then there were five. Five frazzled little programmers, Sleeping on the floor; One listened to a hacker, Then there were four. Four spaced-out little programmers, Wishing they were free; One took an evening off, Then there were three. Three crazy little programmers, Who didn't have a clue; One tried an edit program, Then there were two. Two burned-out little programmers, The year was nearly done; One logged on the HP, Then there was one. One lonely little programmer, Sitting all alone...
Not apropos of anything technological, but this page stood out so much I had to include it. (Also omitted: a comedic "blackface" photo. Times have changed, but that was already a bad look in 1982.) Some of these costumes look familiar -- it seems that what I took above for Hallowe'en may simply have been BCIT's regional interpretation of the short-lived seasonal holiday "Punk Day". (Itself a replacement for the briefly-celebrated "Disco Day"?)
There weren't a ton of photos like this, but my suspicion is always that most of the programming going on up in 1981 was done like this -- with pencil and paper -- plotting out and debugging your program manually long before it ever got anywhere near an electronic device, because access to the equipment was traditionally rare and expensive, and you couldn't afford any surprises when your turn came up to feed your punch cards into the hopper or you'd lose your money and go back to the end of the line.
This concludes our stroll through the BCIT Computer Systems 1981-1982 yearbook! We expect great things of the class of 1982! Excelsior!
No comments:
Post a Comment