UNC-Chapel Hill Computing History

Celebrating 50 years of computing at UNC-Chapel Hill

The official celebration was held March 18, 2010, 2 to 3:15 p.m. in the Nelson Mandela Auditorium at the FedEx Global Education Center. See the University Gazette article for more information. There's also an article in the Alumni Review. Videos from the event and more information is available at its.unc.edu/cio/cc@50.

The Univac 1105 was installed in Phillips Hall in August 1959, and the Computation Center was dedicated March 30, 1960. This site contains several photos of the 1105, the Computation Center dedication program (which describes the speed and capacity the $2,450,000 machine), a Timeline, history, and much, much more.

Interested folks are adding more information and memories that record the history of computing on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. The current main source is four boxes of materials in the University Archives from the Computation Center, now Information Technology Services.

We invite you to register and join the content development effort, adding materials from other departments and your personal memories. You can add new content, add to the Timeline, add photos, and edit to add or correct information. Instructions for adding information and editing are provided in Help, which has a link in the blue bar on the top of each page. If you have any problems, click Contact us and let us know.

You can view what we have so far without registering. Click images to enlarge them.

If you have information to contribute to this website, send email to hallman@live.unc.edu requesting an account. Account registration was disabled August 3, 2012. Visitors are no longer allowed to create accounts -- too many spammers.

To register, click "Create new account," in the left sidebar. Registrations must be approved by the site administrator. You will be notified by email when your registration has been approved. See How to register for more detailed instructions.