1949

The ammonium chloride was left stacked in the shed as the weather cooperated for the first time in three years to give Dartmouth real Winter Carnival weather for 1967. John Rand '38, executive director of the Dartmouth Outing Club since 1938, is normally a very friendly and well-liked person. Around Carnival time his spirits rise and fall inversely with the thermometer, and preparing for the worst he had 1,000 pounds of the chemical ordered in to congeal wet snow or slush. Fortunately, he never had to tear open the first bag of it. I guess you probably know by now that our fine skiing team put all that snow to good use. The team has excellent balance in all events and went on to win not only our own Carnival but also the Williams and Middlebury refrigerated weekends as well. This stamps Dartmouth as the Eastern ski champs and should encourage us to go for both national team and individual honors.

While we can crow about our skiing, we have to say that we are still in the Ivy League cellar when it comes to hockey and basketball. These are definitely re-building years for both teams, and in each sport a new coach is in the picture. We can all look forward to a great deal of earnest effort in bringing these teams out of the doldrums to a place of preeminence in the league. This year's swimming team is a case in point. Coach Michaels worked hard to develop an outstanding group of swimming stars and has succeeded in doing so. We have a freshman team, meanwhile, which has an unbroken winning streak running back several years at this writing. The team should be a great one next year, and the press clippings will have been worth waiting for.

I do want to give more than an oblique glance at one very noteworthy event which recently occurred on campus. The January issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE offered an article in detail on it and you should check it out. On December 2 of last year, the new Kiewit Computer Center was dedicated. It is a very imposing building located at the corner of North Main and Elm Streets and houses one of higher education's most significant new computer systems. Through the generosity of Mr. Peter Kiewit '22, nationally renowned builder, Dartmouth has a home for its new two and a half million dollar General Electric 625 computer and assures its position of leadership in the field.

This is a giant step over what I encountered on our recent Class fall weekend when I did battle with the computer and met more than my match. There was a series of typewriter-like input machines located in what we knew as freshman commons. Early Saturday evening, after the football game, I enlisted the technical support of a freshman I knew and went in to meet the machine. I was told to type out the words "new problem" in order, I guess, to clear the computer's wire-enmeshed brain of the last challenge from this location. Of course, you must realize that the computer normally can work on as many problems as there are input stations simultaneously in view of its incredible speed of calculating which is registered in millionths of a second. My eyes almost popped when the machine came back in teletype fashion, "You have forgotten to type 'hello.' " It was obvious that the computer demanded a respect which I had failed to show it. Trying to appear nonchalant in front of several students and their dates, I typed back the word "hello," hoping to make friends at last. The word "hello" came back immediately. My freshman friend typed in his student identification number, gave the problem a name, and we were set to go.

We asked the computer to give us X squared plus one on all numbers from one to ten. These answers were typed out with machine gun rapidity with an indicated computer time of zero seconds. That is apparently par for the course. I found out that the real bottleneck is input time in setting up and feeding a problem and output time in its typewritten transmission, which far exceed the computer work period. I soon found out that my new-found friend was a bit prissy. I asked it what the odds were on a royal flush in poker, and it fired back the words "illegal instruction." I'll remember not to ask it to sit in at our next monthly poker club party. I decided that I would type out a short alumni club letter and run off the one hundred copies needed right then and there. I tried to corral a young local right in town who might be interested in earning money by simply sitting there and tearing off the paper at the completion of each typewritten letter, but they were all too busy, so I borrowed a wastepaper basket and trained the unwound roll into it. I left the machine running and went back to the room to dress for dinner. I hated having to run out on my new friend but derived some small satisfaction from the realization that I was now complete master of the situation and victor in the battle of man versus machine. While I was relaxing in a nice hot tub, the computer was going to weary itself by knocking out a hundred letters for me which would have taken hours to type at home. I asked the lovey couple playing a computerized Princeton-Dartmouth football game at the next station to keep an eye on my letter. The Tuck student feeding in material for some financial analysis problem also promised to keep an eye on my work. About an hour later, I returned expecting to find all my letters run off but was chagrined to see that the lights were being turned off and everyone was leaving. It seems that Professor Kemeny had been forced to take over the computer's undivided efforts in the solution of a rather complex problem and had been forced to close down all student-operated stations for the evening. If the computer has a sense of humor, I am sure it stored up a winter long laugh on me.

I am going to hold off what little news I have at the moment from our classmates until the next issue, but please note that Carll Tracy and his Gold Pick Axe committee are extremely anxious to have your nominations for this year's award as soon as possible. The deadline is June 1 and the material should be sent to Carll at 20 Fourth Avenue, Warren, Pa.

Secretary, 15 Twin Oak Rd. Short Hills, N.J. 07078

Class Agent, 62 Highland Ave., Roslyn, N. Y. 11576