In 1972 there were young teen programmers on the (then) Univ. of Illinois plasma panel graphic-based PLATO IV computer system (based on Control Data mainframes)

In 1972 there were young teen programmers on the (then) Univ. of Illinois plasma panel graphic-based PLATO IV computer system (based on Control Data mainframes) from Univ of Illinois Laboratory High School (diagonal across the street from the computer facility). Indeed Uni-hi had two of these terminals. Springfield (IL) high students also used the system then because their high school had a terminal. In fact in 1974 or so one student at the high school taught half the 7th grade class (12 year olds) how to program computers using PLATO. In 1973 a then 17-year-old David Woolley (also from Uni-hi) implemented a electronic forum system on PLATO http://thinkofit.com/plato/dwplato.htm#origdev http://thinkofit.com/plato/dwplato.htm#origdev Ray Ozzie was also a college student working on this system. See also: http://platohistory.org/ http://platohistory.org/ If you want, you can try out PLATO at http://cyber1.org/ http://cyber1.org/