Memory Restored
Jacques Bailhe ’71
My adviser was a kindly, erudite man named John Williams, who, among other things, oversaw the splendid du Pont Library. Part of his domain included the school’s main computer, which kept track of all accounting and other essential records. During one memorable school assembly, the normally pleasant and optimistic Williams stood up with a fearsome look on his face. That morning he had discovered that somehow, somebody or something had erased ALL the memory of the entire computer system. Gone! Blanko! The poor electronic beast couldn’t even remember its name, and the good Mr. Williams was beside himself. As he detailed the cost of re-programming, the cost of losing the valuable information, and so on and so forth, I sat in my seat and tried to become invisible.
I had been drawn to Pomfret because of its open-door policy. All facilities were available to all students all the time. So utopian. The night before, after dinner, I had decided to take advantage of this wonderful ethic and wandered into the computer room. The teletype-like terminal of those days had a simple on/off switch. I turned it on, and sure enough the thing buzzed and blipped and typed out five or six letters and numbers. Fascinating, I thought. I knew nothing about computers, absolutely nothing, but figured it would be interesting to mess with for a while. I tried different buttons and things, just seeing what they would do. I typed, “hello,” and hit the enter button, and suddenly it typed “hello,” back. Hey, too cool! I goofed with it for a few minutes, then lost interest, turned it off, and went to bed, having no idea that I had completely destroyed the memory of the entire school.
I knew I had to confess. I saw myself going to the Williams’ house and having a civilized cup of coffee while I explained everything. Then I imagined my father arriving from Bangkok in his massive dark overcoat. I saw my suitcases being loaded into the car he would rent, and imagined myself looking out the back window as the school faded into the distance. Then I came to my senses. Confess? Are you crazy, they’d kill you! And so, I said not a word.
We had some very bright guys in school that year, Eben Ostby ’73, David Matzdorf ’71, and a few other certified geniuses — who had taken up playing a complex war game on the computer. These guys were really smart. I mean like blistering 700’s on their SATs in their sophomore year, that kind of thing. Evidently, their game had grown so intricate and huge that they had run out of room in the memory set aside for daily functions. So, they had come up with the idea of simply taking all the contents of the computer’s memory and storing it on the machine’s reel-to reel data tape. Then, they’d load up their game and fight some epic battles. When done, they’d reload the school records. Mr. Williams had no idea any of this was going on, which was probably for the best, because I’m quite sure he wouldn’t have understood the complexities of what they were doing.
Anyway, as I soon learned, these computer Napoleons and Pattons had simply forgotten to reload the memory on that fateful day. In the still of the night, they quietly restored everything, and all was forgotten.
