A few years later, in 1951, Wasson enrolled in electrical engineering at UNB and, after graduating, obtained a master’s degree from MIT and, later, a Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo. Returning to UNB as an assistant electrical-engineering professor in 1958, the 24-year-old brought new ideas and innovative approaches home with him to New Brunswick.
He also brought a vision where computing networks would drive the future of academia, business and industry. That vision included building a computing facility and a workforce of computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and others to drive the computing industry forward.
The Royal-McBee LGP-30 was the first digital computer ever purchased by the University of New Brunswick. UNB’s electrical engineering department paid $35,000 for it in 1958, about $350,000 in today’s money. (PHOTO: UNB)
Over the next 40 years, Wasson would make his vision a reality and distinguish himself as the first director of UNB’s computing centre, the first director of the school of computer science, and the first dean of the faculty of computer science. Guided by his vision, UNB established Atlantic Canada’s first master’s, undergraduate, co-op and Ph.D. programs in computer science and, in 1990, the first computer science faculty in the country.
Wasson’s many successes grew out of his vision to apply the power and potential of computing technology to engineering, science and business. “I was lucky,” he told me in 2015 when I interviewed him for Keith Minchin’s book, Faces of New Brunswick, “I was around in a time when we could start things from scratch.”
When Greg Sprague, UNB’s ITS/Computing Centre director from 2000-2003, came to work at UNB in 1969, Wasson was the director of computing. “Dana was a man with tremendous vision and an innovator,” Sprague says. “To me, an innovator is someone who loves problems and challenges and that was Dana. For him, every problem was a challenge. It wasn’t a roadblock. It was a challenge to show what he could do.”
In his soon-to-be-released book called Pioneers on the Information Highway: A History of Computing at UNB, 1958-2008, Sprague and his team of researchers tell the story of how a group of visionary believers in the transformative power of information technology at UNB helped lead their province, country, and, yes, even the world into the information age.
Sprague says that many people at UNB were and are responsible for the university’s many advancements in computer technology. He says Wasson played a significant role in laying down a direction and finding ways to get over the hurdles. Hurdles like, how does a small university with little money buy expensive computers in the 1950s?
“When the university told Dana that they didn’t have the $35,000 to give him for a new computer,” Sprague says, “he told the administration, ‘no problem,’ and approached NB Power and convinced them to buy the computer for the university. ‘We’ll house it, and we’ll run it. And you pay for it’ Dana told them. And that’s what happened. How does a farm boy from Jemseg come up with those kinds of ideas?”
For Sprague, who oversaw the UNB ITS/Computing Centre when it seemed every day brought dramatic new changes and advancements, achieving success means adopting Sir Isaac Newton’s statement, ‘If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.’ “Standing on the shoulders of others, we can build upon what others have done and adapt it to our own issues and problems,” Sprague says.
It’s doubtful that the electrician who patiently answered Dana’s questions as he wired the Wasson’s farmhouse on that long-ago day ever realized the impact of his words on him. There is no doubt, however, that the wonder and amazement the ten-year-old experienced that day sparked a creative fire that would burn intensely in his imagination until his passing in 2018 and play a significant role in New Brunswick’s and Canada’s technological development.
Click here to learn more about UNB’s history of information technology
