| 320, New Westminster campus.

| a division of Morris-Knudsen, and
| was used to cost out the operations

 

| owns a computer?

Pook at. it.

W.A.C. Bennett Dam on the Peace

BiTs OF BUSINESS
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“Oh, you press the button down.
“* The data goes round and around,'

VW hoa-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho,

And it comes out here.”

Servicing became impossible
and the company offered it
to Douglas’ Engineering

Did you know that Douglas College
It stands alive
and well, in the Business Lab, Room
You
are cordially invited to come and
It was formerly the
property of Northern Construction,

Sciences department. Hen-
drick Persad astutely ac-
cepted, feeling that ait that
electronic circuitry should
not go to waste.

entailed in the construction of the school was quiet and the new

River. This involved the building | trucker wandered into our

One day in July 1973, when the

Sciences building non-existent,

of a power house inside Portage
Mountain, a dramatic story of
hollowing-out the mountain and
strengthening the 'ceiling' with
about $1 million of lag bolts.
The drama continues, since the
company is suing B. C. Hydro for
about $50 million in extra costs
of that kind.

The computer, a Litton Mark XI
Monrobot, cost about $40,000 in
1965 and was obsolete in 1968.

room (which was then an anthro-
pology lab just being emptied),
and asked if he could dump the
various bits and pieces of this
unloved machine in this appar-
ently unused space. We hugged
ourselves with joy, finally got
it working, and now use it to
teach two introductory courses
in Accounting information sys-
tems, - costs so far: about
$200.

Thank you, Northern Construction

and Hendrick Persad!

(More later).

TRENDS

If Euclid were alive today,
could he patent his algor-
ithm for long division?
Xoma Ltd. of Montreal was
issued a fundamental patent
on computer programs, a
historic landmark event,
since 'logic' was not pre-
viously thought patentable.
The software is in use in
accounting programs and
provides for:
1) defection of erroneous
data
2) automatic posting of the
second of double entries
3) retaining balance fig-
ures after elementary
clearing
4) filing accounts for re-
trieval in novel combin-
ations.
The patent was issued in Oct.
1973 and Xoma is now suing
Several companies for royal-
ties and damages.

Large computer installations
waste a lot of heat. Lib-
erty National Bank in San
Francisco, e.g-, requires

a 200 amp. air-conditioning
system just to cool out the
100,000 BIU per hour, 24
hours a day, 6 days a week
heat generated by their
data processing equipment.
Several large buildings in
England and the U.S.A. now
are heated completely re-
cycling the heat of their
computers.

poueLss oo"

£