From punch cards to SIM cards: 50 years of computing at UGA

By Albert DiSimone Jr.

If the automobile had advanced as much as the computer, we would all be carrying our cars around in briefcases, like George Jetson, and traveling around the world at warp speeds.

From Punch Cards to SIM Cards is a technology mosaic of the most fascinating years of computing history at the University of Georgia. From massive, room-filling machines programmed on paper punch cards to smartphones the same size as those cards, we now hold in our hands devices millions of times more powerful than the University’s first computers in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Included in these pages is the story of how a professor of agriculture had the vision to purchase one of the most powerful computers in the world and help put a man on the moon.

Decades before the Internet changed the way we share and receive information, the University of Georgia was the home of the University System of Georgia Computer Network. This network delivered computing power to the smaller colleges in the University System of Georgia institutions that could never afford their own computing systems.

Another external force was a court decision that broke up the Bell System and how it provided funding to build the University’s campus network.

Another external force was a court decision that broke up the Bell System and how it provided funding to build the University’s campus network.

To learn more, please visit:

medium.com/@bert.desimone/

Albert “Bert” DeSimone Jr. is a retired University of Georgia information technologist now living in Bishop.