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Oh that technology - what would we do without it!
Tina Alford Williams (BA‘91, MA‘97) Wow, the technological development that shaped my days as a student was definitely the Macs with PageMaker we used for the layout and design for the Parthenon! The semester I got there they were tossing the old cut and paste method, which, of course, took much longer. As the newbies with the computers we had to deal with being at the bottom of the learning curve, unexpected computer crashes, and “losing” stories. How many times did Ralph Turner walk into the newsroom yelling, “Are you saved?!” reminding us to save our data. Another thing that’s changed since my days as an undergraduate is registering on-line! Back in the dark ages, we had to stand in line in the basement of Old Main to register for classes, scramble for overloads, and hope the classes weren’t full by the time you got to the window. I remember waiting in LONG lines on the day registration first opened, hoping for the best class times and the best professors. Being an hour late could cost you a lousy schedule L. Michael Lerner: I was in the class of 1964 (pre-dentistry). High tech for me was the 6" slide rule I used to "zip" through calculations in inorganic chem, organic chem, physics, and various math classes. I thought it was classy cause I didn't have one of those 12+" slide rules those "geeky" engineering students hung on their belts, no sir! Mine was sooo cool, being in a little leather sleeve and fit nicely into the plastic pocket protector. Now that was anything but geeky, right? The calculator? Well, that came along about 10 years later (after dental school & grad school) and it could add, subtract, multiply & divide. Square roots? Sorry. It sold for $34.95 (MONEY WAS WORTH MORE THEN) and it was more than 1/2" thick! Those were the days!!!! Sue Smaagaard Litman ('72): After surviving physics without anything more than a slide rule, I was worshiping the tabletop calculator in Dr. Bird's Genetics Lab my senior year. It not only could add and subtract like the machines from the business arena, but it could MULTIPLY and DIVIDE. More importantly, it had what we learned to call a MEMORY. Hallelujah! Pocket sized? Ha ha, more like a bread box!
Roger Ormsby('71):
The electric typewriter was it for me in the years of '65 to
'71. I got my first computer in '78, an Imsai 8080 running
at 4.75 Mhz, the fastest speed available then. My 32K RAM
board cost me $2400. A far cry from today's 5000Mhz and 4GB
RAM, greater and fast for much less.
Ginger Kessel Starr: I don't know what I would have done without my IBM Selectric II typewriter that my dad brought home for me from his company when they converted to some predecessor to the personal computer. Gene Ann ('58): Are you kidding? Look at the year I graduated. We had manual typewriters. The journalism newsroom was full of them and the sound of typing could be heard down the hall of our library basement headquarters. Page Pitt was head of the department. It was a different age. Have lots of good memories of the time. Technology isn't always an improvement. Allison Brooks ('99): While at Marshall, I remember using a typewriter, a computer (Internet had just emerged), and a calculator for math classes. Conn Walli ('71): The technology my friends and I could not have lived without was a hair dryer. Some of them were like a plastic hood on the end of a tube and others looked like the ones in a beauty shop. I can still see my roomies at the Tri-Sigma house, with their long hair in huge rollers sitting under those hair dryers, sometimes studying, but more often asleep! Anita Anderson: My favorite technological innovation is: Pay at the Pump. This method of paying for gas has saved hundreds of hours of my valuable time. When I had small children, I would have to unbuckle my precious offspring from his car seat (which sometimes required an owner's manual to operate), go into the gas station, wait in line to tell the attendant I planned to fill up, return to the car, strap the child (who is now crying because he wants one of the candy bars that were displayed on the counter to solicit just such a reaction in children), pump the gas, unstrap the kid from the car seat again, and return to the counter to pay where we now add two candy bars to the total because I can’t think of any other way to handle this child and I am now stress eating! Sam Stanley ('65, '80): During the three terms I was a student (Eisenhower, Kennedy & Johnson), air conditioning and power steering made it a lot more convenient for Spring Breakers going to Florida. Interstate roads also helped out. Can you imagine now trying to drive to Florida non-stop without ‘em, especially on two-lane winding and hilly roads? Jenny Drastura ('74, '89): In my statistics class in the Speech Department, we had to do our thesis survey data on the only computer in the department. We had to make an appointment to use it. It was unbelievable how fast the formulas worked, as compared to doing the calculations on paper.
Billy Raies
('38): I went to Marshall from 1934 to 1938. I used a
manual typewriter. My degree was in social studies so
none of my classes involved anything technological.
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What
technological developments shaped your days as a student?
The pocket calculator... computer punch cards... UNIX... the electric
typewriter... Send your favorite innovations
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