Computing

On Thursday, November 10, 2011 Drexel University Libraries welcomed nearly 100 students, faculty, alumni, staff and friends to Going National with Apple Computers, a film screening and panel discussion centered around the introduction of the 1984 Macintosh computer to the Drexel campus.

The documentary film, Going National, chronicles the innovative Microcomputer Project. Drexel was the first university that required all incoming students to purchase a Macintosh 128K personal computer. Directed by Dave Jones, Ph.D., dean of Pennoni Honors College, the film captures a unique moment in Drexel’s history.

“There was an excitement around the campus,” Dean Jones said in the discussion following the film, “I liked what [the Microcomputer Project] was doing to Drexel.”

Tuesday, October 18, 2011
5 – 7 PM
W. W. Hagerty Library

Two Sugars, Cream, and an Extra Napkin with That: Portia Isaacson and the First Computer Store

By Martha Cornog

The bar napkin and the airline napkin have long served to record innovation before the keyboard. And thus flying home from the First World Altair Convention, Portia Isaacson used a napkin to pencil in her business plan for a computer store. Her Micro Store opened in March 1976 right across the freeway from Texas Instruments, part of a transition in computing that was far from micro in scope or impact.

Today is the 25th birthday of the Apple MacIntosh. Drexel students were among the first users of the little machine that revolutionized personal computing back in January 1984. Drexel was the first university to require its students to own and operate a personal computer, a story told in Professor D.B.