First Commercial Computer in Wyoming Operated in the Casper Office of Pan American Petroleum, 1960
Shown below is sample computer card that was used to input data into Wyoming’s first commercial computer, an IBM 1401 card system, installed in September 1960, in the offices of Pan American Petroleum in Casper. Vince Siren, who was the first full-time computer programmer in Wyoming, said the computer was about 4’x4′ and stood about 7′ high. It had 4,000 characters of memory and was connected by cables to a card-reader punch and to a 132-character printer. Siren graduated from the University of Wyoming where he learned computing on the academic computers at UW, the first non-commercial computers in the state. (Source: Wyoming Almanac, 7th ed., 2013, p. 162)
An interesting detailed history of computers at the University of Wyoming may be found on the UW IT website. Written by Jim Kirkpatrick, an employee at IT for many years, it tells the story of the various systems and how they evolved at UW. The article can be found at: https://www.uwyo.edu/infotech/aboutit/history/