[GreenKeys] Honorary Teletype usage

[Jones, Douglas W]

At the U of Iowa, we just gave an honorary degree, and Teletypes played a part.

In the mid 1960s, a new graduate student came to the new computer science department at the University of Iowa, Bill Decker.  He was one of the first to get a masters from the department, and he went on to a long career starting at the University's computer center, then directing the computer science department's lab.  Eventually, he served as acting vice president for research before leaving to become the program director for networking at the National Science Foundation, where he oversaw what came to be known as Internet II.  Quite a career for someone with just a masters degree.

So the CS department nominated Bill for an honorary doctorate, and our nomination was accepted.  Of course, they dressed him up in cap and gown and gave him a sheepskin, but after the official ceremony, we held a reception.  One of the high point of the speeches at the reception was when I handed him:

14 punched cards, enough to hold 1.12 kilobytes using Hollerith encoding.
   10 of the 14 cards were University of Iowa cards.
2 paper tapes, freshly punched on a Model 33, one on yellow tape, one on black
   (those being the university colors as well as the only two colors of paper tape I have).
A sealed ziplock bag of chad, black and yellow, 
   including chad from the punching of those tapes.
A slip of paper torn off from the Teletype holding the text contained on those tapes.

Each tape held 4 copies of this text with ample leader between:
        DR. WILLIAM F. DECKER, DSC.  MAY 11, 2024, UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

Bill choked up when I gave him the tapes and the torn off Teletype listing, and he cracked up when I handed him the baggie of chad.

Since I didn't include any linefeeds in the message, but put a carriage return out in the middle of the leader, the printed version represented about 8 overprints of the same text, making it nice and dark despite the rather anemic ribbon I used.  Of course, I only typed the first copy, then fed it through the reader and let the Teletype duplicate it.

         Doug Jones