On Feb. 4, 1985, UVA’s first computer lab opened inside Thornton Hall. These computers in the Stacks Computing Facility weren’t the first ones on Grounds; engineering professor John Thacker (Engr ’67, Grad ’73) remembers a computer terminal in the basement of the physics building dating back to 1963. But the introduction of the Thornton Hall lab, which was open 24 hours a day, meant professors could teach large classes in computing.
The lab’s arrival was the culmination of a 15-month project spearheaded by then-engineering professor Avery Catlin (Engr ’47, Grad ’49, ’60), along with Alan Batson, the University’s director of Academic Computing. The $398,000 lab, with its 128 AT&T PC6300s, gave users the ability to “network,” or plug into the University’s data system. Initially, however, most students didn’t have a clue how to do so.
Dan Grogan
“Students came in with minimal knowledge of computers,” says Larry Richards, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. “We had to teach them.” Richards taught an 8 a.m. Intro to Computing class in the lab for engineers and nonengineers alike. Every Monday, he’d give a homework assignment due the following Monday. On Sunday nights around 7, students started pouring into the lab. “I’d receive a flurry of emails from students with questions,” he says. “As the night wore on, the emails became more desperate and inflammatory.”
The computers fed into several main printers, which alumni and professors say would often print at random. At times, students fell asleep on a bench near one of the printers while waiting for their print job to appear. Once townsfolk learned of the lab, they wandered in on occasion. Richards remembers walking in one day to find a restaurant owner printing out his menus.
Computer labs grew around UVA throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, with 24-hour labs in Cocke Hall and Clemons Library. But by 2011, 99 percent of students owned personal computers. The labs across Grounds were dismantled.
Dan Grogan
Katherine Mitchell (Engr ’86) remembers the Stacks Computing Facility opening during her third year. She and her classmates steered clear of the lab, she says, thinking it was overcrowded by first-years; instead they used the mainframe terminals scattered throughout the Engineering School. “We all thought, ‘That won’t last. Personal computers are a fad that will come and go.’ Ha! I guess we missed that ship.”
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Comments (10)
Edith (Dee) Irwin on 03/17/2017
That lead picture is me! I was in grad school in the CS department at age 45. Hardly the typical student, but I wasn’t the only “older” student back for a CS degree.
Polly Pickering on 04/21/2016
I attended the University between August 1982 and May 1986, and I also beg to differ on the first appearance of computer labs on Grounds. Perhaps this article is meant to reference only personal computer labs? I learned Basic programming in 1983, and I was able to do my work at both labs on campus and via modem from my apartment on my little Atari computer and a TV screen. I know the McIntire School lab had been using punch cards and terminals before I arrived there in the fall of 1984, and McIntire’s IBM PC Lab was in place that school year.
Interesting article, but it appears to have needed a little more research with beards to what was going on in computing on Grounds in the early to mid 1980s.
Ron Cox on 03/31/2016
Diana - yes, it was Gilmer Hall. Luckily I had learned to type and honed that in the Navy. However, dropping a box of cards? Yep, did that more than once - especially in the middle of the night! Fun times. I was probably one of those engineering students. We took Fortran one semester and drafting the other. I used that good old CDC machine for years - and years!
Diana Sun on 03/30/2016
Your article took me back to my undergrad years, circa early 1970s. I felt that computers would be important in our future (!), so even though I was taking mostly English classes, I signed up for a computer class. There weren’t too many choices in those days, so I ended up taking a Fortran class in the Engineering School. The first class, I did not even understand the questions that the other students were asking. We had access to a giant CDC computer in the basement of (I believe) Gilmer Hall—to use it, we had to use keypunch cards! One typo would ruin the whole program. I would submit my cards, wait X number of hours ... and sometimes get a dump. Aaaargh! I was smart enough to change this course to pass/fail and somehow managed to pass. I doubt the keypunch room qualifies as a computer “lab.” I guess I was just ahead of my time, LOL!
Sal on 03/19/2016
Just reading the names of those who replied, this is what our America is (or was). It’s so great!
Mark Glass on 03/19/2016
I remember spending many nights in the late 80s in the Thornton Hall computing lab on those AT&T IBM clones—we were told that they had been donated to the University. I lived in Lambeth for my 2nd thru 4th years and having the terminal room across from the grocery store and laundry room there was a life saver as it saved me a hike to the E-school.
Sal on 03/19/2016
free printing for us poor indebted students? ;)
Law school had free printing up until at least ‘08…trekked all the way on the Blue to print my long essays when they needed hard copies.
Ron Cox on 03/19/2016
I was an undergrad 71-75, and had a part-time job developing computer aided instruction software for Dr. McVey. We ran on the HP computer in the EE lab. I got tired of walking from my office (with a TTY) to the computer lab and put in what would now be called a “back door” so I could have my ADMIN access without leaving my office (a desk behind the old wind tunnel!)
Constantine Roussos on 03/18/2016
Interesting article but I have to dispute the claim that the first computer lab was in 1985. I was a doctoral student in Computer Science from ‘75 - ‘79 and recall using a computer lab then. It was tiny compared to the one in your article, though. You mention Alan Batson in your article. He was the Chair of C. S. when I was a student.
Kim Toufectis on 03/18/2016
I graduated in 1983, and visited a Thornton Hall computer lab nicknamed “The Orchard” (filled with Apple ][e computers) many times in the course of a couple of semesters of computer classes, so the idea that the first lab didn’t open until 1986 doesn’t ring true.
The lab closed at midnight, but some of the more enterprising of us managed to find our way back in thereafter, so the lab functioned more or less 24 hours a day. [Once a security guard visited, took our names, and left us to our work.] The A-School had a lab by then too, but because it had only one computer we architecture students raided Thornton routinely.
During peak times sessions were limited to an hour, and there was a waiting list. Those waiting would often watch the architects, because our work included 3-D models—much more visually appealing than the typical text displays the engineering students generated.
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