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The magic word Computer attracted Dr.Gift Siromoney and he wrote an article in the MCC Magazine entitled Are Computers a Threat to Man? as early as 1965. He started gathering information relating to computers and programming languages. In 1968, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, organized a summer course in Computer Programming with special reference to Fortran II. Dr. Gift was one among a few participants who attended it. His enthusiasm did not stop there. He came back to MCC and organized a course of special lectures to pass on the knowledge he acquired at IIT to the faculty members of MCC. In spite of the hot summer, prominent personalities like Dr. C.T.Kurien. Dr. B.M.Arthur and Dr. E.S. Srinivasan attended those lectures. Subsequently, after becoming the Chairman of the Department of Statistics, he showed greater interest in introducing the fundamentals of computer education to the students. Evening courses were organized in the department after the college hours on Card Punching and Verification, Autocoder programming, FORTRAN programming and COBOL programming languages from 1973 onwards. He procured an ICL Card Punching Machine and an ICL Card Verifying Machine and made arrangements for the students to get training in the use of these machines. Dr. Gift took all the initiative to introduce the Computer Programming as part of B.Sc curriculum in the year 1971, and Formal Languages and Automata Theory as part of M.Sc syllabi in the year 1976 for the Statistics (main) subject in the University of Madras.

All the preliminary data preparation work in the department was carried out with the help of the card punching machines and verifiers, and processed on an IBM 1620 Computer at Anna University, and also on IBM 1130 Computer at AC Technology, Chennai, till 1975. After that, both the students and the staff members started using the IBM 370/155 computer at the IIT, Madras. Dr. Gift Siromoney motivated staff members of the Statistics department to offer consultancy services to teachers and research scholars and mobilized funds for paying computer service charges. Many of our post-graduate students were able to get jobs as computer professionals because of their exposure to mainframe computers such as IBM 370. The department produced a number of M.Phil. graduates whose work was computer-related. The department had the privilege of producing six Ph.Ds whose work was related to Pattern Recognition, Epigraphy, Multivariate Analysis, Iconography, Nutrition, Acceptance Sampling and Applied Statistics by the end of the year 1983.

During the mid-sixties, the advancement in the western countries was so rapid that Dr. Gift felt that India cannot compete in the area of computer technology. So, he motivated staff members in the Department of Mathematics to work on Theoretical Computer Science. He strongly believed that we had enough brainpower to work on Theoretical Computer Science. As a result, the Mathematics department became very strong and published research papers in the areas of Theoretical Computer Science, specifically Formal Languages & Automata, Picture Languages, Lindenmayer Systems, Cryptography and later, on Learning Theory & DNA Computing. Mathematics Department produced a number of Ph.D. scholars in the area of Theoretical Computer Science.

With great enthusiasm in 1984, Dr. Gift Siromoney purchased a small home computer, Colour Genie, with a cassette tape drive and a printer with a user-memory of about 28K, for the departmental use. It was capable of running only a subset of BASIC language. Almost all programs that were run on IBM 370 were converted to BASIC to run on the Colour Genie. BASIC programming courses were organized for both the students and staff members of other departments in the college to promote computer literacy. Later, some more computers with a better configuration were added.

The proposal by the college, to establish a computer center was accepted by the UGC and it recommended HCL Workhorse II with four terminals, one MB main memory, two 20 MB hard disks, a floppy drive and a line printer in 1986. The location of the computer center was chosen as the middle floor of our old library. Initially, the center had four full-time staff members. Dr. Gift Siromoney was the Founder and Director of the center and two of our professors, Dr. R. Chandrasekaran and Prof. N.G. David were honorary consultants. The college computer center was named after Dr. W. F. Kibble, former Professor of Mathematics. A few more personal computers were augmented in due course. The software packages available at that time included word processors, an electronic spread sheet, Dbase II, and language compilers such as Basic, FORTRAN, COBOL, Pascal and C. The students, staff members, research scholars and also some of the administrative sections of our college enjoyed the computing facilities. The Continuing Education Department of our college offered computer courses and used Kibble Computer Center for computer practical classes. Other departments also started equipping themselves with PCs and offering their own courses.

After the college became autonomous in 1978, the Department of Statistics introduced many new papers on computer applications and programming languages. The Statistics Department stood atop on the computer application subjects providing the students career possibilities in the software industries. Presently, the Department of Statistics has its own computing laboratory named after Dr. Gift Siromoney. Other departments also grew up in computer literacy depending upon their scope and requirements and established their own small computer centers. The Master of Computer Applications (MCA) course was started in the mid-nineties with Dr.Mrs. Rani Siromoney, as the first chairman, setting a landmark in the computer education in MCC.

-Chandrasekaran R. (B.Sc and M.Sc.1972-76, Ph.D, 1982, Colleague, 1976-1988)
Current Affiliation: Professor, Department of Statistics, Madras Christian College.