Information Technology Pioneers

Retirees and former employees of UNISYS, Lockheed Martin, and their Twin Cities heritage companies.
We proudly fly the American flag at the top right of our pages.

Home Pg 1

IT Legacy, Pg 10

IT Research Links, Pg 80

1. Welcome:

The VIP CLUB was created in 1980 as the Sperry Retirees Club, a non-profit, social and service organization. From 70 initial members, we've grown to over 1,000 retirees, former employees, and retirement eligible employees of Unisys, Lockheed Martin (LMCO), and their Twin Cities 'heritage’ companies illustrated in the icon at the left.

Unisys currently has facilities in Roseville and Eagan while LMCO has an Air Traffic Management engineering facility in Eagan. For a printable VIP Club summary flyer and membership application form, Click here.

This web site is a living document of our continuing IT Legacy. With two levels of web page select tabs, we provide Club information as sub-tabs under this Home page and the Contact Us tab. The other page select tabs are an anthology of our Information Technology (IT) Pioneering. This Pioneering consists of People who Engineered Computers and Systems at Locations in the St. Paul Minnesota environs and throughout the world.
Our volunteers are preserving documents of this IT Legacy at the University of Minnesota's Charles Babbage Institute in Minneapolis, MN and with an emerging exhibit of artifacts, hardware, and posters at the Dakota County Historical Society's Lawshe Museum located in South St. Paul, MN. Parts of our Legacy were coupled with corporate sister divisions - the Unisys Blue Bell Retirees' Club site is http://www. ubbrg.com.

Click scroll down to:

Welcome to our web site [left]

Announcements*

Next Event Summary

Article for the Month; first posting was April 2007.

Site update log* as of 12/14/2013

Disclaimer

^* Announcement changes are not listed in section 5

The Search function returns a linked-listing of this site's web pages which contain your entry. After opening a page, an Internet Explorer control F function provides a search box for that page.

VIP Page 01 updated 12/18/2013 09:35 AM.

2. Announcements:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to ALL. The Club has no program planned for January 2014; we encourage you to contact then participate in one of the local monthly gatherings described on our Periodic Groups pg 8.
The Dakota County Historical Society's Lawshe Museum has received a $25k legacy grant to do additional exhibit setup posters, etc. The Legacy will help with planning at our January meeting. We hope to match the Museum staff hours with volunteer hours - stay tuned!
February 12, 7 PM - Program and social hour in the Superior Conference Room at Unisys, Roseville. See next section for specifics.
Lockheed Martin '100 years' history book may be picked up free at the our Spring events, thanks to John Westergren for obtaining them for us.
Volunteer Opportunities: The Legacy Committee needs periodic volunteers for the DCHS Lawshe Museum, contact Bernie Jansen or Harvey Taipale. The needs are to help with photo identifications and to write exhibit storyboards for the various equipments and artifacts in storage. Set your GPS unit to South Saint Paul, 130 Third Avenue [map at right.]
IT Legacy is International: [translations and postings with permission of the VIP Club Board as requested by the translator]
1. The Home page introduction and the IT Legacy page, Pg 10 have been translated into the German Language, by Dieter Hoffmann.
2. Our Systems, Pg 60 translated to the Polish language, http://cheap.de/science/1-wprowadzenie-do-inzynierii-systemow.
3. Our Computers, 16-bit page 54 has been translated into the Bulgarian Language, browse http://www.fatcow.com/edu/cp-16bit-bl/.
4. Our IT Legacy, Pg 10 was translated into the Romanian Language, browse http://webhostinggeeks.com/science/vipclubmn-imcolegacy-ro.
5. Our Computers, Pg 50 is on the web in the Slovenian Language, browse http://nextranks.com/informacijska-tehnologija-pionirji/

Contact Lowell to post items in this section:

3. Next Event Summary

Speaker and Social Hour; February 12, 7:00 PM

This event will be at the Unisys Eagan Building [MACS]. The speaker will be Ray Quinn, topic is HELPING VETERANS. Mr. Quinn talks about helping any Veteran get all the benefits he/she is entitled to. You may be eligible for health benefits via the local VA hospital/clinics! My [Lowell] Social Security check was larger by $1.35 monthly because I'd been considered to have been on active duty while at two Army Reserve summer camps in the early 60s. Cookies and de-caf coffee will be available.

Directions to the MACS Building: Set your GPS unit to Eagan MN, 3199 Pilot Knob Road. From Hwy 35E take the Pilot Knob Road exit ramp. Then go north on Pilot Knob Road about ½ mile to to turn left onto Tower View Road. We use the Unisys north parking lot and the visitor entrance thereby.

Future VIP Club hosted programs and events are listed on our calendar page. TOP

4. Article for the Month:

January, 2014 - Herbert Mitchell wrote an Autobiography; George Grey excerpted 4 files of 'EMCC to UNIVAC' info to share with retired UNISYS fellow Ron Q. Smith. Ron sent them to Lowell who culled out Herb's personal info then condensed into two papers; Vol I and Vol II.

December - KH-9 Imagery Declassified: This is the program that we [UNIVAC/Sperry/UNISYS] supported with the 1230 mTc computers. This program lasted for 20 years with a variety of spacecraft. http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/2013/04/kh9-imagery-declass/and http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2383/1 have the satellite information. An AF document has the Sunnyvale site information. By Don Neuman, 20+ years at Sunnyvale.

November - UNIVAC's London Development Center by Arlyn Solberg. 494s, 1108s, Exex 8, Airline Reservation Systems, and Minnesotans overseas are all part of this brief history [1969-1975].

October - Realization of a Dream - The 1st report about our IT Legacy exhibit at the DCHS Lawshe Museum by Lowell Benson

Previous 'Article for the Month' items are listed and linked on the Legacy Project, Documents page, over 80 contributions since April, 2007. TOP

5. Site Update Log*

December xx - Posted the January Article for the Month. Replaced section 3.4 of page 31, People A-B with a more detailed pdf file.

December 14 - rebuilt section 5 of page 0, Site Map. Updated the next event section of this page with the February program specifics. Add Bob Pagac to the People, P-S page 36. Deleted the Christmas Dinner form from the Contact US page. Added VP Bob Pagac to the Board pg 2 page. Added a link to the latest Blue Bell newsletter to the newsletter page. Linked the 2014 flyer from the home page introduction.

December 2 - Added a new IT Legacy page 77; Locations, Winnipeg Operations.

November 30 - Added information to section 4 of page 27, People, They Flew. Updated Calendar page with 2014 dates. Updated the Board page with 2014 Officers and Activity Coordinators. Updated the Club History page. Updated the Lunch Group page. Updated the Contact Us page with topical links to the 2014 Board. Changed the page 6 tab from 'Club Sponsors' to 'Club Hosts'.

November 19 - Updated the next event section on this page. Posted a link to the October newsletter on page 7.

November 13 - Posted the December 'Article for the Month'. Inserted sub-section 4.1.2 onto page 8. Posted the Christmas Dinner sign up form on the Contact Us page. Archived this section through August 2013. Added a link to the most recent Charles Babbage Institute newsletter on page 7, section 1. Added 2013, 2004, and 2005 deceased list links to section 2 of page 39.

November 5 - Added section 4.3 to page 27. Added the 2013, 2004, and 2005 lists to section 2 of page 39. Did some minor housekeeping.

October 29 - Updated sections 4 and 6 of page 27, People, They Flew. Inserted They Flew tabs to other People pages. Posted the Christmas dinner reservation form at the bottom of the Contact Us page. Added section 3.20 to the People, deceased page.

October 24 - Added a new page - People, They Flew, page 27. Still have to insert some tabs on the other People sub-tabs.

October 12 - Posted the November Next Event Summary on this page and did some more 'housekeeping'.

October 8 - Added section 2.7 to the Engineering, Training page. Added the SSN-783 snapshot to section 3.5 of the Computer, Others page.

October 6 - Added the IT Legacy exhibit opening at the DCHS Lawshe Museum to the Club's Milestones and to section 5 of the IT Legacy page. Added section 6.9 to the Links page. Updated the links in the page 11 introduction. Updated the People, Index page first table. Updated the Home page Introduction. Posted the November 'Article for the Month' and did some general housekeeping on all pages.

September 22 - posted the October 'Article for the Month' and updated the link to the latest Blue Bell retirees newsletter, see right side note at http://vipclubmn.org/Newsletters.html#Electronic

September 12 - Added a Polish translation link to our Systems, Pg 60 and updated the next event summary. Archived the June newsletter. Posted the 2013 Unihogs/Uniturkeys flyer on the Periodic Groups page.

October 2007 through October 2013 chronology of previous updates is in printer definition format (pdf).

^* As of November, 2009 changes to the Announcements section of this home page are not listed. TOP

6. Disclaimer:

Please read the following terms and conditions carefully before using this Web site.

By accessing or using our site, you agree to the following terms and conditions. You should review these regularly as they may change at any time at our sole discretion. If you do not agree to any term or condition, you should not access or otherwise use our site's pages. "Content" refers to any materials, documents, images, graphics, logos, design, audio, video, and any other information provided from or on our Web site.

A. We provide our web Site for your Convenience Only!

B. Our Web site is provided to you without charge for your information. By merely providing access to our web site content; we do not warrant nor represent that:

The content is accurate or complete;
The content is up-to-date or current;
We have a duty to update any content;
The content is free from technical inaccuracies or typographical errors;
Links to pages or sites outside of the VIP CLUB site are available or accurate; and
Your access to our Web site will be free from interruptions, errors, computer viruses, or other harmful components.

Your written contributions or corrections to our IT Legacy are and will be appreciated, send to the Webmaster. Visitor # Hit Counter since 2/15/2013.