Advancements in Computers

At the age of sixty, Bobken Bumfredyan, now living in Glendale, came to our house with his wife and daughter for some coffee. Sitting, he was sharing with us all the joyous times he had and he was really amazed of all the changes that took place in society from his time. He was born in Beirut, Lebanon and moved to the United States at the age of thirteen. From scratch, he slowly started getting into the computer business and revolved around its major changes. These were times, he says, in which tremendous amounts of technological advancements took place. Thefirst computer that Jack used was one of the earliest, the IBM 360. From working in a small building, he exceeded his interests and moved up to better jobs with computers. Today, he still works with his main interest just like he did when he was younger, and he is proud for having his own family. He watches the days fly by, and realizes how lucky the children are at this generation. Every year, he says, computers advance and become more useful than ever.

I’m Bobken Bumfredyan, and I was born in Beirut, Lebanon at March 7, 1947. Before coming to California, I lived in Waukegan, Illinois for two years. That’s when I started junior high school, but when I came to California, I graduated from Pasadena High School. My main interest when I was younger was music, and I had no idea what computers were at that time.

When we came to California, my father’s job was a tailor, but it was not enough to support the whole family. So, I worked in World Vision; it was a company which had a noble mission. World vision’s main aim was to support orphanages. I was working in their mailing house, and I was second shift because of school. I got in my computer business accidentally. I realized a notice in our buildings bulletin board saying, “Anyone that is interested in becoming a computer operator, they should apply.” So, I said well nothing to lose, and I went and applied. I was very happy to take that job. 

The first computer that I ever used was the IBM 360 and it was during second year in high school. It had only sixty-four K main frame memory. IBM 360 had tape drive and it had one disk drive. It had a big disk which let you mount the hard disk. We used to use the same drive disk for the operating system, and then we used to dismount that disk and put another disk for the data. Even though it was a lot of work, it still was quiet advanced than doing it manually. At one time they taught me how to sort cards. The only input mechanisms were IBM punch cards which used to be made from key punch keyboards. Then, we had to sort those cards in sequence of account number so that it would match the account number of the tape file. So the new transactions, whether it was a sale or donation, came through those punch cards. 

As I first started in programming computers, I used IBM 360. We used to have the entire Broadway. Broadway used to be a retail company which no longer exists because Macy’s took over. Their entire accounting system was designed on this computer. So, nowadays we have laptops and hand held devices which have much, much more capacity than those big main frames. But it did the job, and it was amazing that how the computers helped the business. Nowadays, we do not realize for instance, if you go to a retail store and give your credit card the calculations that take place.

When giving that card, your account, let’s say MasterCard or American Express, the transaction goes to the center of your account’s company from the store. They verify your limit and they verify if the account is okay. Without the computers nowadays, the entire business will stop. It’s mind boggling, but you know the technology is there to support and handle all this volume.

In my Broadway job prior to computers, they were taking care of the transactions and all the purchases of that day using an adding machine type of unit. And it was amazing. They used to maybe sit and use all their ten fingers to record all the transaction purchases of that day manually. Then there was a crank after they finish. We later converted the system to automation with sixty-four K IBM 360, and it was amazing how much difference it made. The entire cycle used to finish in like three hours with probably two-hundred people working every night.

There is a huge difference with the computers I see today compared to the ones I saw before. You had to have a minimum of a special room for the computers before. I would say just to hold computer 360, a room that is twenty-five to thirty feet long. It had to have an elevated floor and an air conditioning underneath the floor to keep the computer cool. But now, even a computer that you hold in your hand has more power and capability than that big computer which took all that space.

It was most probably in 1973 when I first purchased my computer. It was an apple computer; very small and quiet different. But it was fun. I was able to do a quiet bit on my computer. My brother had a jewelry store, so I started to write a little program to do his accounts receiving and lay away system to keep track of the down payments from customers.

Since the past couple decades until now the population of people using the computer, especially in the United States has increased. Probably sixty-five percent of the homes have desktops or laptops. I carry my laptop home from work and I could do anything that I do at work simply at home. ‘Cause of the internet facility, we can communicate with any location of my company. There is a vast change in age in computer users also. Right now, my daughter is taking courses like Excel or Word (Microsoft) which I never even took until I was probably ten-twelve years older.

I think teenagers use the computers for educational purposes. My daughter uses the computer a lot to do some research on subjects that she’s taking. For instance, she’s taking geometry and physics, and I am amazed at how much information she gets from the computer by the means of the internet. So it is a very powerful tool, especially for those who are going to school. There are also bad things about computers which the parents have to be careful and they have to teach there youngsters to be careful, because as everything else, all the good, comes the bad. Some people think children get distracted, however I don’t think the children get distracted with computers if they are focused.

Since I’m in the business, I use the computer for at least eight hours a day. Currently, I work for Kaiser Permanente, which is a health providing company. We’re doing health care systems right now. We have a big project converting chart medical records into electronic chart which is a tremendous project, and is quiet costly to record every record of every patient into electronic record. Kaiser Permanente has approximately forty-five million medical charts that they keep track, and we’re trying to convert all of that into computers so that it would be much more accurate and it would be very helpful for the doctors to have this information on their laptop or on their desktop.

Anyone that has computer knowledge in the future has a much better chance of getting jobs. I would encourage anyone to start early and learn computers, because we are becoming dependant on it, also more and more computers are going to take over many tasks that we currently do manually.

Interviewed by Armand Harmandayan