The Universitat de València acquired in 1964 for its Computing Centre an IBM 1620 computer, in order to support the research and teaching activities of the Valencian community. This computer was one of the first installed in Spanish universities, was operational until 1978, the year in which it was stopped to use because of its slowness and high cost of maintenance.
Currently, the Computing Centre (Computer Systems Service nowadays) of the Universitat de València is gathering a selection of ancient pieces, as a computer museum, where the IBM 1620 occupies a prominent place. It also has some electromechanical calculators older than this first computer, since the Computing Centre of the Universitat de València was created in 1955.
Besides the hardware parts exposed to the public, it seems interesting to recall those heroic times in which researchers should spend hours operating with electromechanical calculators or those when professors, researchers and students had to write their programmes on punch cards and debug and run them using the IBM 1620.
So the Computing Service has decided to organize a panel discussion entitled 'Origins of Computer Science at the University of Valencia' where representatives of researchers, teachers and students who lived then are invited.
The participants are:
- Juan Palou
- Rosario Domingo
- Francisco Tomás
- Rafael Romero
- Álvaro López
- Rafael Guardiola
- Antonio Ferrer
- Antonio Marquina
- Isidro Ramos
- Enrique Vidal
- Jose Vicente Arnau
- Marcelino Vicens
- Enric Casaban
- Fernando Nistal
Rogelio Montañana will be the moderator of the Computer Systems Service - SiUV. The roundtable will take place on 27 May, 2014 at 12:00 in the Assembly Hall of Eduardo Boscà Science Library, on the campus of the Universitat de Valencia in Burjassot. The session will be free entry, intended to have a fundamentally playful and entertaining approach as it is not required any knowledge of computers for its understanding.
