Historical Photo Gallery

We invite you to browse our gallery, containing photos and digital snapshots of people, places, equipment, and even old Virginia Tech websites dating back to the mid 1970s. Most of these photos come from albums put together by Division of IT employees throughout the years. We've done our best to identify the folks and computer models in these photos, but we welcome your help! If any of these photos sparks a memory, please share it with us — email it.communications@vt.edu.

Typing pools like this one, ca. 1970s, predated mainframe terminals for managing records and data.

A computer lab in Hillcrest Hall,1989. This lab contained both mainframe terminals (center) and PCs (along the left wall).

Floor Plan Diagram of the Virginia Tech Computing Center in Burruss Hall 1983

Clockwise from bottom left, L to R, Gene Thistle, Kevin Peterson, Andrew Mike, Kevin Davis, Dean Kirstein, and David Goldberg staff the "Fish Bowl," the University Computing Support group who handled escalated incidents.

4Help IT Support agents at work in the Virginia Tech Operations Center ca. 2006

The newly upgraded 4Help operations center within RB14. Photo from 2017. The video wall allowed at-a-glance tracking of multiple servers and systems across the university, and connected with emergency responders.

(L to R) Randy Marchancy, Christine Morrison, and Marshall Fisher work on an IBM 370 mainframe, ca. 1980.

Jerry Bell reads while working night shift at Burruss Hall computing center, ca. 1979.

The old computer room in Burruss Hall, ca. 1980, contained mailboxes that housed large printouts ready for pickup. The IBM 3800 printer (on right), was the first continuous feed laser printer and one of the fastest on the market at the time.

Develcon Dataswitch, center, was the primary asynchronous network on campus before Sytek LocalNet was adopted in the early 1980s. To the right is a stack of 300 to 1200 baud modems.

(L to R) Phil Benchoff, Brian Jones, and Tom Tompkins mount LocalNet equipment on the roof of Norris Hall, using a discarded piece of road barrier pipe to secure the components.

Sorting fire-damaged cabling helped in assessing what was needed to restore functionality following a fire in the steam tunnels.

Brian Jones, ca. 1984, works on the LocalNet Headend in the old Burruss Hall switch room. Tellabs phone echo cancellation gear is visible in the bottom right corner.

Brian Jones (front) and Tom Tompkins (back) work in the Burruss Hall mechanical room. Note the LocalNet power supply mounted next to the plywood distribution board.

These rows of IBM 3380 Digital Access Storage Devices provided a few hundred gigabytes of storage. (Terminals probably used to access different parts of the system).

Many once prominent systems lost their marketability as innovation outpaced them.

IT staff and volunteers prepare the Apple G5 computers that comprised the System X supercomputer in 2003.

Constructing these machine racks allowed for additional cooling required for cluster

Elevated flooring in the machine room allows space for the massive cooling and electrical systems required in the data center.

Giant pipes continuously pumped chilled water to keep the data center from overheating.

Custom racks provided stable housing for many interlinked machines.

Neatly bundled ethernet cables provided data transfer capabilities across campus. Rows of Apple G5 computers that made up System X are visible on left and right.

Robust electrical feed for System X supercomputer

This cluster of 1000 Kilovolt, UPS wet cell batteries provided a backup power supply to the data center.

Cranes carefully transport a massive generator which would provide backup power to the data center.

Room of people waiting in line to check in

This IBM Personal Portable Computer, more affectionately known as a "luggable," was a required piece of equipment for engineering students in the mid 1980s. It weighs approximately 30 lbs., and held 256 KB of memory.

Virginia Tech (vt.edu) Home Page Designs

This gallery shows how the vt.edu website design changed over the last 30 years as web development techniques have become more sophisticated and content strategies evolved.

Division of IT websites

This gallery contains snapshots of Division of IT web pages, including those from it.vt.edu and 4help.vt.edu as well as legacy domains, such as answers.vt.edu, computing.vt.edu, and more.

Brochures, manuals, forms, and other technological odds and ends of yore.