With sadness, we say goodbye to computer pioneer and 2022 CHM Fellow Donald L. Bitzer.
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Bitzer studied electrical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), obtaining a PhD in 1960. Following graduation, he joined the UIUC faculty, where he learned of efforts to bring lessons to students over a closed-circuit television network. While a committee of engineers, psychologists, and educators were unable to agree on a single solution at the time, Bitzer wrote up a proposal within a week, got it approved, and immediately started developing his PLATO system for the university’s groundbreaking ILLIAC I computer—the first electronic digital stored program computer built by a university. (PLATO stands for Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations).
From the oral history linked within:
Well those storage tubes were so expensive, we turned off the high voltage on there – a high voltage tube is like a TV tube – just to protect them until we were ready. And then we’d bring the student – I remember, even two at a time, and then sit them down. Tell them – we’d wire them up, because the psychologist wanted to measure their heartrate and breathing as they did the lesson material. And lo and behold, when we sat them down, every time we looked at the results, the second they saw the material, their heart rate doubled. One second. It was just fantastic. And we said, “Something’s wrong. We know the material’s not that good.”
So we examined the procedure. And this tells you how careful you have to be. What we wanted to do was protect the tubes. So we had a technician standing by upstairs to turn on the voltage when we were ready. And the person downstairs, when we saw they were all set, would get on the intercom and call up loud enough that they heard, “They’re all strapped in now, you can turn on the high voltage.” And their heartrate doubled instantly. That was one of the funny outcomes. We corrected that one right away, so we’d get some real data from it…
I always wondered why PLATO, despite being such a large and long running project, remained relatively obscure and less known than other comparatively smaller projects and systems.
I’m now reading “The Friendly Orange Glow” by Brian Dear, on the history of PLATO. I’m just starting to read the part where they want to commercialise PLATO and, according to the book, Bitzer wanted “a million PLATO terminals” installed. I think that may a hint about what went wrong.