The use of computers in analyzing building structures is undeniably a great step forward in our profession. When I trained as a structural engineer in the 1950s, computers were a brand new wonder, and there were no packaged programs available. If you wanted to use a computer, you had to write the program yourself.
Our firm, Silman, founded in 1966, was one of the first to write its own structural-analysis and design programs. In 1970, we took our successful composite-steel-beam design program to the New York City Department of Buildings and asked them how we should file calculations. Fortunately, they realized that this was the wave of the future and suggested that we develop prototype calculations by hand in the conventional way and then submit parallel results performed by the computer, illustrating that the solutions were the same. To do so, we rented an IBM 1130 with 8k capacity, which was fed by decks of punch cards grinding away for many minutes on fairly simple problems. This became standard protocol for the Department of Buildings, and the first nine programs filed were from our office.
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