The 1984 Drexel Macintosh 128K — complete with a blue “D” for Drexel — that was distributed to Drexel University students in 1984. This model, photographed in 2024, is housed in Drexel’s Department of Digital Media in the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design.

“The freshmen now entering Drexel [in the early 1980s] will spend the greater portion of their professional lives in the 21st century, in an environment in which the computer will be an everyday, even commonplace tool. … In every field of endeavor the successful practitioner will utilize computer technology in order to understand and deal with the challenges of everyday life,” declared Drexel University’s then-president, William W. Hagerty, PhD, in 1982.

With that proclamation, Drexel announced that all incoming students starting in 1983 would need access to a personal microcomputer — a first within higher education that earned Drexel a national reputation as a bold and technologically advanced institution.

The University doubled down on that reputation when it secured a first-of-its-kind partnership with the Apple Computer, Inc. company (today’s Apple Inc.). Students, and most of the faculty, received a discounted, brand-new Apple Macintosh personal computer in early 1984 — before it was available to the general public.

The story of Drexel’s Microcomputing Program, as the initiative was known, is an example of Drexel leaders anticipating the workplace of the future, entirely in line with Drexel’s 1891 founding mission to prepare students for a changing world. It also showcases a continuum in how the University has sought to bridge digital divides not just on campus, but also in Philadelphia and internationally.

Drexel’s Early Days of Computing

By the time of Hagerty’s 1982 announcement, Drexel had experienced three decades of computer use on campus, mostly for academic research and computing as well as administrative data.

In 1958, Drexel opened the first computing center in Delaware Valley, making it one of just 75 educational institutions in the country to have one. The center mostly served to train and support research for students and faculty and teach certain classes related to computer programming and digital computers for engineering, mathematics and business.

By the ’70s, computers were becoming more common; a computer science-mathematics major was first offered in 1975 and the library began incorporating computer services and searches. But the University moved most of its on-campus computer operations to the Uni-Coll Corporation, a profit-making corporation co-owned by Drexel, the University of Pennsylvania and the University Science Center.

Vice President for Academic Affairs Bernie Sagik, left, and Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs and Drexel Microcomputing Program Director Brian Hawkins, right, with a Drexel student on a distribution day of the Macintosh computers in March 1984. Photo courtesy Drexel University Archives.

Everything changed when Bernie Sagik started as vice president for academic affairs in 1980. Drexel had transitioned from an institute to a university just 10 years before, and enrollment was suffering from a tough economy, federal financial aid cuts and a dwindling local population. 

Sagik first pitched mandatory computers for engineering students only. Drexel’s president initially rejected the idea, thinking computers were just a fad. But Hagerty changed his mind when business colleagues outside of Drexel told him to open it up to all students, and that it’d be great for publicity — both of which did eventually happen.

“If you go national, you compete against every other first-rate national institution, and you’re a newcomer in it. You’re just one more the many [sic]. So I felt we had to trade on what Drexel had already, that which was unique to us, which means co-op, which means very applied programs built on a solid theoretical base. And those are the things that we can sell,” he said in a documentary about Drexel’s computer mandate, called “Going National.”

Preparing the Campus

Internal reports from the time show that on-campus computer illiteracy was widespread. While more than half of the 300-something full-time faculty members had considerable experience using computers, only one in five had taught with computers. Of those with prior experience, most were scientists and engineers using machines for computations and research.

To prepare the University, Brian Hawkins, PhD, assistant vice president for academic affairs, led the Drexel Microcomputing Program to oversee the integration of technology throughout Drexel’s campus, community and curriculum.

Drexel spent about $7 million (about $22 million in today’s dollars) updating its campus technology infrastructure. The University created “clusters” outfitted with shared computers and printers and staffed with about 40 co-op students. Computers were also allocated to academic departments. Five lecture halls received video projection systems. Printers were installed in four rooms across campus.

A room full of Drexel Macintoshes for students to use. Photo courtesy Drexel University Archives.

With a $2.8 million grant (almost $9 million today), Drexel started computer training classes and seminars on campus, which were attended by about 70 percent of the faculty in 1983. About 30 percent of the faculty completed a 20-hour hands-on introductory seminar teaching word processing, spreadsheets, database management and educational software.

“It was a great way to meet people because they were suddenly in the same room with you learning things, and we taught each other. I had pre-existing programming experience, but I didn’t know how to use a spreadsheet or a personal computer,” remembered Eva Thury, PhD, associate professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences. 

Thury had started at Drexel in 1979 as a graduate student studying information science at the School of Library and Information Science (today’s College of Computing & Informatics, or CCI) and as an instructor in the English Department. Later, she began teaching computer programming classes for English students in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (part of today’s College of Arts and Sciences). 

Thury used an Apple Lisa (Apple’s first business computer, which preceded the Macintosh) in a computer room on the fifth floor of MacAlister Hall to write Tools for Writers, a program that allowed students to use the Macintosh to analyze and revise their work to improve their writing skills. As time went on, she shared the project with then-School of Library and Information Science associate professor and future husband M. Carl Drott, PhD, who had once taught her to program a computer. Tools for Writers tallied words, sentences and other stylistic characteristics. Later, Thury developed “literature labs” requiring students to use the software to talk about style in quantitative ways. Tools for Writers was eventually used throughout Drexel and sold nationally through Apple’s catalog of programs, and Thury traveled often giving demonstrations at the company’s events.

Professors like Thury developed nearly 100 programs — sometimes with help from students or expert programmers — to use in courses, ranging from an electronic periodic table to a program that could replace polygraph machines. Dragons also developed University-specific programs, like the Drexel Disk introductory software given to all entering freshmen as well as those using the University’s training and support services.

Faculty proficiency had been developed in time for Drexel’s 1983–1984 deadline. Deciding on a computer for everyone to use ended up being much harder.

Picking the Apple

When Drexel made computers an academic requirement, it didn’t specify which brand. After having attracted national attention, the University had over 300 different options to choose from.

The computer had to be sophisticated enough for technical users and programs, but also flexible enough for novices. A portable, stand-alone unit was preferred, because half of the first-year class were commuters and students could then take their computer on co-op. The price was capped at $1,000 (about $3,000 today), which was equivalent to one extra textbook per course. A bond was issued for the University to make a volume purchase of computers to resell to students. Those who couldn’t make a one-time payment could pay in increments (at a below-market interest rate), and the cost of the computer was included in calculating the student's financial aid.

Drexel was prepared to buy IBM computers — and had equipped its computer centers with IBMs for decades — but the cost came to more than $1,000 per unit. IBM’s young competitor Apple, on the other hand, was willing to give discounts, provided the University agreed to secret negotiations and discreet showings of its newest, unreleased personal computer.

A wall on Drexel’s campus displaying art made in MacPaint, as photographed in 1984. Photo courtesy Drexel University Archives.

Bruce Eisenstein, PhD, Arthur J. Rowland Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering, was the head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the time, and had been the founding faculty adviser for the Drexel Computer Society started in 1972. He was Drexel’s choice to meet with an Apple representative to see the future Macintosh, which had never-before-seen properties like a mouse, icons on a screen and different fonts. This new Apple product was more powerful and easier to use than earlier personal computers; novices could supposedly master it in 30 minutes (without the need to memorize and type coded commands). And Apple agreed on the $1,000 price tag for a model that sold to the public for $2,495. 

“I went back to the selection committee and I said, ‘Listen, you have to forget the IBM. This new computer from Apple is the one you have to get. They are going to make it available to us for a thousand dollars — that's all inclusive.’ And the first question was ‘Is it compatible with the IBM computer?’ Well, no. Was there software for it? No. Were there any programs for it, like a word processor? Not yet. So the committee justifiably kept saying, well, what's the name of this? What's it like? I couldn't tell them. I had to say you just gotta trust me on this. So they took a vote and unanimously voted to adopt the unknown computer that turned out to be the Macintosh,” Eisenstein recalled in “Building Drexel: The University and Its City, 1891-2016.”

Drexel chose the untested Macintosh even knowing that Apple wouldn’t announce it to the public until January 1984 and that the computers wouldn’t be ready until March, almost halfway through that momentous academic year.

A professor using a computer as students watch. Photo courtesy Drexel University Archives.

Countdown to 1984

In the fall of 1983, Drexel ended up welcoming its largest first-year class ever with1,882 students. The electrical engineering department admitted 500 new students, compared with 120 or 130 in previous years. Only about 20 percent of male first-years and 9 percent of female first-years had owned a programmable computer.

Those students, and the rest of the general Drexel community, still didn’t know what computers they’d already purchased, or when they’d get them. Things changed after Apple aired its famous Ridley Scott–directed Super Bowl commercial that “changed the Super Bowl forever” and ended with a promise: “On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984.’”

With the Macintosh’s public unveiling came the announcement of the Apple Consortium, made up of 24 colleges and universities partnering with Apple. Drexel was a member along with Ivy League schools and Stanford University.

Still, the University didn’t receive its Macs until the end of February, and it took even longer for other Apple Consortium institutions: Stanford held a lottery for students to receive their similarly discounted Macintoshes after months-long delivery delays.

Upon Drexel’s delivery, staff opened each of the 2,000 Apple boxes to verify contents and add to the bundle. Each Macintosh 128K package included a computer, mouse, keyboard, power cord, manual, system diskette, blank disk for backup, programming switch, audio cassette “guided tour,” user manuals and programs including MacWrite, MacPaint and Microsoft Multiplan software. Each computer was branded with a blue Drexel “D” (known as the “flying D”).

Students picking up the Macintosh package on a distribution day in March 1984. Photo courtesy Drexel University Archives.

Students picked up their machines starting on March 5, with 60 time slots per hour spread across a week. The entire process, as well as the time leading up to it, was documented in the 1985 “Going National” documentary directed by Dave Jones, PhD, an associate professor of film.

Of the first-year class, just 50 chose not to buy the discounted Drexel Macs. Drexel also bulk-ordered Macintoshes for on-campus use and personal purchase — all but a third of full-time faculty purchased one, too.

Around that time, students who had been on a student advisory committee for the Drexel Microcomputing Program founded a tech support organization called DUsers. The group assisted in student training and advised the administration on student-related computer updates. At its first meeting in April 1984, 100 members learned about fonts and watched vice president and computer engineering major Steve Weintraut play a program he created that killed a target named Prime II, named after the infamous Prime campus mainframe. 

Impact on Campus and Across the Country

Before and after the distribution, Drexel received an enormous amount of national publicity and academic prestige. In the first year after Drexel announced its computer mandate, representatives from over 70 institutions contacted the University for more information. Drexel received so many requests that the Drexel University Microcomputing Program Working Paper Series was created to share white papers, faculty-penned essays and the results of a five-year longitudinal study.

Drexel’s technological success expanded outside of academia to the professional workplace. For example, Denise Walls, president of that DUsers group and a mechanical engineering student, reported interviewing for jobs and hearing people say “Oh, Drexel. You guys got the Macs, didn’t you?” And curricula across the disciplines were influenced, too: introductory financial accounting courses, for example, were taught using spreadsheet software after leaders of some of the country’s biggest accounting firms told Drexel’s president that they would soon require all first-year accountants to own a computer.

About a year after the Macintosh distribution, Drexel hosted a black-tie, red-carpet premiere of “Going National” in the Mandell Theater. And yes, Steve Jobs attended.

Two Drexel students holding the Macintosh in 1984. Photo courtesy Drexel University Archives.

A Legacy Lives On

Drexel’s reputation continued as “the Macintosh capital of higher education,” as PBS’s “Computer Chronicles” program called it in 1990, when there were about 14,000 Macs on campus. Faculty still gave and attended on-campus presentations and brown bag seminars, and publishing a new program was on par with publishing a scholarly article. A whole generation of Dragons had graduated by then, entering the workforce with much more experience than their peers at other institutions. 

Drexel began offering online courses in 1995, and in 1996 started one of the country’s first fully online degree programs (MS in information systems). And after providing wireless connections in its library in 1998, Drexel had become fully wireless everywhere on campus except the dorms by 2000. That year, it became the first university to provide free voice-recognition software to students. In 2002, Drexel earned another “first” after launching a mobile Web-portal service (DrexelOne Mobile) to access grades, schedules and other University news and alerts. 

Over the years, the University also continued to provide access to technology not just for its students on campus, but also to community members off campus and around the world.

Two students in the Tanzania computer lab holding laptops refurbished and donated by TechServ that were brought over through Drexel’s ICA. Photo courtesy Senior Director of Education Abroad Ahaji Schreffler, who taught the ICA.

DUsers had ceased to exist by 2004, and its assets (old computers, website URL) were transferred over to TechServ, which was founded in 2003 as a student organization completing community service via tech support. In the spring of 2012, TechServ held its first free “Community Genius Bar,” which it has continued ever since. It also refurbishes old and donated laptops and distributes them to community members and local organizations. In 2023, its 20th year, TechServ donated more than 100 computers to organizations including The Center for Returning Citizens, which helps people reenter society after incarceration. It also expanded its international reach by donating 15 laptops to start a secondary school’s computer lab in Tanzania through a Drexel Intensive Course Abroad (ICA). This year, it’s on track to double its donations, and is set to furnish both a community and school computer lab in Liberia through a different ICA.

“TechServ’s whole entire goal is to bridge the digital divide,” said president and fourth-year mechanical engineering major Vince Cariello. “TechServ was founded off of this idea, and we've built ourselves into something very different, but it's great to look back at our roots and see how we've evolved from DUsers.”

In 2020, Drexel’s Expressive and Creative Interaction Technologies (ExCITe) Center was designated as one of three organizations to improve digital inclusion for members of the West Philadelphia Promise Zone through the City-funded Digital Navigator program. Members assist with in-person skills training and programming at the Beachell Family Learning Center’s KEYSPOT computer lab at Drexel’s Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships.

Drexel University Libraries’ laptop vending machine and portable power charger lending kiosk, as expanded in 2024. Photo credit: Jaci Downs Photography.

Drexel’s connection with Apple has remained and expanded, starting with its yearslong Macintosh requirement and partnership (and discounts) for a whole generation of Dragons. More recently, in 2013, Drexel University Libraries became the third university on the East Coast, and the first in Philadelphia, to dispense MacBooks for in-library use after hours; Drexel was the first to offer 15-inch MacBook Pro laptops.

Drexel also continued to host Apple luminaries on campus, with John Sculley, then-CEO of Apple Computer, Inc., serving as commencement speaker during Drexel’s centennial year in 1992.

Over the years, Dragons have gone on to work at Apple for co-ops and full-time jobs. Cariello, the TechServ president, will start a co-op there next term related to advanced manufacturing for the iPad line. Drexel Board of Trustees member Jim Bean, finance and accounting ’91, worked there for 20 years and retired as Apple’s vice president of retail.

Drexel faculty and professional staff have also worked at and with Apple. In 1987, Drexel's student newspaper, The Triangle, announced Hawkins, the leader of the Drexel Microcomputing Program, was leaving the University to work as the university resource specialist Apple Computer. Vice Provost for University and Community Partnerships Youngmoo Kim, PhD, who is the founding director of the ExCITe Center with the Digital Navigators program, was recognized as a 2013 Apple Distinguished Educator, a prestigious distinction for global education leaders.

1984 in 2024 

The Drexel computer mandate has also been studied in Drexel classes like the “History of Games” course taught by Tony Rowe, associate teaching professor in the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design. He teaches the history of personal computer games and how personal computers evolved, and said students are usually surprised and interested in the Drexel/Apple connection (“and hopefully become a little proud,” he added).

Rowe demonstrates the 1986 Mac game “Maze Wars+”, an early version of a multiplayer first-person shooter game, on a Macintosh SE (the Drexel “D” is on the back of the monitor). It’s one of several 1980s Drexel-branded Apple personal computers and components that Westphal owns.

TechServ also inherited several ’80s Drexel-branded Apple computers, including the 1984 Macintosh that will be on display this spring after the College of Computing & Informatics’ CCI Computer Museum moves to the 11th floor of 3675 Market St.

Some of the Macintosh components held in the CCI Computer Museum, including a MacDraw package, a “Knowledge Navigator” VHS tape, and recreated software disks for a Macintosh systems disk, MacWrite and MacPaint.

“Our whole goal with the new museum area is for the CCI Computer Museum to be hands-on. We don’t want the computer to be something that you can stare at, but for it to be something you can actually interact with,” said Brian Bijeau, a CCI systems administrator who is the CCI Computer Museum’s unofficial curator and graduated with a computer engineering degree in 2019. 

Bijeau is now staff adviser to TechServ after serving as its president from 2015–2017. A vintage tech enthusiast, he spent the Macintosh’s 25th anniversary teaching his middle school's computer classes using his own personal Macintoshes. He learned about the Drexel/Apple connection during his first year at the University, which coincided with the 30th anniversary (which TechServ celebrated). And during this 40th anniversary year, he hopes to bring that 1984 Macintosh out for people to try using 1980s software he was able to copy, thanks to an alumnus’ donation to Drexel University Archives. He has already restored the 1984­–1989 versions of Drexel-created software as well as original Macintosh software.

In 2011, Drexel University Libraries hosted an exhibition exploring Drexel’s pre-1984 use of computers: Access for Everyone: Computing at Drexel, 1946–1984. Programming included a discussion with then-professor of psychology and computer science Thomas Hewett, PhD, who was teaching in the Psychology and Sociology Department in 1983 when he co-created the boot faculty computer newsletter as well as the “Drexel Disk” program used by all Dragons. Jones, the film director who was then the dean of Drexel’s Pennoni Honors College, also spoke at the exhibition’s “Going National” viewing and panel discussion.

Now, in 2024, the Libraries will host an exhibition next term celebrating the 40th anniversary. On March 5, 40 years to the day after the Drexel Macintoshes were distributed, “Going National” was uploaded to the Libraries’ YouTube page and is now available online for the first time ever. 

College of Engineering Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Adam Fontecchio, PhD, will host alumnus Michael Baum, computer science ’85, at a first-year engineering class; the alumnus was inspired to become a software engineer after a 1983 campus visit by Steve Jobs and his cybersecurity company, Splunk, is set to be acquired by Cisco for $28 billion.

This year’s Alumni Weekend will feature a special event related to this period in Drexel history. TechServ will be hosting an event and Cariello hopes it will spark connections with DUsers alumni.

Meanwhile, all across the world, the importance of computers in education was never clearer than during the COVID-19 pandemic, as most of today’s current Drexel students spent some of their high school and/or college years only learning on computers. Four decades after the Macintosh won over academic and home markets, it’s obvious that computers have impacted higher education and the professional workforce in countless ways.