Sunday, November 25, 2018

A 1960s Halloween superprank in a computer center




















Telling scary stories is a favorite Halloween activity. This year the Shark Tank blog at Computerworld told one titled Little IT Shop of Horrors III: The eyes! The eyes! from the mid-1960s about the first supercomputer, the Control Data Corporation 6600.   

The control console on the CDC 6600 had a pair of large, round, green, display screens that typically were used to display text, as shown in an image from a linked article. But those screens also could display graphics, as is shown above.

AT 2:00 AM the operator on duty saw those screens “wake up” to first display a pair of closed eyes. Then the eyes slowly opened, looked to the left, looked to the right, and stared straight ahead. Finally the eyes closed, the display went blank, and right back to displaying text.   

An image of a CDC 6600 originally came from Wikimedia Commons.

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