PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations) [1][2] was the first (ca. 1960, on ILLIAC I The ILLIAC I , a pioneering computer built in 1952 by the University of Illinois, was the first computer built and owned entirely by a US educational institution, Manchester University UK having built Manchester Mark 1 in 1948) generalized computer assisted instruction system, and, by the early 1970s, comprised some 1,000 terminals worldwide. Originally, PLATO was built by the University of Illinois The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a public research university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the oldest and largest campus in the University of Illinois system and functioned for four decades, offering coursework (elementary–university) to UIUC students, local schools, and other universities.
The PLATO project was assumed by the Control Data Corporation (CDC), who built the machines with which PLATO operated at the University. CDC President William Norris William Charles Norris was the pioneering CEO of Control Data Corporation, at one time one of the most powerful and respected computer companies in the world. He is famous for taking on IBM in a head-on fight and winning, as well as being a social activist who used Control Data's expansion in the late 1960s to bring jobs and training to inner- planned to make PLATO a force in the computer world; the last production PLATO system was shut down in 2006 (coincidentally, just a month after Bill Norris died), yet it established key on-line concepts: forums, message boards, online testing, e-mail, chat rooms, picture languages, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multi-player games.
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