Talk:Joel Barlow High School

Todo
This article really needs some cleanup - it isn't very well-organized (compared to other school articles). --Core des at talk. o.o;; 00:55, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Historic Computing
JBHS has a history of periodic investment in advanced computing technology. Here's some information from the 20th century. The PDP-8/E was used for attendance and also BASIC programming. In an interesting remote access method, even for the 1970s, Easton and Redding middle school students would create their own BASIC program using special computer cards. Math textbooks included sample BASIC programs to help students probe further into concepts. During Math class, the student would use a No. 2 pencil and color in boxes on specially printed mark sense cards designed for entering BASIC language source code (Zoom in on middle card). Entering a single BASIC source code line per card involved: Later versions of the mark sense card printed the template information onto the DEC BASIC mark sense card.
 * 1) coloring in the line number's digits in columns 1 to 3,
 * 2) choosing the BASIC keyword (LET, FOR, IF, END, etc.) from column 4 or 6,
 * 3) and using the BASIC template to mark the remaining characters for the line, up to 34 characters.
 * Note that OS/8 BASIC did not support lowercase characters. The ASR-33 Teletype only supported uppercase characters. To print lower case, or even script, text the pen plotter had to be used. This device would to slowly draw out lines with a pen onto a single sheet of paper. The plotter looked something like this HP 9862A.

The student's BASIC programs, entered onto stacks of cards, would be gathered up from the class, sent to JBHS, input through the card reader, and a paper listing made. Also, the source code syntax error listing was printed, or if there were no errors, the program was run and the output printed or a run-time error was printed to paper. The computer cards and paper output would then be sent back to the middle school for the next week's class. With turnaround time of a week on programs, students rapidly learned to be extremely careful with their program source code. These odd cards allowed whole classes of students to get programming experience without training them to use keypunches. The district leased just one of IBM's keypunches for use in the computer room at JBHS.

As the computerized attendance system developed, the home room teacher was supplied with a cards for each student. If a student was absent that card was sent to office, and the cards were combined and fed input the card reader. The cards for absentee students were then sorted and sent back to the homeroom for the next day. The report generated allowed the school to quickly contact parents and also monitor students cumulative attendance. A difficulty arose when the cards became worn and eventually needed to be duplicated and replaced. Frequently absent students had the cards with the most damage.

This gem of a source shows JBHS was one of the first high schools to have a computer in the 1960s:



includes a table on p. 7, excerpted here: