My first hands-on experience with networked, time-sharing computers was an introduction to BASIC programming in a math class I took in my freshman year of college. The programming was interesting but, I admit, it didn’t grab me the way the hardware setup did — teletype terminals connected to a remote data center over leased telephone lines.
Technology Review explains the background on how this educational initiative began, exposing students to the future that we live in today, and the directions the program took later.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/20/1071291/learn-to-code-legacy-new-projects-education/
By April 1971, the network encompassed 30 high schools and 20 colleges in New England, New York, and New Jersey. All an individual school needed to connect were a terminal and a telephone line linking the terminal with the mainframe on Dartmouth’s campus (often the greatest expense of participating in the network, at a time when long-distance phone calls were quite costly).
And I was so certain the next post (i.e. this one), given the recent titles, would be a reference to a lyric in Jackson Browne’s “Runnin’ on Empty” (’65, I was 17)