Reg, that would be about right.... I was a junior in high school; our "computer club" had a timeshare teletype hookup to Dartmouth's 360. That would have been school year 64-65.
I just don't remember which came first, the 360 or the GE235; Dartmouth switched 'em over at some point, but I think it was the 235 that came later. Continued to work with those, off & on, until USArmy time in 1969. Didn't touch computers again until my Mac Plus in 1980-something.
SomeHOW I avoided the GE machines, I was probably too fascinated with what I actually DID work with to pay much attention to what else was out there.
I didn't have anything to do with Dartmouth until they started buying (or "Accepting" ?, I think they might have been donated) dec PDP-n machines.
Farthest back I can remember was probably a PDP-7 around 69/70 and then a PDP-9 or two.
I don't even remember a department or prof name there, which is TERRIBLE !
I think they had a PDP-6 or 10 there at one time, that would have been more central than departmental and supported by a different group at dec.
PS I did wiki the 360.
It says announced in April '64. (not that wiki is PERFECT, history writ late is largely the collective hunch).
I thought my interview was 3 or 4 months before the big announcement, but can't remember much about dressing up for that.
Dark suit - Yes. White shirt - Yes, Conservative neck tie - Yes, matching dark socks - Yes.
I don't remember having to keep the BLACK shoes clean from snow/slush with overshoes, or if I had sweating problems in my non air conditioned car.
Those are the sorts of things I would remember from dress up interviews.
So, it could have been late Winter of 63/64, but '64 for sure (-:
I didn't get a break from the (ever evolving) computer industry until 2003.
(2003 - 1962 = 41 years... Oh My Goodness,,,,, time flies like the wind (but fruit flies like bananas))
Now my computer time is largely hacking around with various Linux distributions and Amiga emulations.
Ubuntu 9.10 is my current favorite, but that could change (-:
I'm not liking Amiga Forever "packaging", though the underlying WinUAE is still very good.
I gave up on mac emulation on Amiga, err,,,, probably not a good tangent for THIS thread.
I stay current on Oracle, but not much else in commercial scale computing.