School Days
| Freedom's just another
word for nothin' left to lose
Bobby McGee - Kris Kristofferson
|
The big bad Card School
I took a student loan and went to
Portland
Business
College
to study data processing which I knew absolutely nothing about but thought this could finally be my
career. It looked like fun if I could get a job in data processing or as it was
later more glamorously called, information systems. Maybe I could get paid for
just having fun. For a time the class was about unit record machines that processed
those rectangular IBM
cards. The IBM machines did
all kinds of work with cards, but it seemed to me the whole
idea of doing things with a bunch of cards was somehow out of date. Still these
data processing systems kept the world going for
well over 70 years before computers were here, so I have a lot of respect
for the history of this somewhat occult art that today seems so
forgotten.
To ease the
boredom of classes in unit record, I changed around wiring boards on
the machines to confuse the instructors and make things interesting.
I was not what one would consider a model student or even one
that showed much respect.
After unit record we got into
something substantial--computer languages, such as the IBM assembler
language, my absolute favorite of all, and for me very easy to work with.
In fact computer languages were all essentially doing the same
thing just in slightly different ways. Next we learned FORTRAN, an extremely awkward language designed
more for scientific applications. Finally there was COBOL, a true business language.
I couldn’t
believe how anybody would have difficulty with computer languages, so I
spent extra time at the college helping my classmates and
writing programs that did weird and fun things to the computer and made
the cards fly around and the lights blink. It was a game to me.
The
last item offered at the school was systems analysis where I got to
design computer systems, that is, applications that performed
typical monotonous company functions, like payroll, inventory and
accounts receivable. The course consisted of designing file layouts, describing
processes and doing flow charts, a pictorial representation of how
processes interrelated. It
seemed simple and I did all the projects and even wanted more. They
didn’t have any more so I made up my own stuff.
Gil Gillette
The most important person at the
Portland
Business
College at that time was Gil Gillette. He was an
old guy who didn’t teach us much but had us laughing most of the time
with his many stories and jokes. He
was an old timer and highly experienced TAB man who spent most of his life in that field.
TAB stands for tabular processing and comes from the work of
Herman Hollerith, the
inventor of the first tabulator adding machine used in the 1890 census.
Gillette also had a morbid side. He was a Pearl Harbor
veteran and told us stories about the dead men they fished out of the
harbor. The sailors would comment to each other “Plant
that one over here, maybe he’ll grow some arms and legs next year”.
Not funny, but understandable with the emotional trauma those
people had to deal with.
But most of Gillette’s jokes were good. “How was
Herman Hollerith buried?” “Face
down, nine edge first”. That
joke brought a chorus of laughter from the students. It's a TAB
joke. In
unit record all cards are loaded face down nine edge
first, except for the reproducing punch.
I graduated from school with honors. I don’t know why because I never was challenged with anything
and was constantly giving my instructors fits by doing things in different ways.
At about this time I developed a keen interest in
early Data Processing and recently put together something in article
form about the History of Data Processing,
mostly because nothing else is like it on the internet.
How to succeed without trying too hard
Gil Gillette was most valuable because he knew people in
town. That was where his real
strength was. He just about knew every manager in every data processing
shop in Portland
because they had been through the school. So he got me a job immediately.
It
wasn’t any job. It was a
programming job. Realize
that at the time nobody without experience got a programming job, but I
got a programming job. Usually
graduates start at the bottom like a data entry clerk, a machine operator,
or a distribution clerk, and gradually work their way up the ladder to a
programming job. So it was a
big thing for me.