Interview 6: Joe “K” Kochenderfer

Well the big thing to me was I came to Aberdeen Proving Ground. Of course, Aberdeen Proving Ground had the ENIAC, which was the first, argumentatively the first, electronic computer. I had never seen electronic computers in my life. Going to college it was something I never thought about, I guess. It was built by the people – a combination of the Moore School of Business (note: actually School of Electrical Engineering) and the Army – for the sole purpose of creating what was called firing tables – like I have a cannon here and I want to hit the courthouse in Bel Air. How do I do that.

(So it was like a calculating machine? You gave it numbers and it worked out…)

YES. And it took up a room – you know, the administration session in city hall – from … it took up a room that size all the way down. And then as time went on, we had the next level. Of course, the technology again, this was early on, everything was fed by punched cards. The output at that time was punched cards, which you then used on a printer. The first time in my, in our group, we got handheld adding machines, electronic – they were $450 bucks a piece or something like that.

For several years when we started out, we used monromatics. You know what those were… they went shshshshsh… well, you didn’t have to pull it (the handle).. but had to shshshshs… push the button… shshshsh. And that is big technology. Of course, now what kids have today in a laptop can do everything that that whole building of stuff did in those days! But I’m somewhat overwhelmed.