Information Technology Pioneers

Although these activities listed and described on this page are not a part of the planned and regular VIP Club functions, the Club Board endorses them with notices herein and in the monthly newsletter. [lab]

     Three decades before the VIP Club was formed, employees and former employees began getting together outside of work for personal communications.  

endorsed by the VIP Club

     In 1989, this annual event was changed from February to the Friday before Thanksgiving to accommodate participation by the Arizona, Florida, and Texas bound ‘snowbirds.’

     In 2002, the committee changed from an evening dinner with speaker to a luncheon with participant recollections. David Boslaugh was one of the featured speakers in the '90s. During the 80s attendance was in the low 100s. In the 90s several events and speakers drew up to 150 participants. In recent years participation has diminished to about 65 persons. There is always a somber reading of former employees who have passed away during the year. 
     Over the last decade, event planning committee has been led by Fred Vihovde (formerly at Plants 1 and 4) and Bob Blixt (deceased 2007).  Fred has been on the planning committee for over 25 years. He's now being assisted by Lowell Benson, Ross Rash, and Jack Ross.  New committee members would be heartily welcomed.  

     Have you read "A few good men from Univac" by David E. Lundstrom? His chapter 21 includes discussion about the UniHog start and includes the 1982 program announcement as figure 24. Copied hereunder for your reading pleasure:

" One day I got a phone call from a friend that I had known since my Univac days.  He asked if I was going to Unihogs this year.  “What’s a Unihog?” I asked.  He explained that a growing group of ex-Univac employees had for years arranged an informal get-together once a year on Groundhog Day.  The combination of Univac and groundhog suggested the name “Unihog.”  Unihogs form a loose non-organization.  Originally, to participate, one must have left Univac.  Returning to Univac does not disqualify a member once qualified.  Some attendees have left Univac three and four times!  The requirements were later loosened to include anyone who had even thought of leaving Univac.  Unihogs have no membership roll, no dues, no elections, no bylaws, no officers, no newsletter, no secret handshake, no funny hats, and no rituals – except for the singing of the “Unihog Drinking Song” at the close of every reunion.  Unihogs are governed, if that is not too strong a word, by a self perpetuating, six-member committee of volunteers.  Two new members are added to the committee each year, and the two members who have served for three years are dropped.  The treasury, consisting of an old envelope with a few dollars in it, is passed along from head hog to head hog.  A small surcharge is added onto the cost of the dinners at the annual reunion to provide funds for mailing the meeting notices and for gag gifts.  An artist among the membership drew the mascot of the Unihogs, which appears on the meeting notices and banquet tickets: a little black and white spotted pig with a single long horn growing out of its forehead. 

            The first meeting that I attended was held in the basement private dining room of a nightclub just down the road from the Univac headquarters.  About a hundred hogs showed up for cocktails and gossip.  Luckily someone had brought a supply of “Univac Visitor” name tags, which everyone wore.  I had not seen many of the attendees in fifteen years.  At a later reunion my old friend, Dick Karpen, now living in Herkimer, New York, managed to visit the Twin Cities on Groundhog Day.  Dick brought me up to date on the whereabouts of some of the Philadelphia hogs. 

            Typically, after an hour or so of socializing, the hogs sit down to dinner.  A short program follows dinner, always something related to the early history of computer development.  One year an academic paper was presented on the founders and the original organization of Engineering Research Associates, the predecessor of Univac St. Paul.  Another year a member showed slides of he early ERA and Univac computers.  At the 1983 reunion, the speaker who introduced himself, consistent with our porcine nomenclature, as the “big boar,” was none other than Willis Drake, the man at whose house I had subscribed for Control Data initial-issue stock back in 1957.  Drake, chairman of Data Card, a company that makes magnetic credit card processing equipment, spoke on the need to recapture the engineering creativity of the early days, a topic close to my heart.

      The 1984 reunion speaker was the new director of the Charles Babbage Institute for the History of Information Processing, Arthur Norberg. (Charles Babbage was a nineteenth--century British mathematician who attempted to build a mechanical “computing engine.”  He is considered by many to be the earliest designer of the programmable computer.) The Institute, a nonprofit foundation at the University of Minnesota, was set up to document and preserve the early history of the electronic computer.  The director spoke on is experiences in attempting to document the early growth of technology in Silicon Valley, where he had just completed a project.

            Following the program the hogs always stand for the ritual bellowing of the “Unihog Drink Song” (sung to the tune of “the Whiffenpoof Song”), with a final chorus:

Managers, programmers, engineers

We’re all Unihogs, and we’ll give three cheers

We’ll program computers to recall past years

Oink, oink, oink.