Word: delta
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Take for example the following comment made by Mr. Hall after describing all the wonderful benefits of owning a Delta 2000: "Nevermore should we have a burnt out boiler. Harvard is way ahead of the competition in this area." Now while I can almost understand Hall's high regard for his computer, the stuff about being ahead of the competition just goes over my head. Who's Harvard's competition anyway? Let's hope that Yale never hears about this whole thing or else we might find ourselves in the middle of an ever-escalating computer warfare. Yale will...
Hall's real love for the machine derives from the fact that the Delta can save some money for the Harvard administration. Hall says that the system will make back the money originally invested in it just by preventing the breaking of boiler systems for a couple of years. After those couple of years, Hall says, whatever the Delta saves is pure profit...
Hall is sensitive about the possibility that the $2.2 million spent on the Delta 2000 might be wasted cash. When he invited me to take a tour of the system he said. "There's a good chance that something won't work on the computer while you're there visiting it, but I want you to know that only happens rarely...
...happened, all was working well when I went to the Science Center to grab a look at the Delta 2000. The schematics bopped onto the screen when they were supposed to and temperature readings appeared on the console's display board when the programmer told them to appear. I even got to listen to some fan somewhere whirring and burring away...
Even though the Delta 2000 works exactly according to plan--and if a computer can't, what can--I don't like it or any other computer any better for having seen Hall's wonder-baby in operation. Maybe I'm myopic, but I just don't see the beauty in a machine, even if it does save Harvard a buck or two. And maybe I'm naive, but if Harvard really cares about equalling and surpassing its "competition," it had better pay less attention to expensive computers and more to the things that really count in making a university...