The following report from the 1994 Chronicle comes from a time when landlines and pen-and-paper were still the default means of communication in both business and personal life in Australia. The internet and email were yet to be widely used; mobile phones and wifi were not readily available.
In days of old, when someone decided to ring into Ormond, a sprightly student service chap manning the single phone would bound up the stairs, fetching the said student. About 1990, when the sharing of one communal phone between twelve was slowly losing its novelty, moves were undertaken to find a new phone system. In 1991, college administration drew up a comprehensive proposal involving the installation of both telephone lines and computer links into each room.
In 1992 at a Students’ Club General Meeting a motion to install phones into all student rooms was passed. Although the motion was essentially meaningless as the Students’ Club wasn’t about to pay the $200,000 cost of installing a new system, it was indicative of students’ enthusiasm for a technology upgrade.
A library staff member with the computer and telephones used by staff in the early 1990s.
The situation in 1994
In 1993, consultation between administration and student representatives Fi Anderson, John Knox and Arun Gupta revealed a strong misconception: college staff saw computer links into each room as highly desired. In contrast, an informal survey of students showed few were willing to pay for an ethernet card to use the network and in any case the fibre optic link to the university necessary to make this useful seemed nowhere on the horizon.
After this re-evaluation, things started to move faster. Possibilities such as an in-College mobile phone system were quickly dismissed. Finally over the 1993-94 summer holidays a spanking new Ericsson landline phone system was installed. The funky beige handset in each room had full voicemail. The huge effort put in by college staff over these holidays is commendable to say the least.
The new system had a few teething problems, including phone diversion tricks, overloading of the voicemail system and 24-hour phone ringing in Picken (audible in Main Building). In addition, the phone system has provided a valuable mechanism for budding pranksters to hone their skills.
In 1994 a telephone similar to this was installed in each College room.
The future
Well, with all the fuss in the press about multimedia, videoconferencing and the internet, it’s hard to play Nostradamus. I’d probably say Spring 2007 for videophones at Ormond. Hopefully the fibre optic link to university will be here sooner.
When the link finally does finally get installed, big changes to the computer room will follow. A Unix computer is a possibility for 1995, allowing computing students to work locally and giving everyone convenient access to world-wide electronic mail.
Already rumours about replacing the theological library above the MacFarland library with a new ‘media centre’ are surfacing; with performance/price ratios constantly increasing, there is great potential here.
One consequence of a new ‘media centre’ would be the huge improvements in colour and design possible in upcoming Chronicles; in this edition we’ve just started the ball rolling with some spot colour and layout changes. If there is at all an underlying theme to this article, it’s that often a bit of hard yakka and communication results in great changes for all.
Students in around 1995-6 using the college’s computers, which had the only internet connection on the grounds.
Tell us more
Every Ormondian has their own experience of College, and their own story to tell. Do you remember when telephones were installed in student rooms at Ormond? Or another technology first? Share your experience with the community.
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