Over the past few decades, schools like NMC have been computerizing various aspects of their administration, admissions, and facilities. Computers are a staple in libraries, offices, and classrooms throughout NMC.

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According to various staff members, as Northern Michigan’s first community college, NMC has had a historic advantage over other community colleges in terms of keeping up with modern trends and technology, especially computers. I was greatly intrigued by this little anecdote and decided to investigate further.

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I sent an email to the NMC archives and spoke with them in person, asking for everything that they might know about NMC’s first computer. They could not find much information, however, they did provide me with an image of George Kuhn with NMC’s first computer, which was a Royal Precision LGP-30, and said there was some anecdotal evidence that it was used for about 10 years. 

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In the image, you can see the LGP-30’s cube-shaped paper tape reader and puncher, Kuhn standing before a modified typewriter, and the main body of the computer itself that looks like a chest freezer.

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After scouring NMC’s online archives for old issues of the Nor’wester newspaper, NMC barbecue records, emails back and forth with NMC’s archivists, and a few other connections, I managed to piece together a near-complete history of NMC’s first computer.

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In late 1963, Kuhn, then professor of mathematics and physics at NMC, persuaded the Wigwam club to use the funds from the then-upcoming 1964 NMC barbecue to purchase a digital computer. 

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The Wigwam Club was the name for the student body that organized the NMC Barbecue fundraisers and designated the use of the money from them. 

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The plan was for them to raise $5,000 to add to a $10,000 National Science Foundation grant. This would then match up with another $15,000 grant being provided by the State of Michigan for a total of $30,000 to buy the computer. That’s about $316,245 in today’s dollars for just one computer. 

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This digital computer would be used by the computer technician and computer operation/programming courses starting on Oct. 14, 1964, with the LGP-30 as the only computer for the class to share.

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The Royal Precision LGP-30 is quite an odd computer by modern standards, and thus required specialized courses to learn how to use it. It was a first-generation computer designed in 1956, when computer companies were more or less just throwing computer designs at a metaphorical wall to see what aspects worked well. 

For instance, it doesn’t exactly have a keyboard; instead, it has a Friden Flexowriter on a shelf mounted to the left side of the computer. The Friden Flexowriter is a heavily modified typewriter that acted as both the keyboard and printer for the computer. It also contained a paper tape puncher and reader, which could read or print out data on paper tape with holes punched into it to represent binary. 

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The large cube to the left of Kuhn in the image is a separate, higher-speed paper tape reader/puncher connected to the computer, which was a purchasable accessory to it. Inside the computer, though, the data is all stored on a magnetic drum spinning at around 3,600 revolutions per minute. On this drum, there is room for 4,096 “words,” with 64 rows of words across, and each row having 64 words around the drum. Each word was composed of 32 binary digits, (zeroes or ones expressed by direction of magnetization of the drum’s surface), and could be either an instruction or data word, with the last bit always being a zero for spacing on the drum. 

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Meanwhile, a modified oscilloscope displayed the data inside the computer and showed the binary digits inside the instruction and accumulator registers, as well as the track and sector numbers on the drum memory. 

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Thankfully, the online Bitsavers archive contains plenty of information about the LGP-30, so quite a lot of information about our school’s first computer and its history is still available today.

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While this computer was already a bit old by 1964, it nevertheless proved itself useful in teaching NMC students computer programming and operation when most schools, except for four-year colleges, didn’t even have one. 

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Preston N. Tanis, the first director of NMC, even praised the computer in a Nor’wester interview back in 1964, declaring, “I see it with two very valuable potentials. The first is in teaching. It was acquired with that purpose in mind. The second is in extra benefits derived.” 

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In the meantime, Kuhn switched from being the physics and mathematics teacher to the computer programming teacher at NMC, aided by his previous work at the Battelle Institute in Columbus, Ohio, where he was first introduced to computers. From 1964 onwards, NMC offered many courses and educational opportunities in the field of digital computing.

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NMC originally started as a small local college with a mission to prepare students in Northwestern Michigan to enter the workforce. Having a computer course all the way back in 1965 is a sign of NMC’s dedication to evolving with the technological and computing innovations of the times. 

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NMC has and continues to keep up with progressions in computing and digital technology, but it is good to remember where it all started and reflect on it for NMC’s 75th anniversary.