The golden era of computing at Waterloo

The photo above was taken in the Red Room, located in the centre of the Mathematics and Computer building on the 10th anniversary of the IBM 360 Model 75, the largest computer in Canada at the time. (From left to right) Paul Dirksen, Wes Graham, Don Cowan, Jerry Bolce, Gwen Burgess, Rod Milne, Sandra Ward, Dave Styles (IBM service), Joe Benediktson, Peter Sprung.

What makes computer science at Waterloo so special? You could point to the larger-than-life figures, the spin-off successes or the technological breakthroughs.

But for Jerry Bolce (MSc ’66), an early pioneer of computing at Waterloo, it all starts with culture.

As a final-year undergrad at Queens University in the early 1960s, Bolce sought out a recently created computer lab, only to be rudely apprehended at the door. “What are you doing here? This lab is for faculty only.”

“Fine, I won’t be returning,” Bolce remembered thinking.

A couple of years later, after a stint working for IBM, Bolce came to Waterloo to do a master’s degree and worked for Wes Graham in the Computing Centre.

From the beginning, Waterloo felt different. The people were young and adventurous. And the University had made the uncommon decision to let undergrads access its computers. Once, a local high school student even turned up at the centre, asking if he could use the computers. Wes Graham’s response was telling: “As long as it’s educational, sure!” 

The ethos was in sync with the free-spirited 1960s and Bolce enjoyed the youthful camaraderie.

The problem solver

Yet, for all its virtues, the open-door computing policy created its share of technical and logistical challenges, many of which fell to Bolce to solve. With so much demand for computing, finding ways to allocate the resource fairly and efficiently proved challenging.

Bolce wrote code that enabled computers to move programs from the foreground to the background, ensuring that lower-priority and slow-processing projects didn’t create huge backlogs. His efforts were also crucial to developing Waterloo’s famous “cafeteria-style computing,” in which students could put their jobs into a card reader and get the output at a printer nearby. In the 1980s, he created JANET, the first local area network (LAN) to connect an IBM Personal Computers (PCs) lab at Waterloo.

Never a “salesman type,” Bolce avoided the spotlight, yet his innovative contributions were foundational to computer science at Waterloo. Without his behind-the-scenes work, no one else could do theirs.

He retired in 1996, turning his attention to his extensive orchid collection and travel, but he has remained connected to the University. In 2016, he established the Jerome Bolce Entrance Award.

Change and continuity through the years

Bolce has seen remarkable advances in computing in his lifetime but retains a fondness for the early IBMs with their physical switches and flashing lights: “Those were exciting days when you felt like you really had your fingers in it.

He recalls how students would crowd around the windows of the Red Room (the lab that housed the University’s supercomputers) to see the work unfold. “The machines felt like magical beasts in those days,” said Bolce.

The machines felt like magical beasts in those days.

The University has grown and evolved too, but in many ways the spirit of the early days lives on. The Faculty of Mathematics is planning a new building, Math 4 (M4), which will be home to some of its top researchers in cybersecurity, statistics, and computer science, among other fields, and that will accelerate research in data science. Just as the early Waterloo math researchers were powered by the Red Room and its IBM computers — some of the fastest in Canada at the time — today’s math researchers will benefit from state-of-the-art computing housed in M4. Specifically, the building will feature the Green Room, an energy-efficient data centre containing computing infrastructure capable of fueling the Faculty’s most cutting-edge research while simultaneously heating the building. Its name is a nod to the Red Room and pioneers like Bolce, who helped make the Faculty what it is today.  

When he sees the success of the Faculty and the David Cheriton School of Computer Science--ranked the top computer science school in Canada--he is proud to have played a part. But, forever humble, he is quick to deflect praise. “There were so many people involved,” said Jerry. “It was always such a strong community.”