Category: Encounter with computers

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How did it all start for me?

It was one of these three, I think probably the middle one …

… that kicked off my interest in computing. Of course these were very much analog mechanical calculating machines, and I never got the hang of how to use them however hard I tried in the Statistics Practical labs at UCW Aberystwyth in the period 1969-70, but they did revive my interest in mathematics which I’d had to drop as an ‘A’ Level subject, and soon after, multi-variate statistics became my focus for much of the next 10 years as I struggled to complete (#fail) a PhD.

However, when we went through the induction course and were told that we should sign-up for a course on programming in Wirth’s Algol 60, I didn’t delay. The die was cast, my future was sealed. I spent the next three years learning Fortran IV, then Dartmouth Basic (used on Teletypes) to submit jobs to the Elliot 4130, later a ICL 190x that the Computer Centre had. My data sets were so large I had to submit jobs to the Regional Computing Centre at Manchester which meant I had to work every evening to get the data set correct, then submit the job through a landline (modem connection) so that it ran through the night and returned the job the next day for me to print out the results and prepare my data set, or change the algorithm, for the next nights job. Oh happy days!!! Oh to be so young and energetic again!!!

Later when abandoning my lecturing role at a College of Education I did a MSc Computer Science conversion course at Bradford where I was given a Digital Equipment PDP 11/60 to play with and build my own Disk Operating System (Modos) using another of Wirth’s programming languages – Modula. He went on to develop Ada which was widely adopted in the defence and general scientific community. So that led me into Systems Programming.

I returned to Cardiff in 1981 at what was then South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education as Systems Programmer for their brand new Prime 500 computer and had to learn a new operating system – Primos, and new programming languages – PLP (as well as using my Fortran experience).

Latterly as computing developed and fighting for time-share and batch-processing came to be a thing of the past – much as mechanical calculating machines had disappeared – I embraced the internet in the early 1990’s. I created the first website for what had become UWIC, and had learnt a fair bit about HTML, and scripting.

It all went downhill from then on as management responsibilities took over and programming became a thing of the past. Of course I do still dabble, but really – it’s way beyond me, as my eldest son tells me on more than one occasion.

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My first encounter with computers – notes from meeting

Ted told us he’d managed to avoid computers until he started work then it was a PC – a heavy laptop which he took home (possibly a Compaq) on which he used spreadsheets like Lotus 1-2-3.

Judith came across computers first when she started doing office work as a “temp” then later in the 60’s and 70’s she learnt how to use a word processor that led to her having an Amstrad PC at home eventually.

Phil told us his involvement with computers started in the mid-10980’s through the Micro-electronics Programme for Schools (MEP Cymru??). he went on courses; then got involved with using a BBC-B in school and we shared a laugh at the way it loaded programmes from Cassette tapes and how you could type-in programmes from magazines such as BeebUser. Two he remembered were Base Invaders and Flight Simulator.

Christine first encountered computers when she started working in a bank and saw a machine room; that persuaded her that this environment wasn’t for her and so she moved to a local authority computing and schools where, like Phil, she used a BBC-B.

Ann also used a BBC micro in the late 1980’s. She went on several courses, leant quite a few pieces of application software and then went on to learning more advanced computing topics such as Oracle Database, C++ programming and learning about computer security.

Marilyn didn’t use computers in work but did buy a Tiny PC fro a shop in town, She has been amazed at how much she has learnt from her use of computers including finding out that from a BBC website that there is a recording of Tennyson speaking his works online that was originally recorded to wax cylinder.

Stella attended a Beginner’s Course in Computing when she was living in London. She had an Amstrad PC 1512 and thinks she probably worked on an IBM machine as well at that time. She’s impressed (like Marilyn) in what she can find online and cited the Enigma Machine in the National Archives (at Kew) as being a great example of a resource.

Mike didn’t use the computer much in his work until it was necessary to complete MoT work (garage). His claim to fame is that he had three Sinclair ZXs and broke all three of them.

Thanks to you all, and of course the others who talked about what they’d written here …

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