MY MEMORIES

Charles Glenn Petersen

1977 - Wisconsin Years II

Oshkosh (continued)

During that Spring semester, Nancy analyzed the data she had collected and began writing her dissertation. She used the same computer program I had used called Thesis to write her dissertation. However, this time there were no punch cards as I had used, she was able to enter everything from a computer terminal. She had a terminal in a downstairs room that was connected via phone line using a 300 baud (basically 300 bytes/characters per minute) acoustic coupler to the computer at Iowa State University. It was a long distance telephone call at cents per minute but cheaper than driving 9 hours from Oshkosh to Ames and back. I know that today that sounds like back in the dark ages given our modern Internet speeds of megabytes per second, but in those days it was revolutionary. There were people back then that lived near universities making a living, or at least supplementing their income, typing graduate student theses and dissertations. Just like the buggy whip, those jobs are gone.