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A day like today, fifty years ago, went on the first computer in Argentina. "Clementina", a flower of computer science (by the standards of the time), opened his eyes for the first time. There was a teenager and just over ten years later, the deterioration and military governments gave their task completed. But his life was as short as productive, as well as to make it an important point in the history of science in our country.
was the golden age of the University of Buenos Aires. The Faculty of Sciences, with Rolando Garcia as dean, had implemented the idea of teacher-researcher, taking the current scientific thinking that made art in the world. Oscar Varsavsky was devoted to applied mathematics, José Giambiaggi worked on the theory of subatomic particles, Cora Ratto and Enzo Gentile introduced set theory and modern algebra and Gregory epistemological Klimovsky the latest trends. And Eudeba, Boris Spivacow published at very low prices and a relentless pace thousands of high quality books.
In December 1960, Clementina arrived by boat. Manuel Sadosky, Dean of Mathematics, son of a shoemaker and a doctorate in physics and mathematics, had taken steps to acquire of a scientific supercomputer last year. The bid had been submitted signatures IBM, Remington, Philco and Ferranti. The winner was a Ferranti Mercury, really a monster of 5000 glass valves, 18 meter cabinets (say, about 50 thousand times larger than current computer), which required building a special room in University City, where he also checks on the temperature and humidity. Clementina
so named because his memory had been stored in the old American song of that name, spoke, as our PC, with zeros and ones, but no monitor or keyboard. To interact with it was necessary to a reader strips of paper with holes made by the operators for binary language, always on the edge of the error and fix with tape. The programming language used, specially developed for this model was replaced by a version of its own, giving birth to the first Argentine software called Comic designed by Wilfredo Duran.
Led by Clementina and Sadosky, now recognized as the pioneer of cybernetics in the country, was consolidated Computing Institute, from which years later would launch the career of Computer Science, with courses open to the public computer. Just like playing chess and hummed a couple of tangos, Clementina was central to the development of a wide range of research. He came to work 24 hours a day, solve numerical problems, especially for the engineering and statistics, but also was used for linguistic research on language structure and translation. It provided service to various government departments, working on astronomical calculations, solid mechanics studies, and had its honorable role in the 1960 Population Census.
Our dear Clementina, the first Latin American academic computer had its great moments of action and service to both research and the productive sector. But above all, formed a large litter of science researchers. In 1966, when the brutality of the dictatorship of Juan Carlos Ongania speaking universities, the Institute of Computing suffered a blow. It was the Night of the Long poles, and the brutality of the military coup against the Faculty of Sciences and emptied it expelled the members of the Institute to other destinations. Clementina continued to operate, but the deterioration, lack of spare parts and accelerated academic leadership end. In mid-1971 was reported to cease operations and promised a replacement, which never came, in the media of high rank. Thus, Clementina was dismantled and left to be with us.
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