Abstract
The origin of the academic study of information and computing at Georgia Tech is a story of intuitive visions and the hard work of actualizing them. This included fortunate hires and timing, good responses to changing conditions, a spirit of innovation, and, of course, lots of hard, routine work. The visions were held by multiple people, a creative, productive faculty that formed a mini think-tank in the early years, a World War II refugee with an eclectic education, a librarian who knew nothing about computers, and a WW II research director with amazing foresight. Georgia Tech benefited from its location, three strategic and forward-looking leaders in this period, early benign neglect of computing by most of the campus, and a rich technological environment from which a world-class academic unit eventually grew.
You have to know the past to understand the present.
—Carl Sagan, Astronomer, Writer, & Scientist
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Notes
- 1.
Special thanks are due to several faculty members present during the period covered—Albert Badre, Phil Enslow, Rich DeMillo, Rich LeBlanc, and Ray Miller. All generously corrected multiple versions of my 2015 paper that formed the basis of this chapter and shared numerous recollections of that time. All but Miller, since deceased, also contributed additional insights to this chapter. The result is immeasurably better because of their contributions.
- 2.
“Various letters and reports,” Dorothy Crosland, 1950–1970, Archives and Special Collections, Library, Georgia Institute of Technology; Somers, op. cit.; Slamecka, op. cit.; Engineering the New South: Georgia Tech, 1885–1985, Robert C. McMath, Jr., Ronald H. Bayor, James E. Brittain, Lawrence Foster, August W. Giebelhaus, and Germaine M. Reed, University of Georgia Press, Athens, 1985; “Dorothy M. Crosland,” Wikipedia, accessed December 3, 2020; and “History of the Georgia Tech Library, with Emphasis on the Crosland Era,” Li, L.; Altamirano, I.M.; Finn, B.M. June 2017, http://hdl.handle.net/1853/58508, accessed 1/13/2022.
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Bulletin [Catalog] 1964–1965, Georgia Institute of Technology, p. 132ff.
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The Innovators, Walter Issacson, Simon & Schuster, 2014.
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“News of the Alumni,” Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine Vol. 46, No. 03 1968, p. 38.
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“John Goda, Jr. Obituary,” Atlanta Journal Constitution, October 12, 2013.
- 7.
“Pete Jensen Obituary,” Atlanta Journal Constitution, February 9, 2005.
- 8.
Interview of Richard DeMillo by William Aspray, June 29, 2020. Transcription available in College of Computing Archives, Archives and Special Collections, Library, Georgia Institute of Technology.
- 9.
“Jesse Hubbard. Poore, Jr. Obituary,” Find a Grave.
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Philip H. Enslow, “Distributed Data Processing System,” IEEE Computer, Vol. 11 January (1978) 13–21. He specified five properties of distributed systems: multiplicity, physical distribution, unity of system operation, system transparency and cooperative autonomy.
- 11.
“Social processes and proofs of theorems and programs,” Richard A. DeMillo, Richard J. Lipton, Alan J. Perlis, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 22, Issue 5, Volume 22, Issue 5, May 1979 pp 271–280.
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Freeman, P.A. (2024). Early Days of Computing at Georgia Tech (1947–1978). In: Vision and Actualization in Academia. History of Computing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43930-8_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43930-8_2
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