Originally published in
Text by LYNN ASCHER, photographs by AVINASH PASRICHA
Training for the Future At Kanpur’s Indian Institute of Technology 200 students use the Computer Centre every day for training, course projects and research. The IIT’s Computer Centre reinforces the Institute’s reputation for excellence in technical education. Below: The modern campus.
AUGUST
1970
R
aising his voice over the clicking of an IBM 7044 computer, Hosakere Mahabala said happily, “I worked for months on a kind of computer-robot being built at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for an artificial intelligence project, and I never got it to perform as reasonably as my two-year-old daughter!” Mahabala, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, takes his relationship with computers seriously but always with a light heart. “What we always have to remember,” he continued, “is that basically a computer is an idiot. Of course, this is an idiot that can do its work very rapidly—a million calculations in 10 seconds, in some cases—but still it can’t do any more than carry out the orders you give it.” llT’s 7044/1401 system was carrying out its orders with a busy clatter in the Institute’s new Computer Centre, a modern structure of stark but strong architectural lines. The largest computer facility in any Indian school, the IIT Centre trains not only IIT students in computer use but short-term students from educational, research and industrial organizations. All 300 undergraduates in the third year of their B. Tech. program are taught the use of computers. Most of the 500 postgraduates use computers, and on a typical day the Centre runs the programs of about 200 students, chiefly in their project and research work. A graduate program with an option in computer sciences is offered in the engineering department. Both programming techniques and computer design techniques are taught in this course. There are in addition courses in computer application. The Centre also rents its computer facilities and services to research and development establishments, although 90 percent of the computer’s time is still reserved for faculty and student projects. So far over 100 outside organizations have used the Centre’s facilities. Their needs fall chiefly into three categories: engineering design of systems like turbines, electrical generators, bridges and buildings; operations research, such as the location of petroleum distribution points and forecasting demand; and tabulation and analysis of data collected in surveys, such as in city planning and market research. Watching the 7044 complex at work is much like watching babies in a hospital nursery. The observer peers at the machines through windowed walls while the proud engineer at his side points out tapes, discs, memory banks, calculators, processors and print-out devices. Inside, on a reinforced floor (the weight of these mighty brain cells is considerable) stand several dozen To share articles go to https://spanmag.com
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