'My" IBM 1130 -- A Memoir
Steve Hill
'MY' IBM 1130
By Steve Hill
For as far back as I can remember, I was always interested in how things work. A technophile from the word go. Sometime early on, computers caught my interest and I had to know how they worked. I read all the books I could find, which weren't many in the small town where I lived. In those days of course (the mid 1960's), no one had even thought of building the PC, much less owned one.
When I was about 13 and in the 8th grade, my 7th grade English teacher (who lived next door to my parents and I) took me one Saturday to UC Riverside and took me to see my first real computer. He was friends with someone at the computer center there, and managed to talk them into letting me into the machine room. There, I was delighted to find myself in the presence of an IBM 360/65 mainframe computer. Most people have no idea what an impressive sight these machines were. It had over 100 flashing lights on the main console, and a chattering IBM Selectric-style typewriter, banging out requests to the operator. The console was attached to a huge cabinet housing the central processing unit, usually painted bright red or cool blue. These were flashy, 'movie style' machines. Below is a picture of a similar system (courtesy of IBM, thanks folks).
I was in heaven!
IBM 360/50
(Photo courtesy of IBM)
The day I was there, an IBM technician was there performing the routine maintenance cycle and, to impress the young visitor he found there, he grabbed a tape from his bag and ran a program. Behind me, I then I heard the high-speed printer begin to ‘sing’, music was coming from the printer! I stood there dumbfounded as the 1403 printer played out on its print hammers a medley of Christmas carols, while at the same time, printing out a series of pictures on the long ribbon of computer paper. It printed everything from Christmas ornaments and holly to a long banner of Santa Clause riding in his sleigh pulled by his eight reindeer. I think this was the moment in my life when I decided I was going to spend my life working in the computer business.
Of course, this grand machine was totally beyond my reach. I could hardly touch it, much less use it. The morning went on, and after annoying the people there with a thousand questions, I was politely shooed out, as they had real work to do (he he).
***
So, I was left to wander around the campus for the rest of the day by myself. Now, since science and technology were always my main interest, I inevitably ended up wandering the halls of the Physics building, just looking to see what I could find. I remember talking for a while to a graduate student as he was using a punch card machine to encode the data from some kind of nuclear particle experiment. But, as my wanderings continued, I found it! There on the second floor of the building was a room I would later visit many times in my youth. For it was there I found an IBM 1130 computer. It was a very simple machine by any standards, even those of the time. It had 8K (that's 8,192 words) of main memory, and a disk drive with 512,000 word capacity (that is, 1 MB). It also had a very slow printer and card reader. A modern PC is thousands (perhaps, millions?) of times more powerful. But there it stood, the doors to the room were wide open and students using it with their own hands. It looked much like this one below (sans the pretty model).
IBM 1130
(Photo courtesy of IBM)
I spent quite a while there that day, the students were friendly and happy to show me how the machine worked. I paid careful attention and I was pleased that they actually let me touch it. In fact, I was pushing start buttons when they told me to, learning how to load paper into the printer and how to feed cards correctly into the card reader. I even got to use the old manual card punch to punch a few cards. I had an extraordinary day. I'm pretty sure now it was the most important day of my life.
***
It wasn't long before I paid a visit to the offices of IBM in Riverside (with my mother in tow, of course), where I purchased a copy of the FORTRAN manual for the 1130, and a box of blank punch cards. (Anyone remember Hollerith punch cards?) At a mall bookstore, I also bought a textbook on FORTRAN programming1, by the legendary computer scientist, Daniel D. McCracken. I took it all home and began to learn.
A few weeks later, I was ready. I hopped a ride with my ex-English teacher again (he often took courses at UCR on the weekends), and quickly found my way again to the second floor of the Physics building.
Looking back on it now, I'm quite sure the students who were working in the lab that day must have been quite astonished to see a 13 year old kid brazenly walk into the room, sit down at the card punch, load it with cards from the box he was carrying, and begin to type. I'd really love to know now what they were thinking...
After struggling awhile to get the cards punched just right, I added the necessary cards to the front of the deck needed to run the job and, when the machine was idle, put the cards in the reader and hit the 'READY' button. The job started and, as all programmers know, a program never runs on the first try. Mine didn't either. But, I got the printout off the printer, sat down and read the error listings, got out my books, and kept trying until my program ran. Thus, I wrote and ran my first "Hello World" program on 'my' IBM 1130 that day.
Many, many, such weekends followed. I can't recall now, of course, exactly what I did on those many visits to that wonderful room. I only know now, that was where I got my start writing software.
***
I will finish this memoir with a final story from a few years later. I attended college for a year at California State University at San Diego (now SDSU). While there, I got a student job as a computer operator for the Engineering and Astronomy departments working in... you guessed it, their IBM 1130 computer lab. I ran the computer there for the students. In this lab, the students weren't allowed to run the computer themselves. Of course, I spent as much time as I could (ok, more than I should have) there.
Just being the operator there taught me much more about programming than you might think. Almost daily, I would find myself face to face with a bewildered engineering student, asking me why their FORTRAN program wouldn't run. This is where I found that all those weekends at UCR were valuable and worthwhile. I became very adept at looking over a program listing and locating at least the gross errors in the program. After some practice, I could often perform this feat in less than a minute or so while the standing at the operator's station. I imagine that I acquired a reputation there, though I never really thought about it at the time. Obviously, this experience has served me well in all the years since. The ability to quickly find errors in a program's source code is a gift I'm grateful for now.
I've been in the computer business for almost 40 years now, but I'll never forget the IBM 1130 and what it taught me. It was a fantastic little machine!
Steve Hill
***
If you are interested, here are some links to websites about the IBM 1130.
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/1130/1130_intro.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1130
NOTES:
1 McCracken, Daniel D. (1961) - A Guide to Fortran Programming. At the time of course I had no idea who he really was.
Text Copyright © 2009, 2010 Steven Hill. Fair, non-commercial use is permitted.
Photos Copyright © IBM Corp., used with permission.