It wasn't really the dawn, more like 8 am. We had been directly driving typesetters for several years, when in 1977 we gave new definition to the term "on-line".
It was the night of the first live production of a classified ad section using the new CSI System 11/70. The Statesman Journal of Salem, Oregon had boldly purchased the first advertising system, after being appropriately impressed by the editorial version, which by that time had been running for eight months at the Winnipeg Free Press.
CSI had dispatched a team of programmers, and, for ceremony, as well as for fetching late night pizza, had sent the vice presidents of both sales and software. Along with the resident installer there were six CSI employees in attendance.
We all thought that the excitement of the day was about over. From the beginning the challenge of this system was serving responsively the needs of a room full of ad takers, using their CSI terminals for the first time in live use. And we had passed that test- a few problems, but overall an excellent first day.
Only the "ad dump" remained. This batch program traverses the data base of classified ads, gathers those which are scheduled for the next day's paper, sorts them into categories and then passes the whole mess to the H&J program. Here the ads are composed and then, in Salem, translated into the arcane typesetting language of a Harris phototypesetting machine. Finally the ads are sent through a program called the "typesetter device driver" and over a parallel cable directly into the Harris machine.
This last step, a direct on-line connection from the CSI computer to the typesetter, was a big improvement over prior paper tape techniques. The computer would punch long reels of paper tape, placing about six characters per running inch. A classified section produced a lot of tape, which would be gathered up and then fed to the phototypesetter. In 1977 newspapers had not yet rid their back shops of paper tape, and CSI still had the requirement to be able to produce the stuff, though only as a backup measure.
The ability to punch paper tape had all been tested and forgotten weeks earlier. The punches, however, were not yet installed in their proper location, and in fact were temporarily placed on a shelf above the disk drives.
It was about an hour before the ad dump, when one of our programmers, inauspiciously named Murphy, decided to implement a small change to the typesetter device driver. He felt that the change was innocuous enough that he did not have to wait for the newspaper to close. (He never made that mistake again.)
With the composing room deadline fast approaching, the ad dump was initiated. The gather and the composition steps each worked fine. But of course, the recently modified device driver failed to move the data to the typesetter. We scrambled over to the console, checked a variety of possibilities, our celebratory mood quickly turning to concern, then escalating through worry to fear. It was the VP of software, who made the decision, "Let's go to the paper tape!"
The installer was dispatched to the back room for paper tape and a wind up machine as all eyes turned to the punches. I grabbed one, intending to place it on a small table next to the console, when we realized the cable was too short. The only flat surface within reach was the disk drive. So we placed the punch on the drive, and with one of us holding the big reel, turning on a pencil, another ready to catch the punched tape to guide it to the floor in front of the computer, yet another holding a waste basket to catch all the little holes, any one of which falling into the drive enclosure would bring down the whole works, we started it up. Our sales VP wound up each piece when it was done, and the installer was running the tapes down to the typesetter room. Murphy sat at the backup computer console still trying to figure out what he had done wrong.
It was somewhere between "Legals" and "Lost and Found", with the five of us lined up shoulder to shoulder in the cramped computer room, when the production manager of the newspaper, stuck his head in the door and announced, "Well, I'm glad to see CSI is finally on line".
Postscript: The newspaper got out that night, though a bit late. We were punching "Used Furniture" when Murphy found his error.