The first computer at UB was put in operation in November 1961. The IBM 1620 model cost $86,000 ($700,000 in today’s dollars) and was the first data processing system at any college or university in the Western New York region. A 1961 issue of the UB newsletter Colleague described it accordingly: “Digesting and solving complex mathematical problems more quickly than a battery of skilled mathematicians ... the swift solving brain ... is as necessary to a modern university as microscopes and test tubes.”