MY MEMORIES

Charles Glenn Petersen

1972 - Missouri Years I

Northwest Missouri State University (continued)

Our department did have a small HP computer that the Senior students got to use on a one user per time basis. The input was via paper tape and the only language used was BASIC, another programming language I knew nothing about.

One of the COBOL programs I wrote while trying to become the local teaching expert on the language was a small version of a program developed at Iowa State University that allowed students to write papers, thesis, and dissertation on punched cards that the computer would turn into the properly print form accepted by the library as completed works in the library’s specified format.

I got my version working and even got some members of the English Department to accept student writing papers using my program. Then one day I was called into the head of the Computer Centers office and told that my program could no longer be used because using the computer to help write papers was a terribly wasteful use of the computer. Today we would laugh at that logic because most people use their computer to do text editing just like I am writing now.