First Computer at the University

In 1958 Dr. Paul Cromwell, head of the Electrical Engineering Department, rented a Librascope General Purpose 30-bit computer (LGP 30). It was the institution’s first real digital computer and was restricted to use by Electrical Engineering. It took almost a second to multiply two numbers. The first computer for general university use was purchased in 1961, an IBM 1620—a transistor-based design that was a step beyond the vacuum-tube technology prevalent at the time. The IBM computer was partially funded by a grant of $50,000 from the National Science Foundation. It had 20K memory and was located in Glocker.