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VOLUME I ISSUE 1
NOVEMBER, 1971
Computer Terminal Opens New Vistas
Fr. Peter, Nancy Naughton,
Jack Richford, and John Drogos
Until the fall of 1968,
computing of any kind, whether
educational or administrative,
was looked upon by Belmont
Abbey College as a luxury which
only the large colleges and
universities could afford.
However, when the school year
began in 1968, a staff member of
the North Carolina Computer
Orientation Project visited our
campus and offered us one year
of free computing service.
The resulting computer
terminal consisted of a
teletypewriter connected via
telephone line to a remote
computer at Research Triangle
Park, North Carolina. Students
punched their programs into a
paper tape which was then
transmitted over the line to the
computer. When the program
had been processed, it was
returned automatically in
printed form on the teletype.
The Chemistry Department
enthusiastically supported the
idea of computer service and
gave the new terminal its
warmest welcome. To
encourage further interest and
to show that the new stranger on
campus was reallly a friendly
giant, short courses in
programming language were
offered to students and faculty
members. Chemistry students
used stored programs for
obtaining mathematical
analyses of individual and group
experiments. Freshman
mathematics students
supplemented classroom
instruction with computer
programs. A team of business
work on a computer problem
using the new 1050.
students entered the
intercollegiate business game
competition sponsored by
Emory University and used the
teletype to transmit decisions
and receive results.
When the year of free service
was over, the College elected to
pay the cost and to continue
computer service. By the end of
the 1969 Fall term, a level of
activity had been reached which
severely taxed the capacity of
the teletype. A National Science
Foundation grant awarded to the
Abbey in November 1969, made
it possible to replace the
teletype terminal with an IBM
1050 terminal which was
installed in February, 1970.
The 1050 reads cards instead
of paper tape. With the use of a
keypunch machine, students
now punch their programs into
cards and then transmit the
information to the computer via
telephone line. Although a low
speed terminal, the 1050 can
handle about twice the volume of
work that the teletype could
handle, because programs are
now punched out on a separate
machine, thus freeing the
terminal for full-time datai
transmission.
The old teletype was located in
the William Gaston Science Hall
away from the center of the
campus. Many of the non
science students and certain
faculty members believed that
the computers were large,
expensive calculators that
scientists used. The new 1050
terminal was installed more
centrally in the
Administration Building.
Because of the 1050’s many
operational advantages over the
teletype and because of its
central location, the Abbey is
able to integrate computer
applications into the
educational process more
successfully. For example,
students and faculty in the
Social Sciences now have
access to a large data bank that
affords the user an experience
in statistically analyzing social
sciences surveys such as the
pre-presidential election
survey of 1968 and Murdock’s
ethnographic atlas. This
program provides a wide range
of opportunity for the fields of
sociology, political science,
anthropology, psychology and
other disciplines involving
survey analysis.
Economics and business
students will find the computer
Please turn to page 4, Col. 3
V
Focus
Nancy Naughton and John
Drogos are utilizing two key
components of the new 1050
System.
DR. FRANK DEFELICE
A shock of reddish hair, an
intense gaze, and a distinctive
Bostonian accent are several of
the natural endowments of Dr.
Frank DeFelice, Professor of
Economics, and one of the new
members of the social science
faculty.
Frank completed his
undergraduate work at
Michigan State University and
received his B.. A. degree
magna cum laude. He has been
in North Carolina since he
began his graduate studies in
the early 1960s. He was
awarded the M.B.A. and Ph.D.
in economics by the University
of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill. Before coming to' the
Abbey, he taught at East
Carolina College, at the
University of North Carolina at
Charlotte, at Davidson College
(as a visiting associate
professor) and at Queens
College. He did post-doct()ral
work through a Ford Foundation
fellowshipat Duke University.
During these years he also
produced a number of articles
for various learned journals.
His special interest in
computers won him a grant
from the National Science
Foundation to develop
programs designed to integrate
the computer with instructional
work in the classroom. In his
economics courses this study is
already bearing fruit, for the
Abbey students are using the
computer terminal more and
more. In collaboration with I'r.
Peter .Stragand, Frank is
making plans to upgrade the
whole program for the vai ious
disciplines of social and
physical sciences.
He lives in Charlotte with his
Please turn to page 4, Col. 1