Computing Gets Personal at FAS

On January 22, 1984, during the third quarter of Superbowl XVIII, an advertisement aired that would change the world’s perception of computing. As faceless gray drones marched lockstep down a long metallic tunnel, a sledgehammer wielding woman, clad in red and white sportswear raced past them. She approached an enormous screen casting Big Brother’s unhappy gaze upon the crowd and the woman launched the projectile, shattering his visage. The screen froze and words began to scroll: “On January 24th, Apple Computers will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984.’”

“It was a great ad because it didn’t actually tell you anything,” recalls Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science Harry R. Lewis, “it just told you that it was coming.” Lewis was one of the first people at Harvard to own a Mac.

“I remember standing there on the corner of Oxford Street,” he says, pointing out the window of his office in Maxwell Dworkin, “with this box with the Mac logo on it.” His outstretched hand passes over bookshelves cluttered with titles such as “A History of Computing in the 20th Century” and “Operating System Principles.” On his walls are computer science charts affixed with masking tape and hangings of Japanese calligraphy. But the most prominent feature in the space is his pristine, widescreen Mac desktop computer. “It was an exciting moment,” he says, referring to its predecessor.

Until the early 1980s—before the introduction of personal computers—Harvard exclusively provided centralized computing to students and faculty. Richard P. Draves ’85, now a research area manager at Microsoft, remembers, “There were these rooms of terminals in the basement of the Science Center.” The central machine was a VAX 11/780. “It was not a very fast processor,” Draves recalls, “and [at any given time] it was being shared among about 50 students.”

According to Draves, the majority of students who used computers at Harvard relied on this central system for any coursework that required a computer. Computer memory, however, was in short supply: “this machine had about four megabytes of memory,” says Draves. “You know, your phone has more than four megabytes.”

Lewis takes the discrepancy even further: “People do not appreciate what it’s like to live with no memory. Four megabytes is not even a wristwatch.”

Having to cope with high usage and an agonizingly slow computer response time led Draves to an upsetting conclusion. “I quickly realized that you basically had to pull an all-nighter to get any work done,” he says. “During the day the machine was basically too slow and unusable. You had to be there really late at night when no one was there.”

The difficulties of central computing began to drive students to the convenience of owning their own machines. Eventually, a growing interest in personal computing led to the formation of the Harvard Computer Society. According to current president Josh. A. Kroll ’09, the club was formed in 1983 as a response to student demand. “One of the club’s early duties was as a collective for purchasing computer hardware at a discount,” Kroll wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson.

In a questionnaire composed by Lewis and dated February 6, 1984, 54 out of 258 respondents had already purchased a computer. They anonymously reported using them for activities ranging from “Expos,” to “studying Latin,” to “various calculations and experiments in math and physics courses, and in German, for learning vocabulary.” Others who didn’t own a computer seemed ready to make the purchase: one wrote, “Get me a Macintosh!” while another responded, “personal computers are the way to go!” One student who didn’t own a computer but shared one with a roommate wrote, “I cannot foresee my preparing a paper using anything else.”

Such observations would prove prescient. Lewis calls the exponential growth in computer speed and processing “astonishing.” Speaking of the trajectory from personal computer squabbles to Internet freedom of information fights, he says, “right now we’re in as much a state of turmoil with that as we were 25 years ago with the question of what to do with these personal devices.” He adds, however, that, “this will all be settled in 25 years.”

Some Luddites who responded to the 1984 questionnaire, however, refused to acknowledge the march of technology. At the end of the survey, one student proclaimed, “Though I see and understand the advantages of computers and word processors, etc., I DO NOT feel that the technological progress they represent is good. I think it is alienating and it disturbs me greatly. I do not like them here or there. I do not like them anywhere.”

—Staff writer Mark Chiusano can be reached at chiusano@fas.harvard.edu.