From: Gerry/Joy Gabel
Date: August 6, 2010 3:01:29 PM EDT
To: Jeff Ogden
Subject: old MTS photos

Jeff:

I read the Wikipedia entry on MTS and I too have to congratulate you on an excellent job of preserving this piece of computing history. You may not remember me but I was at the University of Alberta from 1967 to 1977 and was heavily involved in the adoption and development of MTS at U of A.

 . . .

One item not mentioned in the Wikipedia article is the Student Oriented Batch Facility that U of A Computing Services developed in 1971 to provide a quick turnaround facility for undergrad students learning to program in FORTRAN, ALGOL, PL/C, and 360 Assembler.  The compilers were fast versions developed at various Universities (eg., WATFOR at University of Waterloo).   It was a dedicated punch card input, printer output system that provided a 5 minute turn around and ran several thousands of jobs a week at a cost of 15 cents each.  I don't believe it was adopted at other MTS sites, however, so I leave it to your discretion to include it or not.

Thanks again for undertaking this task and for bringing back some fond memories for me.

Best regards,  Gerry Gabel