Generally I keep my yap shut, preferring to soak up to the stunning collective knowledge y'all bring to the table in these dialogues. But I would be remiss if we didn't place the discussion of computer literacy in the larger context of IBM's efforts to raise academic and public awareness of how computers worked, and how they could be applied not to crushing mankind beneath cold, uncaring metal robotic feet, but as tools to serve man in the pursuit of knowledge, corporate wealth, and easier ways to do things. It's a continuous theme at IBM from the very beginning of the tabulating business (IBM's education program started in 1916 specifically to capture and spread knowledge of established, new, and potential EAM applications in various industries). But that's far afield from the original conversation about PC literacy classes in the 1980s. Still, closer to computer era, you can easily thread from the Watson Lab at Columbia in the mid-1930s, to the pro bono use of the SSEC at 590 Madison and the scientific calculation classes at Columbia and the hosting of computer symposiums in the late 1940s, to the support of user groups and the film linked below and Arthur Samuel's appearance on the Today show with his checker-playing program and Fred's ski lessons in the 1950s, to exhibits like Mathematica and the IBM Pavilion at the NY World Fair in the 1960s, and so on right up to Watson on Jeopardy. This was a consistent company effort to portray computers to academics and the public as forces for good with real life relevance. And oh, by the way, as an interesting career for those with skills in math, science, and engineering. Which of course, y'all know already. :-) Enjoy the film! <a href="http://www.architizer.com/en_us/blog/dyn/36736/the-eames-ibm-and-the-dawn-of-computing/">http://www.architizer.com/en_us/blog/dyn/36736/the-eames-ibm-and-the-dawn-of-computing/</a> P~ Paul C. Lasewicz IBM Corporate Archivist 914/766-0611 lasewicp@us.ibm.com Find IBM History online at www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history "History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth."  E. L. Doctorow From:        Peter Capek <capek@ieee.org> To:        Rick Dill <rdill@cyburban.com> Cc:        Robert B Garner/Almaden/IBM@IBMUS, scc_active@computerhistory.org, 1401_all@computerhistory.org, JHMcCarthy@aol.com, mcclure@computerhistory.org, davebradley@nc.rr.com, jon.pearce@sjsu.edu, franklin.stan@gmail.com, ted@designworlds.com Date:        01/06/2012 02:52 PM Subject:        [SPG_Active_Members] Re: [1401_interest] Fwd: [1401_founders] First        computer literacy class? Sent by:        scc_active-bounces@computerhistory.org <hr noshade> 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 <<a href=mailto:rdill@cyburban.com>rdill@cyburban.com</a>> 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, <a href=mailto:JHMcCarthy@aol.com target=_blank>JHMcCarthy@aol.com</a> 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 <a href="tel:%28561%29391-1422" target=_blank>(561)391-1422</a> Cell: <a href="tel:%28561%29504-7048" target=_blank>(561)504-7048</a>  [snip] [ _______________________________________________ 1401_interest mailing list <a href=mailto:1401_interest@computerhistory.org>1401_interest@computerhistory.org</a> <a href=http://mail.computerhistory.org/mailman/listinfo/1401_interest target=_blank>http://mail.computerhistory.org/mailman/listinfo/1401_interest</a> <tt>_______________________________________________ SCC_active mailing list SCC_active@computerhistory.org </tt><a href=http://mail.computerhistory.org/mailman/listinfo/scc_active><tt>http://mail.computerhistory.org/mailman/listinfo/scc_active</tt></a><tt> </tt>