MY CO-OP EXPERIENCE AT IBM KINGSTON, NY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA’S CO-OP PROGRAM

After enrolling in the summer semester at Florida, I decided to apply to participate in Florida’s co-operative education program. The co-op program offered an opportunity to integrate classroom instruction with practical work experience. I was accepted and offered a position with IBM’s Federal Systems Division in Kingston, NY.

The New York experience broadened the horizons of a relatively sheltered existence in a railroad town located in rural Central Florida: geographically, socially, technically, in all directions, in all dimensions.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Labs designed and IBM was producing the SAGE Computer System. SAGE (Semi Automatic Ground Environment Environment) System was the United States’ digital computer-controlledc old-war early warning and defense control system of the 1950s and 1960s. It was logically and physically the largest digital computer system in the world. It literally weighed 250 tons.

My position as an electronics technician was to install changes and perform maintenance on the AN/FSQ-7, the SAGE mainframe computer. IBM Kingston housed the prototype vacuum tube dual processor manufactured and delivered the systems to air force bases around the US.

How lucky was I to work with one of the earliest large digital computers in the world? I took my very first computer programming course at IBM Kingston. Programs in those days were written in machine language.

AN/FSQ-7

Here are some archival data on the ANFSAQ-7:

These huge mainframe computers were installed in the following locations.

Below is the old IBM plant in Kingston. The Rhinecliff Bridge across the Hudson River is in the background. We crossed that bridge many Saturday nights for an evening of dining and dancing at the Rhinecliff Hotel on the east bank above the Hudson.

DIGITAL COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY OF THE DAY – SAGE COMPUTER

Computer memory before large scale chips was generally made from tiny donut-shaped magnets called magnetic cores. Each core could save on binary digit, or bit, of a computer character. It took millions of cores to build a binary array to make up the memory of the SAGE computer. Here is a finished core memory bank for SAGE.

Stringing these cores onto wires to build the core memory banks was done at the IBM plant in a large, enclosed and controlled environment – a huge glass-enclosed in a corner of the IBM Kingston manufacturing plant. We called the core assembly room Peyton Place (after the 1957 movie filled with salacious moments that took place in a town called Peyton Place).

The management theory in those days was that women were move patient and detail-oriented than men. So the Peyton Place core assembly area, except for a few male managers, was “manned” exclusively by female employees who were especially good at the tedious task of threading the small donuts on an array of three wires through each magnetic core memory bit.

FRIENDS AND SOCIAL LIFE IN KINGSTON

The IBM coop students from various colleges tended to meet, share apartments, and have big parties. Friday nights were mostly spent as boys-night-out or girls-night-out. Saturday evenings were boy-girl events. It was ate night if you knew a girl to ask out. It was party and meet-a-girl-night if you didn’t have a girl. Word about where the Saturday parties were being held was spread at the IBM plant on Fridays.

I hit the jackot! My first Saturday party included a group of nursing students from the Benedictine Hospital School of Nursing. The second Saturday night included a bunch of young women from the Baptist Nursing School. That did not work out as well as the Catholics from Benedictine did.

Two seniors in the back row I became close with: Boni Albers and Helen Boudreau. Helen and I were close friends.I became engaged to and almost married Boni. Joan arrived just in time.

Mickey McMonagle, another senior, and two girls in the Class of 1960 (Phyllis Madajewski and Karen Dunne) were special friends while I was there that summer.

Mickey McMonagle

For a time, I dated both Phyllis Madajewski and Karen Dunne, alternating between the two. They must have enjoyed the game because to took them weeks to disclose to me they were roommates. Shock and surprise to me. It was all fun and social. In fact, the two of them conspired and matched me up with Boni Albers. Boni and I fell in love and became engaged over the coming year. The odds were stacked against a southern boy and a northern girl of German immigrant parentage making a successful life together, but that was not obvious to me or to Boni at the time. Joan Moore entered my life in the summer of 1960 at the wedding of mutual friends. Dstiny changed quickly. Joan and I married 11 June 1961.

Here’s a picture in our apartment on my second assignment to Kingston summer semester of 1958. Dave, standing on left, I standing on right, Bob Bednarz squatting , and two visiting coup student friends.

Bob Bednarz and I double-dated many times. Bob is with Aggie Serdienis and I don’t remember the name of the girl I am with . In the picture below, we were on a Saturday outing to the Ashokan Reservoir in the Catskill Mountains. Ashokan is one of the reservoirs that provides drinking water to New York City, 90 miles south.

I dated Aggie after Bob Bednarz went back to school in Boston. They kidded me at IBM about my southern accent. They called me Rebel. I called the Damn Yankees. Bob had a Boston accent. He would “steer” his coffee. I thought he was saving his money to buy a “cow”, not a car.

After I met and got serious about Boni, Aggie went on to marry Bill Chitty and moved to California where Bill was an engineer for JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratories) in Los Angeles. This Christmas card from the sixties was in my files. We have maintained contact all these years. Aggie and I have remained good friends for life.