1977 1983 Attala
Emile Attala had a vision where industry helped fund the Cal Poly Csc Department. He, together with the faculty, worked hard to get equipment, support, money or help in any way from the private sector to help fund Csc programs. Hewlett-Packard, Chevron, Tandem, Apple, Xerox, Control Data, TRW, and many others in the 1970-1980s helped with this objective.
Emile formed an Industrial Advisory Committee consisting of Don Fowler, a Vice President of Tandem; Charles Oldenberg, Manager of the Computer Division of Chevron; Bruce Kehring, a Vice President of Service Bureau, a division of CDC; an executive from TRW; and John Adelsbach, a Vice President at HP in charge of software quality. This group met with Emile and the Csc Department on a regular basis at Cal Poly, providing guidance, computer equipment, and funds to support the Csc program. Many of them became key players in the University Industrial Advisory Board later established by Warren J. Baker.
Gary Kildall, who wrote CPM and created the company, Digital Research, also served as an advisor to Emile. He would frequently fly his own airplane to San Luis Obispo from Monterey and give talks to the Csc students and faculty on topics such as compilers, operating systems and programming in general. The CSL had computers running CPM developed by Digital Research which had been donated to Cal Poly, as well as D.R. Pascal and PL/I compilers.
[Editor’s Note: I well remember Dr. Gary Kildall’s visits to Cal Poly. He gave presentations to the operating system classes on the file system organization of CPM. He related to us how he designed the file system and why he organized it that way. Very interesting and his code, I remember, always had the Kildall style, which was short, well defined modules – easy to read code.]
Interesting developments in the computer science evolution during Professor Attala’s tenure as Department Head.[^11]
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In June 1977, John Lions, Department of Computer Science, The University of New South Wales, published two booklets, one containing a selection of Unix Source Code (version 6) for the PDP 11/40 and a commentary on the Unix source code describing its operation line by line. The booklets, with permission from AT&T, were used as a text in many university operating system courses.
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The Motorola 68000 microprocessor exhibited a processing speed far greater than its contemporaries. This high performance processor found its place in powerful work stations intended for graphics-intensive programs common in engineering.
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In 1981, IBM introduced its PC, igniting a fast growth of the personal computer market. The first PC ran on 4.77 MHz intel 8088 microprocessor and used Microsoft’s MS-DOS as its operating system.
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In 1982, Mitch Kapor developed Lotus 1-2-3, writing the software directly into the video system of the IBM PC. By bypassing DOS, it ran much faster than its competitors. Along with the immense popularity of the IBM’s computer, Lotus owed much of its success to its working combination of spreadsheet capabilities with graphics and data retrieval capabilities.
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Time magazine altered its annual tradition of naming a `"Man of the Year,`" choosing instead to name the computer its `"Machine of the Year.`" In introducing the theme, Time publisher John A. Meyers wrote, `"Several human candidates might have represented 1982, but none symbolized the past year more richly, or will be viewed by history as more significant, than a machine: the computer.`"
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The Cray XMP, first produced in this year, almost doubled the operating speed of competing machines with a parallel processing system that ran at 420 million floating-point operations per second, or megaflops. Arranging two Crays to work together on different parts of the same problem achieved the faster speed. Defense and scientific research institutes heavily used Crays.
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Apple Computer launched the Macintosh, the first successful mouse-driven computer with a graphic user interface, with a single $1.5 million commercial during the 1984 Super Bowl. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Macintosh included many of the Lisa’s features at a much more affordable price: $2,500.
Emile Attala accepting a donation from Bruce Kehring, Service Bureau Corp., a Division of CDC, for the Department. Emile’s vision was to involve the computer industry with education at the Cal Poly Csc Department.
Emile Attala, King of Backgammon.
As mentioned earlier Bernard Evans, under the direction of Dan Stubbs, created the first Computer Science Laboratory for the microprocessor courses.
In the school year of 1977-1978, Emile Attala formally established the Computer Systems Laboratory with 375 square feet of space. One technician, Ralph Nicovich, was allocated to it, with Jay Bayne as the faculty director. By Spring quarter 1983, the space grew to 1800 square feet by the addition of 14-238, and doubled later in the summer with the addition of 14-235. By 1983, the CSL staff maintained the computer literacy facilities, the faculty office systems and the department computer systems as well as CSL software and hardware.
By May 1985, the CSL consisted of a half-time faculty Director and a technical and administrative support of four. Approximately 1.5 of the 4 positions were for hardware maintenance and support, 2.0 for system software support, and 0.5 for administrative support. There was 4,200 square feet of floor space, including a well equipped repair and maintenance shop. CSL housed over $2 million worth of hardware and software.
As of 1985 the CSL Advisory Committee consisted of Beug, Grimes, Keller, Hsu, Stubbs, and Webre with Joseph Grimes as the Faculty Director. Staff members Gilbert Keas, and Haley Landis handled software support with Neal Pollack dealing with hardware and Alan Bell as software manager. Daniel Stearns followed Joseph Grimes as Faculty Director of CSL.
Neal Pollack left Cal Poly in the Spring of 1987, and the department hired Don Erickson for CSL manager. Don commented that “every piece of equipment since he started has been replaced and every network restructured.” He estimates that the equipment in CSL is worth over $10,000,000.00. Ron Oliver, Ray Boche, and Chris Buckalew have served as Faculty Directors over the years as well as various Department chairmen. The acquisition of equipment in CSL as well as how the lab evolved over 25 years makes an interesting story which is developed in another chapter.
Bill Lind, Manager of Chevron’s Computing Division, and Colleague presenting Warren J. Baker, President of Cal Poly, $10,000 for Csc Department’s Scholarship Fund.
The search for a new Cal Poly president concluded May 22, 1979, with the announcement by the California State University Board of Trustees that Cal Poly’s eighth president would be Warren J. Baker. A professor of civil engineering from the University of Detroit, Baker held a Ph.D. in geotechnical engineering from the University of New Mexico, as well as a B.S. and M.S. degrees in civil engineering from the university of Notre Dame. While in Detroit, he progressed rapidly through the administrative ranks becoming the dean of the College of Engineering within seven years, and then vice president for academic affairs.[^12]
Two decades later, when asked about his first impressions of Cal Poly, Baker emphasized, “I had found that Cal Poly’s goals were similar to my vision of higher education.” Arriving at the campus, I discovered, “an institution in transition, founded with a focus on agriculture, but expanding into a comprehensive polytechnic university. I also noted that labs and other facilities needed significant improvement if ’learning by doing’ was to flourish in the 1980’s and 1990’s.” Recalling the excitement of those first days, Baker observed, “... seemed like a place where a president could have considerable influence and not just be a caretaker.”
In a 1998 essay on the “Future of the University,” Baker affirmed the enduring place of learn by doing in a Cal Poly education.
“Whenever appropriate in most disciplines, particularly those in polytechnic areas, we should reinforce classroom instructions with practical, “hands-on” learning in the laboratory, the studio, or out in the field. We should educate students to do what they are reading about, to apply the principles they learn, to act on their own ideas.”
The main language for the core courses is an issue in any computer science department. From 1969 to 1979 we used a variety of languages in various classes, ranging from IBM 360 assembly, Fortran, COBOL, PL/I, Algol, C, and even BASIC. The consensus seemed to be that everyone learn assembly, Fortran or PL/I and then students choose another language depending upon their interests. Since 1977, many faculty considered neither Fortran or COBOL appropriate as a core-sequence language. Algol, PL/1 and Pascal became the main candidates. We review history of the 1960’s-1970’s so you may see the environment and issues of that period.
In a meeting held in Zurich in May, 1958, the ACM and the German Society for Applied Mathematics met to specify a new language with the following goals:
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Close to the standard mathematical notation and self documenting.
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Possible to use the language to describe algorithms for publications.
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Programs written in the language must be translatable into machine code.
The language designed became Algol 58, a descendant of Fortran, with several new features such as data types. The language's programs read more like an algorithm than did Fortran's. A second meeting was held in France, in 1960, where Algol was described in BNF form. In this time period, excellent Algol compilers were available, but Algol 60 never achieved significant use in the United States. Despite this, it remained a formal means of communicating algorithms for over 20 years as seen in the ACM Collected Algorithms.
Zane Motteler with his computers.
Like Fortran, PL/I was developed as an IBM product. In this era, IBM considered two views of computing.
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Scientific computing: Used floating point arithmetic, extensive use of arrays, minimal i/o, subroutine calls, complex algorithms, some assembly, and mainly used Fortran.
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Business computing: Packed decimal types, simple algorithms, elaborate file i/o, data processing, and used COBOL.
With the IBM 360 system of computers came the idea of a new language, PL/I, that could be used both for scientific and business applications and for good measure throw in systems programming and list processing.
Niklaus Wirth had been on the committees that modified Algol in the ’60s. His version of Pascal and the implementation process appeared in 1973. By 1979, there existed excellent compilers for Pascal. Its popularity for both teaching and other applications is based primarily on its simplicity and ease of use.
If you had a vote in 1978-1979, how would you vote? Algol, PL/I, or Pascal? Remember, we had IBM equipment and PL/I was big and powerful.
Algol lost, as it was not popular enough in the U. S. and because of its i/o statements, in spite of Bob Dourson’s gallant effort on its behalf. PL/I lost because it was an IBM product with CDC equipment on the horizon for the whole State University System and because it was just too large. So the decision was Pascal. Simplicity and ease of use ruled.
Oh Pascal!! Csc 118 became the introductory course into the Csc curriculum and N. Wirth’s Pascal book became the first textbook for the course.
Looking back 32 years later, I think we made a great decision. Time sharing and microprocessors were now available at Cal Poly, as well as card image input via a terminal to a central computer. But Pascal then and even now, is simple enough for novices to learn quickly without getting too involved in the details. Compilers were available on all platforms. It worked great for time sharing and we had almost instant turn around time. Big step forward!
We later moved to a close relative of Pascal, namely Modula-2, and then in 1990 we stayed within the family with ADA. I need to mention that over this period, a class in Unix and C programming remained in high demand by students as a free elective. In 1995, the core sequence used C++ as the main language with object oriented programming as a standard feature of the curriculum. Then in 1999, Java became the main language. C, the ``high level assembly language`` together with “GNU” inline assembly became the main vehicles for systems and some network programming.
What do you think, are we progressing? What is next on the language horizon?
Dean William Langworthy awarded Elmo A. Keller with the 1982 School of Science and Mathematics teaching and research award together with a check of $250.00. Keller has recently developed a statistical spreadsheet package, MSP, that runs on multiple platforms, Unix, MSDOS, and Apple computers. Versions were written in both Pascal and C. The spreadsheet has a windowing environment with both a command and a menu driven interface and provides over 120 statistical procedures to process data stored in a worksheet. Keller, who developed the package with Patrick Marsh, a graduate student in the Computer Science and Statistics Department, teaches in the areas of microprocessors, operating systems, and statistical computation.[^13]
Elmo A. Keller received the 1982 School of Science and Mathematics Teaching and Research Award.
Left to right: Charles Dana, (1982) programming languages and core sequence; Zane Motteler (1982) compilers, microprocessors, Director CPE program; Cornel Pokorny (1983) graphics and core sequence.