TECHNOLOGY
Simple to Super
Classroom and research technology evolve over 90 years
By David Peregrino

Walter Fisher

"I have taken my slide rule to class and (the students) laugh."—Walter Fisher, metallurgical engineering professor

   A friend of engineering and math majors for decades, the slide rule now rests in peace inside a glass case at UTEP's Heritage House museum.

   And over the university's 90-year history, others have joined the slide rule in technology's graveyard: suitcase-sized dictation machines and typewriters, punch-card reading mainframes, and snail-fast Macs and PCs from desktop computing's early days, to name a few.

   Metallurgical engineering professor Walter Fisher remembers one of the first hand-held calculators that spelled doom for the slide rule.

   It was the Hewlett-Packard HP-35, arriving on the market soon after he finished his doctorate in 1970.

   "I gave my slide rule to my brother," says Fisher, who joined UTEP in 1978.

   Today, inexpensive department store calculators can do as much as that old HP-35—which cost about $395 when it was introduced.

   But such is the nature of computing power, which gets smaller, faster and cheaper year to year, if not month to month.

Research Labs

   At UTEP, the Schellenger Research Laboratories drove much of the need for state-of-the-art-technology on campus.

   Established in 1953, the labs conducted research in several areas including atmospheric physics, acoustics, optics and films.

   In the late 60s, UTEP created a "Computation Center"—the forerunner of today's computer laboratories found throughout the campus.

   The center's backbone was a Control Data Corp. computer, which crunched numbers for the Schellenger labs and other departments.

Computing dinosaurs

   Fisher isn't nostalgic for those old punch-card reading computers, which university departments shared as late as the early 80s.

    After writing programs on machines that popped chad out of a stack of cards, students would place their rubber band-wrapped bundles in line to be fed to the computer.

   They'd return a while later pick up their results from a print-out bin, hoping they hadn't made any mistakes that would require them to start the programming process again.

   "You didn't make many (computer) assignments because it was a hassle," Fisher says.

   Ray Bell, a lecturer who was one of the Computer Science department's original hires, also has no fond memories of the old mainframe dinosaur that resided in Bell Hall in the early 80s.

   "It really was a pain compared to today," says Bell, recalling those "horse and buggy" days of computing. "Everybody used it -for payroll, for keeping records... '

   Bell says IBM, Apple and Sun Microsystems' development of easier-to-use desktop systems was the breakthrough computer users were waiting for.

   "The whole Windows thing, the whole graphical interface, that was a true revolution," Bell says.

   Advances in hand-held calculators have delivered another computing revolution to engineering students.

   Holding a late-model Texas Instruments TI-89 graphing calculator, Fisher says: "This can do what it took a whole roomful of computers to do back then."

   Today, a TI-89 can be bought at major discount stores for about $140.

   Fisher says technology has allowed his students to tackle problems that would have been "just talked about" in classrooms decades ago.

   "If a student from 30 years ago could pop into a classroom today, they would be astonished," Fisher says.

Super computers

   That same student may also be impressed to see today's students working on a variety of smart machines in Computer Sciences' robotics lab.

   Last year, Bell's department acquired five new bucket-sized Trilobot research robots, which joined the lab's family of older mobile 'bots and two robotic arms.

   The lab works in partnership with the Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering departments to help promote robotics education.

   As the university heads toward its 100th anniversary, Fisher says there's no worry that UTEP is behind when it comes to providing his engineering students access to technology.

   "The availability of high-level computing power has put us on equal footing with any university," Fisher says.

   Last year, an IBM grant gave UTEP a $500,000 parallel-processor high performance computing platform: the IBM p690, also known as the "Top Gun."

   Armed with 12 processors and 24GB of main memory, Top Gun is believed to be the highest-caliber computing machine ever to reside on the UTEP campus, says Pat Teller, the associate professor of computer science who was instrumental in landing the IBM grant.

   Already, science and mathematics departments are using Top Gun for a variety of complex research projects.

   "I think this coming semester we'll have more successes to report," Teller says.

For the masses

   When computing was in its infancy, UTEP students and departments shared a mainfraime computer for math, engineering and record keeping tasks.

   Today, the campus provides all majors access to technology with a variety of computer labs, including:

• Academic Center for Engineers and Scientists (ACES) - labs in the Classroom and Physical Sciences buildings.
• Computer Applications Learning Center (CALC) - College of Business.
• Independent Learning Center- College of Health Sciences.
• Liberal Arts Center for Instructional Technologies - Liberal Arts Building.
• Library Technology Center - University Library.
• Access to Technology Learning and Services - Undergraduate Learning Center.
• Digital Media Center for faculty - Undergraduate Learning Center.