A Brief Computation Center History
From Computation Center Users Manual, chapter 2, page 1, July 1972 edition:
The first computer at the The University of Texas at Austin was an IBM Card Programmed Calculator (CPC) leased to the Military Physics Research Laboratory at Balcones Research Center in February 1953. In October 1955 MPRL installed an IBM 650 and the CPC was moved to the Chemistry Building on campus. In March 1955 a special committee recommended to the President of the University that a computation center be planned. In June 1958 an IBM 650 was installed in the Experimental Science Building.
In [June] 1958, the Computation Center was established, and in October 1959 the present site for the Computation Center was approved. In March 1961, the IBM 650 was replaced in the Experimental Science Building by a CDC 1604 and CDC 160. The 1604 and other equipment were moved to the present site [of the Computation Center Building] in September 1961 and the present Computation Center Building was officially dedicated in April 1962. In December 1962, an IBM 1401 computer was leased. The CDC 6600 was delivered in August 1966 and became operational in September 1966. The CDC 1604 was used through December 1966 and then removed. The Computation Center was expanded in November 1967 to include parts of the ground floor and fourth floor of Will C. Hogg Building.
The Computation Center at the University of Texas at Austin was founded on June 1, 1958 with Dr. David M. Young, Jr. as the first director. He served in that capacity until July 1, 1970. The second and final director was Dr. Charles H. Warlick, who served from July 1, 1970 to August 31, 1996, at which time the Computation Center ceased to exist as an organization. During its 38 years of operation, the Computation Center provided computing and telecommunication services to U.T. Austin's academic community.
On September 1, 1996 the Computation Center was renamed "Academic Computing and Instructional Technology Services" (ACITS was the acronym, but staff were instructed to use the improbable pronunciation "assets"). Dr. Thomas F. Edgar became the Interim Director, with Dr. Clair W. Goldsmith serving as his Deputy Director, and Dr. Warlick serving as technology advisor to Provost Mark Yudof.
Dr. Warlick remained as an advisor to the Provost until his retirement in August, 1997. ACITS persisted until 2001 when it was merged with the Data Processing department and the Telecommunications group to become the Information Technology Services (ITS) department. Serving under the new Vice President for Information Technology, Dan Updegrove, the first Director of ITS was Randy Ebling, previously the Director of Data Processing.
UT's "TeamWeb" has also assembled some related web-oriented history.
July 29, 2009
