In 1963 a USAID-funded IBM 1620 flew into Kanpur on a DC-7, becoming India's first campus computer at IIT Kanpur
CatAstro_Piyush · x · 2026-10-17
In July 1963, a chartered DC-7 landed at a military airbase in Kanpur carrying an IBM 1620 computer purchased by USAID for the newly founded IIT Kanpur.
The receiving team included Harry Huskey, who had worked on ENIAC and spent time with Alan Turing in England, plus two Princeton men, Forman Acton and Irving Rabinowitz. They got the machine running within weeks.
The team then picked about 25 first-year students for an informal evening programming course — Acton later said he chose them mostly by their English marks. One was Ravi Sethi, who went on to head Avaya Labs. By February 1964 the 1620 was running round the clock. IIT Kanpur calls it the first computer at any Indian educational institution and the first with a Fortran-class compiler available for broader use; the team also ran 10-day courses for external trainees.
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