Betty Cook Rottman:
Uh, Doctor Parker recently received an award for his pioneering in the field of library automation. This reward came, this award came from the Missouri Library Association. Doctor Parker, according to this, you really began some of your early pioneering back in the 30s when you were in Texas. How did you get into that?

Ralph Parker:
Well, actually, it was something of an accident. Uh, I was, I guess I should say, I was always quite lazy, and, uh, I hated to do things that seemed to be, uh, fruitless. Uh, one of the things that, uh, concerned me as being fruitless was checking books in at circulation desk at the university library, and the system that was used there meant that you checked each book in not once but twice. There were two files set up, uh, to answer various questions that people might ask. And I thought this was utterly wasteful, so I started toying with ideas of how you could simplify and have only one file instead of two.

Betty Cook Rottman:
This was, uh, where in Texas?

Parker:
University of Texas, uh, in, uh, this is in the 1930s, early 1930s. Well, one, late one afternoon, I was alone during the dinner hour, and, uh, there was, a book came through being to be checked in, I was checking books in, and there was this book dealing with punched cards. Now I had only barely heard of punched cards, but I opened it and started reading and the light dawned on me, this is what I've been looking for all along. So that night I took the book home and I, uh, studied it, and I had an idea, got an idea of how we could change circulation records in a library to have only one file and yet you would be able to find out what books any borrower had, when they were due, answer the question of where is this book if a customer wants to know. All with one single file.

Betty Cook Rottman:
What was the stage of punched cards at that time in the country?

Parker:
Well, at that time, uh, very few people had heard of them. There were no computers at that time. You had machines which, in which you could punch holes in cards which could later be interpreted by other machines and, uh, you could print out, uh, the results. So at that, uh, the next morning, I then, uh, took this idea to my boss, the head librarian, and he said, well, why don't you get in touch with the, uh, punch card salesman? I did. He said, well, it did look like it was feasible. So, uh, we, uh, uh, pursued the idea, went back and talked to the boss. He says how much will it cost to put on a, put to a trial? And we figured that we could do it for $300. He says, okay, I will gamble $300 on the project. So that's what started the first application of punched cards and what later led into the computer, in a library anywhere in the world. And it was just, well, uh, it was accidental.