Sources

In writing this memoir, I began by writing down what I can remember. I then searched for contemporary documents to check my memory of facts and dates. The information that I have been able to find is often incomplete and unbalanced. For example, there is a great deal of information about Multics at MIT, but very little about the Dartmouth Time Sharing System.

Two of the three EDUCOM books cover topics that are covered in this narrative. They are:

Campus computing strategies, edited by John W. McCredie, 43-65. Bedford MA: Digital Press. 1983

Campus networking strategies, edited by Caroline R. Arms, 67-89. Bedford MA: Digital Press. 1988

Many of the details about computing at Dartmouth come from the reports and brochures that the Kiewit Computation Center produced intermittently. I have the publications from 1969-71, 1973-76, 1985, and 1986.

IBM's Academic Information Systems division produced a well-balanced brochure on the Andrew project:

Carnegie Mellon University Reaching for World Leadership in Educational Computing and Communications, IBM. 1986

Many of the facts and figures about Carnegie Mellon are drawn from a 1986 brochure and a paper that I wrote when Richard Cyert resigned after nineteen years as president:

Arms, William Y., Reflections on Andrew, EDUCOM Review 25(3):33-43. 1990

Wikipedia has technical articles on many of the computer systems. Some are excellent, e.g., the article on PDP-11 minicomputers, but there are some notable gaps and Wikipedia says very has little about how the computers were used and next to nothing on their impact.

Errors and mistakes

Much of this material is my memory of events that happened many years ago. I am sure that there are mistakes. Please send me corrections whether of facts, misunderstandings, or failures to give credit to the right people.