[SPG_Active_Members] Re: [1401_interest] Fwd: [1401_founders] First computer literacy class?

[Peter Capek]

Rick -- My recollection -- and I think I may have something which documents
it -- is that IBM was teaching its customers
about computers earlier than the mid-70s.   I think mid-60s is a closer
estimate.  I presume it was all in the service of
sales, but I think Ken Powell was involved.

Fred - I'm curious whether you can recall any discussion with the IBM execs
about issues other than the mechanics of computers
and assembler programming.  For example, were the issues of what is
computable, or what an algorithm is, or in what directions
languages and compilers might evolve, ever raised?    By your estimate this
would have been after FORTRAN had
been delivered and met with some success, but before COBOL and Algol 60
were under way, so I'm curious whether that would have
entered into the discussions.   (And I fully realize that this was A Long
time ago....)

                Peter


On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 10:55 PM, Rick Dill <rdill at cyburban.com> wrote:

>  On the business end, the first "computer literacy" courses I know of
> were led by Ken Powell, who worked for IBM Education.  Ken was very much a
> self-starter.  In the mid 1970's he put together a team to teach computer
> literacy to IBM executives.  This was before there was a real IBM PC
> project.  He engaged any executive for whatever time he could get (from a
> couple of hours to multiple days)
>
> It started with simple exercises .. writing instructions on paper and
> handing them around to illustrate the concepts of a program .. and went on
> from there.  IBM execs at the time knew about selling computers, but had no
> clue about how they worked.  It ended up (if there was time) programming a
> KIM.  I think it helped soften up management to allow the PC to proceed.
>
> I was aware of this because the the other three on the team worked for me
> and I gave them time from their research to do it.  At that time, my
> department focus was on display technology, but we had  number of
> interesting computer projects including a WYSIG display that could produce
> a full page of formatted text, far in advance of the LISA.
>
> Ken earlier put together a project to get "personal computers" into the
> hands of people at home and see what they did.  I signed up and he got a
> few of us Sphere computers.  I couldn't get the memory in mine to remember
> long enough to get much done, but others had better success.
>
> Rick ..   who spent 45 years in IBM .. mostly, but not all technology
>
> p.s. my first computer literacy course came in the summer of 1954 when I
> was a summer student at IBM in Poughkeepsie.  At that time, the company
> took its vacation together and the new employees and summer students spent
> three weeks in class learning about IBM.  R. K. Richards taught a course on
> computers (701 era) using the pre-prints from a book he was writing.  That
> was an era when they handed out boolean minimization problems to groups of
> people to see who could come up with the best solution.
>
>
>
> On 1/5/2012 5:46 PM, JHMcCarthy at aol.com wrote:
>
>  Ron: I cannot personally attest to knowing any college level classes
> before 1982, but I am sending your inquiry to Dr Dave Bradley for his
> input.   Regards ----   Jud
>
> Justin (Jud) McCarthy
> 251 SW 9th Ave
> Boca Raton, FL 33486
> Home (561)391-1422 Cell: (561)504-7048
>  [snip]
>
>  [
>
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