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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.

1972

First computer scientist hired
Larry Harris. Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell

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.

1978

Second computer scientist hired
Scot Drysdale. Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford.

Computer Science major established
(during John Kemeny's presidency). First degree was awarded in 1979.

1981

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

1984

Macintosh introduced campus-wide
This was a 128k machine.

Department name changed to Department of Mathematics and Computer Science

First senior hire
Professor Donald Jonson (Ph.D. Cornell. 1973). His startup funds were used to purchase for CS faculty the first Sun workstations at Dartmouth.

1985

Ph.D. Program in Computer Science established
There were five Computer Science faculty at this time.

1986

Xerox awards a University Grant to Dartmouth
The grant consisted of $1,000,000 of workstation equipment and provided the impetus to connect the Thayer School by a fiber optic link to the rest of campus.

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

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

1991

First Ph.D. degree in Computer Science awarded
There were 10.5 regular plus 5 associated faculty.

Second senior hire
Associate Professor Fillia Makedon (Ph.D. Northwestern. 1982).

1992

Dartmouth Institute for Advanced Graduate Studies established
First summer symposium held: 100 attendees.

1993

First massively parallel computer acquired at Dartmouth
The 2048-processor DECmpp was obtained with funding from Digital Equipment Corporation, the National Science Foundation, and the Kiewit Computation Center.

Sudikoff Laboratory for Computer Science finished.

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

1994

Independent Department of Computer Science formed

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

1999

11:59pm, December 31: DCTS is shut down for the last time.

2000

12:01am, January 1: Original founders decide to re-write DTSS as an emulator.
This project is born.

2004

May 11: TrueBasic-based emulator available for Mac and Windows here.


Portions reprinted without permission from the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, March 1995.