Graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989

The photographs rediscovered

I found twenty-six black-and-white photographs in my archive, kept under the label “Computer Engineering graduation lecture, 1989”. I no longer remember the exact circumstances, and I have not yet found an invitation or programme that might confirm the date. The succession of speakers and the atmosphere in the lecture hall nevertheless show that this was the graduation lecture of a Computer Engineering class.

If the year recorded in the archive is correct, the event could only have taken place towards the end of the academic year, probably in June 1989. About two months later, I was to leave Romania. Yet nothing in these images suggests a farewell. We are teachers addressing a graduating class, each in his or her own way, in a university ritual repeated at the end of every cycle of study.

Nearly four decades later, the ceremony itself has faded into the background, while the faces have become essential. Not everyone photographed belonged to the Department of Computer Engineering. There were also teachers from other departments who had contributed to the education of the graduating class. Many are no longer alive; without having been taken for this purpose, the photographs have become a small archive of an academic community.

The gallery does not, however, represent the complete staff of the Department of Computer Engineering. The graduation lecture brought together chiefly the teachers who had taught this particular class, so many colleagues whose courses were intended for other years or other programmes are absent. Even among the teachers of this class, the photographs are incomplete; Octavian Stănășilă and Șerban Petrescu, for example, do not appear.

The origins of the Department of Computer Engineering

The Computer Engineering programme had been established in the 1967–1968 academic year, and the Department of Computer Engineering in 1969. Its initial nucleus did not come from a single group, but from the meeting of two strong traditions at the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest: automatic control and electronics.

Marius Guran, Ivan Sipos and Petre Dimo came from Professor Corneliu Penescu’s Department of Automatic Control. Mircea Petrescu, Nicolae Cupcea, Theodor Dănilă and Mariana Necula came from Professor Mihai Drăgănescu’s Department of Electronics. Florian Moraru, Valeriu Iorga and Petrică Dumitru were graduates of the Automatic Control programme who had been retained as assistants in Professor Penescu’s department.

This dual lineage explains the Department’s profile: computer construction and electronics, operating systems, programming languages and methods of software design developed side by side rather than as isolated fields. In 1989, when the photographs were probably taken, Professor Mircea Petrescu was once again head of the Department.

A school built together

Behind the portraits stand projects and teams that gave substance to the Bucharest school of computing. The group led by Adrian Petrescu, which included Nicolae Țăpuș and Trandafir Moisa, designed a succession of Romanian microcomputers. Irina Athanasiu also took part in the development of the FELIX PC.

Computer graphics was pursued, among others, by Mircea Petrescu, Florica Moldoveanu and Zoea Racoviță. Teams including Nicolae Cupcea, Theodor Dănilă, Eduard Andrei and Romulus Andrei built microprocessor equipment and worked on the simulation of electronic circuits. Florian Moraru implemented the CP/M operating system for microcomputers developed in Romania.

In the field of programming languages and software tools, the LPTR team brought together Irina Athanasiu, Florica Moldoveanu, Mariana Necula, Valentin Cristea, Cristian Giumale, Valeriu Iorga and myself. Later, around the INTERFORM system, I continued research into computer-aided program development and protocol validation.

These landmarks do not exhaust anyone’s contribution. They merely explain why, when I look at the images, I do not see a simple succession of teachers, but a network of collaborations, influences and shared projects.

Identified portraits

I have kept the photographs as portraits of the teachers who addressed the graduating class. They form neither a catalogue of the Department of Computer Engineering nor a complete list of those who had taught these students. Sometimes the teachers appear at the lectern, at other times among the rows of seats, with a sheet of paper in hand—not necessarily a prepared speech—or speaking freely. The order of the images attempts to reconstruct neither the academic hierarchy nor the sequence of speeches, which I no longer remember. I have indicated each person’s field only in broad terms: computer engineering and electronics, programming and software, automatic control, mathematics, or the humanities.

Luca Dan Șerbănați at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 1. Lecturer Luca Dan Șerbănați, who taught theoretical computer science and programming.

Mircea Petrescu at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 2. Professor Mircea Petrescu, a founder and head of the Department, vice-rector, and professor of electronics and databases.

Adrian Petrescu at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 3. Professor Adrian Petrescu, former head of the Department, professor of computer engineering, and one of the founding figures of the Bucharest school of computing.

Nicolae Cupcea at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 4. Lecturer Nicolae Cupcea, who taught electronics.

Theodor Dănilă at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 5. Lecturer Theodor Dănilă, who taught electronics.

Florian Moraru at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 6. Lecturer Florian Moraru, who taught computer programming.

Valeriu Iorga at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 7. Lecturer Valeriu Iorga, who taught computer programming.

Nicolae Țăpuș at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 8. Lecturer Nicolae Țăpuș, who taught computer engineering.

Valentin Cristea at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 9. Lecturer Valentin Cristea, who taught computer engineering.

Marian Dobre at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 10. Lecturer Marian Dobre, who taught programming.

Trandafir Moisa at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 11. Lecturer Trandafir Moisa, who taught computer engineering.

Irina Athanasiu at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 12. Lecturer Irina Athanasiu, who taught computer programming.

Florica Moldoveanu at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 13. Lecturer Florica Moldoveanu, who taught computer programming.

Zoea Racoviță at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 14. Lecturer Zoea Racoviță, who taught computer engineering.

Adina Florea at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 15. Assistant Lecturer Adina Florea, who taught computer programming.

Dan Suciu at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 16. Assistant Lecturer Dan Suciu, who taught computer programming.

Claudiu Popescu at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 17. Assistant Lecturer Claudiu Popescu, who taught computer programming.

Cornel Popa at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 18. Professor Cornel Popa, who taught philosophy and logic.

Eduard Andrei at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 19. Assistant Lecturer Eduard Andrei, who taught computer engineering.

Romulus Andrei at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 20. Assistant Lecturer Romulus Andrei, who taught computer engineering.

Ioan Dumitrache at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 21. Professor Ioan Dumitrache, who taught the graduating class in the field of automatic control.

Vasile Brînzănescu at the graduation lecture for the Computer Engineering class, April 1989 — Fig. 22. Lecturer Vasile Brînzănescu, who taught mathematics.

Looking back

My relationships with the people in these photographs were not all the same. With some I worked closely and naturally; with others there were differences of vision, tensions, or episodes that time has not entirely erased. In the Department, as in any living intellectual community, circles of affinity gradually formed—“cliques”, as we used to call them—around particular personalities, research themes, or shared activities.

At the time these photographs were taken, there were three such groups. Two had formed around the two “leading figures”, as we called them. The third grew out of the group established when Petre Dimo was still in the Department and had by then come under my responsibility. It was smaller and less influential, and its work centred on software—an indispensable component of any computer, but still regarded by some as a secondary activity, on the grounds that “anyone can write programs”.

I would not, however, want this page to become a belated judgement. I prefer to preserve what each person brought to the life of the Faculty and to the education of its students, without turning the differences of those years into a reckoning of merits and blame.

A department is not the work of a single person, nor the history of a single idea. It is built out of different abilities, ambitions, solidarities, conflicts, and projects brought to completion together. In that room, a graduating class was completing its studies. Without the photographs saying so, an entire stage of my own life was also drawing to a close.

Documentary note. The exact date of the event remains to be confirmed. For the landmarks concerning the history of the Department of Computer Engineering and the projects of its teams, I consulted the volume Information Science and Technology in Romania , which cites the anniversary booklet Department of Computer Engineering, UPB – 45 Years, Politehnica Publishing House, 2014.

Luca Dan Șerbănați

Emeritus Professor at Politehnica University of Bucharest

Research, teaching, industry and memoirs