As a freshman at Vanderbilt University in 1967 (was that not just last week?), I was hired as a punch card operator for our newly-acquired Scientific Data Systems Sigma 7. The university had invested over five million dollars (U.S.) for the behemoth which was housed in a mostly underground circular building featuring high security including armed guards. I needed spending money and $5.00/hr. was twice the minimum wage...
The Beast, as we all called the clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junque, could understand words of 128K (!), processed at a multiplicative rate of 30.5 ųs (not exactly teraflop speed!), and had about 60 MB of tape drive memory (less than one ten-thousandth than that of my cell 'phone!) Lord have mercy, it was the highest of high tech!
During one endless and completely boring evening session of punch card entry, when I was stuck in the computer center whilst my fraternity brothers were out wining and dining the pulchritudinous, wealthy, and well-humored female students, I absentmindedly entered a divide by zero command on a card relating to a Psychology student's experiment dealing with the consumption of communion wafers by white rats. I already knew the results intuitively - the rats would die and go to Hell anyway.
The stack of cards was placed into the main card reader and the RUN button was depressed. (See what I did there? We should have
run and I was about to be really
depressed.) In milliseconds - nanoseconds were not even dreamed of at the time - red lights flashed furiously on the system control unit, peripherals screeched to a halt, and tape flew off memory storage reels in quantities rivaling a New York ticker tape parade for the Apollo astronauts! I had managed to bring the computer system of the Harvard of the South to screaming surcease. It stayed there for two days. I quit.
But then there was Star Trek and those pulchritudinous, wealthy, and well-humored female students. And beer. Life is good...
- Ed
