CONCLUSIONS - Inventing the PC - page 171

MCM /70 Desk Top computer,” reads The MCM /70 in Educa-
tion promotional brochure, “represents a breakthrough in tech-
nology of tremendous significance to education.” The company
even proposed the “ MCM /70 Classroom” concept. In its min-
imal configuration, such a classroom was to be equipped with
from fifteen to thirty MCM /70s for individual use by students
and with three to six printers to be shared among the students.
However, with a price tag of $6,500 for an MCM /700 in basic
configuration (with a single cassette drive) in 1975, such MCM
classrooms were not realistic. Only single computers, at best,
could enter high school computer classrooms. One such com-
puter class was run by math and computer science teacher David
Borrowman at Sydenham High School in Sydenham, Ontario,
about 25 kilometres north of Kingston. Recollecting his early
computer education efforts, Borrowman explained:
It began in 1970 as an after school “club” at which in-
terested students learned computer programming using
FORTRAN . They coded their work on paper sheets, I
then took them into Kingston to be card-punched and
then run on computers at Queen's University. The cost
of that would have been prohibitive if the Queen's Direc-
tor of Computing at the time hadn't been so interested in
providing the opportunity at no cost to high school aged
students. Turnaround time was about three days.
This all changed when the school acquired an MCM /70. The
school's computer provided a very practical if somewhat limited
platform.
The limitations … had to do with the relatively small
memory, the single-line plasma display screen, and (in
our case) the lack of a printer in the system. I surmounted
these difficulties by issuing each student their own tape