By Robert P. Goebeler, Sr.

Every day at the university, thousands of people connect their computer to other computers to do business, send e-mail, perform research, and communicate. The machines connect over the air through wireless technology, or over telephone, cable, or fiber optic lines with the software and hardware built right into each machine. You may remember how things were before all of these connections were made over the Web, when you had to call coworkers on the telephone and keep physical records in paper files.

Almost 30 years ago, the university entered the network computing age when it began using a Hewlett Packard HP-3000, a machine that, at the time, was at the cutting edge of computing technology. The HP-3000 was the innovation that first allowed the university to network with other University System of Maryland schools via computer. Many of the university’s administrative applications have run on the HP over its long tenure. It has housed the Payroll system, the University-wide Budget System, and the original Financial Accounting System (FAS), as well as the Student Information System, Financial Aid, the Endowment System, Applicant Flow, Capital Equipment Inventory, the Drop-Add system, the Central Billing system, Surplus Properties, Work Request, A21 Effort Reporting, Campus Parking, the Alumni System, the Accounts Payable system, the Motor Pool system, the Contract and Grant system, and many more.

In the years since the HP-3000 was installed, additional computer networking advances arrived at the university, and the multitude of services housed on this computer have been migrated or recreated on more modern platforms that support a Web-based architecture. At the end of September, OIT turned off the HP-3000, leaving behind the era when the HP provided the university’s reliable administrative computing backbone and saying goodbye to a computer that has served the university community quite well through the years. It is hard to imagine the university having another single machine that will serve the community as well for as long.