Shopping for a time‐sharing service

SMALL COLLEGES, or the small users within large colleges or universities, have recently found that access to a computer is economically within their grasp through computer time‐sharing services. Yet the inexperienced may ask how to go about acquiring a time‐sharing system and how to decide among the options available from the many firms that now flood the market. I will attempt to answer these questions by describing how a small physics department such as ours, with a faculty who did not know anything about computers, has acquired both a small computer and a time‐sharing system. Taking advantage of the competitive situation, we obtained time‐sharing services well within our budget. We have introduced computer instruction and have made it an integral part of the physics and mathematics curricula.