#81 Control Panel from the University's First Computer

#81 Control Panel from the University's First Computer

On display in the UVA Computer Museum on the fifth floor of Rice Hall.

The University's first computer was a Burroughs 205, purchased in 1960 and installed in the Physics Building's basement. “This marvelous little machine filled an entire room, and required a full-time engineer from Burroughs to maintain it,” recalled Joel Rose, who worked as a programmer in the summers of 1962 and 1963. "It had a gazillion vacuum tubes"—1,800, to be precise—“so I imagine a lot of the maintenance involved just replacing burned-out tubes.” In 1964, the University purchased a Burroughs 5000. Bill Wulf, who received the University's first PhD in computer science in 1968, told the alumni magazine about the end of the Burroughs 205: “My dissertation adviser, Alan Batson, declared we would have a ‘bring your own screwdriver’ party. We took the machine apart.” Wulf ended up with the computer's control panel, and it has been in his possession for nearly fifty years.