MY MEMORIES

Charles Glenn Petersen

Iowa State University

Robert Stewart was Chairman of the Computer Science Department. The department was just getting ready to move into the new Computer Science Building. I believe it is now called Attanasoff Hall after the courts declared that John V. Attanasoff, professor in the Physics Department at what was then called Iowa State College, and Clifford Berry, his assistant, were the inventors of the first electronic computer. They built a machine called the ABC (Attanasoff Berry Computer) back in the late 1930’s. Attanasoff moved on and many years later when Stewart, a young graduate student in Physics, was given an office in the basement of the Physics building and asked if he could tear down this piece of old unused electronic equipment that was in the room. Yes, it was the ABC. Attanasoff built the first computer, Stewart tore it down and eventually became the first Chairman of the new Computer Science Department. In the past few years, the ABC has been rebuilt according to the original plans for historic and display purposes

During the Spring term at Iowa State, I took mainly Computer Science undergraduate courses bringing me up to speed so that I could start taking Graduate courses in the newly formed Masters and Ph.D. programs in Computer Science. As I remember it, I took a programming course using the PL/1 language, a data structures course, and a course in computer logic. I can still visualize the instructors in those courses but I can remember the name of only one of them. The programming instructor was a very intelligent woman, a PhD candidate and a member of MENSA. The data structures course was taught by a fellow in a wheel chair who had only minimal uses of his arms and hands. As I recall he was a former classmate of mine from Electrical Engineering. He was injured in a car accident sometime after graduating. The logic instructor was Dale Anderson, a graduate student in Electrical Engineer, who was working on his research for his PhD.

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