When I began teaching at UWSP School of Education, I had just written my dissertation. To analyze the data involved, I wrote a program in the computer language Fortran. When I moved to the campus, I wrote in the faculty newsletter that if anyone wanted to discuss computers, I would be interested. I was hired by the campus business department to assist faculty in using a computer they rented from IBM for $16,000 a year. Part of that job was to talk to faculty members about the availability of that rented computer for faculty use.
A couple of times, I struck up a conversation about the availability of a computer for academic research and was asked, "What is a computer?" I doubt that I would be asked that today. At that time, of course, people were not generally carrying a powerful sophisticated computer in their pocket as they are now. Then, we had to write the routine we wanted the machine to follow, "write the program", a job I found difficult and tedious.
