In the fall of 2024, Pomona launched a minor in data science. To commemorate the new concentration, let’s look back at some of the College’s milestones in computer science and technology.
1958: Bendix G-15
1958: Five years after first offering “computer classes” for word processing, Pomona opens Millikan Laboratory, its first computer lab, which included a Heathkit analog computer and the Bendix G-15 digital computer. One of about 400 manufactured globally, the Bendix was the size of a refrigerator, required punched paper tape to load instructions and data, and had “memory” in the form of a rotating drum the size of a wastebasket.
1964: As part of the launch of the Seaver North science building, Pomona is one of the first U.S. schools to buy an IBM System/360 computer, which eager Assembly- and Fortran-learning undergrads used for work in chemistry, economics, geology and math. The Student Life newspaper marveled at how a unit the size of a cigar box could contain the computer’s entire memory of 16,000 bytes; today’s smartphones are roughly 16,000,000 times more robust.
1967: Programmer Bea Cooley in the Millikan Lab. Image courtesy Honnold Mudd Library
1971: The Mudd-Blaisdell residence hall is outfitted with a PDP-10 mainframe, immediately sparking the interest of first-year Don Daglow ’74, who used the computer to create several early video games, including what’s widely regarded as the world’s first “role-playing game,” which was a text-based game adapted from the then-new “Dungeons & Dragons” tabletop game.
1971 Daglow coding in his Mudd-Blaisdell dorm room
1980: Five years after purchasing IBM’s second-ever 5100 minicomputer, Pomona becomes the first educational institution to own and operate an IBM 4331, which opened students up to being able to use email.
1988: VAX 6310
1988: The Mudd Science Library installs a VAX 6310, which permits the linking of computers to the other 5Cs, thereby introducing students to resources such as the internet. That same year Pomona and several other schools launched the Science, Technology and Society program.
1991: The first two computer science majors graduate from Pomona. Computer science split off from math to become a separate department in 2006, and is now one of the College’s most popular majors.
2000: Pomona launches the Andrew Science Hall for Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science—the first time there was a dedicated space for computer science as an academic discipline. By 1997, Pomona also had become one of the first colleges to hook up every single bedroom in its dormitories to a 56K network connection for internet use.
2014: Pomona is named the country’s “most wired college” by the higher-education review platform Unigo, which previously cited Pomona’s innovation in being one of the country’s first colleges to provide Wi-Fi connectivity to all of its dorms.
Estella Laboratory Courtyard