The Advent of the First General-Purpose Computer in Iceland

This paper first tells the rather unusual story of the acquisition of the first scientific computer by the University of Iceland. It then goes on to describe the efforts by the staff of the University Computing Centre to introduce key persons to the use of computers and to teach selected groups of people programming and assist them in using the computer. Finally it lists several applications in widely different areas that ensued during the first six years of the computer’s operation. The advent of the IBM 1620 Personal reminiscences This section tells the story of how the University of Iceland came to acquire the first general-purpose computer in Iceland. In 1960 a few Icelandic students had come into contact with electronic computers during their university studies abroad. I had actually started using the EDSAC I computer in Cambridge in England already in 1950, using machine language. At the instigation of the Icelandic Mathematical Society two engineering students in Denmark spent 3 months in 1960 working on the DASK computer at Regnecentralen, using machine language. One of them went on to work on the GIER computer using Algol a couple of years later. One student in England had begun to use the Mercury computer in 1960, using Autocode. Two students in the United States started work on IBM 650 and 704 computers around 1960, using machine language and later FORTRAN and MAD (Michigan Algorithm Decoder). These people, with different computing backgrounds, were the human resources available to initiate scientific computing in Iceland. Thus, in the beginning of the 1960's a few scientists and engineers in Iceland had used computers in their studies abroad but no computer was available in Iceland. The possibility of acquiring a computer had been looked into, e.g. acquiring a Mercury computer, but that possibility was not realistic. An Icelandic engineer visited Regnecentralen in Copenhagen in 1959 and its director, Niels Bech, came to Iceland in the summer of 1960. He even broached the idea of setting up a branch of Regnecentralen in Reykjavík with a GIER computer, but that was not a realistic idea and the matter did not go further. In September 1960 the representative of IBM in Iceland, Ottó A. Michelsen, wrote to the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Iceland, and to the National Research Council, offering a 60% Educational Allowance on the purchase or rent of an IBM 1620 Model I computer that had been launched in October 1959. The offer was not taken up. In a proposal from 1961 for the establishment of a Science Institute at the University of Iceland a recommendation was made to acquire an electronic computer for the institute. In 1963 an Icelandic electrical engineer spent several months at Regnecentralen in Denmark studying the GIER computer. The idea was to obtain components and assemble a GIER computer in Iceland. That plan did not materialise. In October 1963 the IBM representative arranged for an IBM 1620 Model I computer, which was being shipped from Canada to Finland, to make a “stop-over “ in Iceland. Courses in Fortran programming were held with support from IBM in Denmark and people were given the opportunity to use the computer. This aroused great interest, primarily among scientists