Computers

March 1968, Jersey City, New Jersey.

Public Service Electric and Gas, Hudson Generating Station Unit 1 control computer.

Posing in front of this massive computer is a 20 year old engineering student from Bergenfield NJ. He is nearing the end of his second co-op assignment. As a sophomore at Drexel Institute of Technology (later to become Drexel University) he is very interested in computers and only mildly interested in the electric generating station where he works.

The computer was custom built (I think by RCA) for this application.  The design predates integrated circuits which is why this thing is so large.  My guess is that it has less memory and is significantly slower than my smartphone today.  

It received all sorts of data from the plant indicating the position of many valves, the temperatures of boiler feedwater at various stages of the cycle, and the status of the turbine and generator (i.e. temperatures, speed, control valve position, lube oil pressure, etc.).  When given control of the unit (which seldom happened while I was there) the computer could control valves and other peripherals to maintain the unit at peak efficiency. All output from the computer was logged through an IBM selectric typewriter which was the only human readable interface. In addition to the computer control there was a complete analog control system operated by plant staff.