Life of the Cybermind

1887

Harry Bates Th' 79 designs an electrical punch-card machine for the 1890 United States Census. He goes on to found the Tabulating Machine Company, which evolves into I.B.M.

1940

Bell Laboratories mathematician George Stibitz conducts the first public demonstration of remote computing. He connects a terminal at Dartmouth to his headquarters' "automatic calculator" in New York.

1956

The term "artificial intelligence" is coined by Dartmouth mathematician John McCarthy.

1959

Dartmouth gets its first real computer: the LGP-30.

1964

The Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS) is born at 4:00 a.m. on May 1 when it solves the problem submitted by two terminals simultaneously: "Print 2+2." The system fails an average of every five minutes.

1968

Results of a swimming competition are computerized for the first time. A student keyboards data at poolside using a teletype and a modem. Applause for an especially good dive disrupts the terminal's acoustic link, crashing the program and eliminating all of the accumulated scores.

1975

A survey reports that 73 percent of the student body is enrolled in a course that uses computing. There are 184 such offerings.

1977

Thirteen thousand volts pass through the body of a small squirrel. Kiewit is shut down for ten hours.

1981

The Dartmouth College libraries develop an experimental on-line catalog.

1986

Six hundred years' worth of scholarship on Dante's Divine Comedy are offered through an on-line database. Other new networked databases include alcohol-related writings, and a compilation of all 1,623 concerts given by the Grateful Dead.

1990

Key Server, a Dartmouth innovation, allows controlled access to commercially available programs for the Macintosh. Students and faculty get to use the programs for free.

1993

The College announces that it will pull the plug on the obsolete Dartmouth Time Sharing System.

1994

Dartmouth puts a "home page" on the Internet's World Wide Web.

Dartmouth was in cyberspaceeven before this pioneer.