Time Capsule #23: Old high-tech

Most of you were a lot better than me at taking advantage of the variety of challenging intellectual offerings at Dartmouth.

I'm one of those who never darkened the door of Kiewit during four years of walking by it.

As far as I knew back then, the computer center was a great place to print out dot matrix images of Snoopy punting on continuous, tractor-feed paper.

We must have had to use Hollerith punch cards to sign up for some courses, but I can't remember.

I do remember, however, the I'm-A-Human-Don't-Fold-Spindle-Or-Mutilate meme that started with the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley when we were in high school and was still being repeated in Hanover by us aspirational anti-authoritarians.

When I was in grad school in the mid-70s at the University of Texas, punch cards were still being used for course registration. You had to go to department offices to request a card for registering in each course and then stand in long lines to hand them to a person at a desk in the college registrar's office.

Kiewit is long gone.

So are magnetic tape data drives, punch cards, dot matrix printers, modems, diskettes, floppies ...and steam locomotives.