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1st touch on a Computer

I worked for IBM for 30 years, starting in 1973 and retiring in 2003.

In 1973 computers were tucked away inside computer rooms and most "ordinairy" people never actually saw them, and had no idea what they did.

In those days punched cards were all the rage, and my first job was repairing card readers and card punchers. Going into rooms full of (mostly) women who spent their whole day sitting at a card punch machine typing into it.

I then progressed to fixing huge mainframe printers, then on to fixing mainframes. I remember loading data into a mainframe using a pile of punched cards about 2 foot high. If you dropped the cards you had fun sorting them into order again.

I remember when somebody wanted a computer job to run they had to punch the cards themselves, then take the cards and instructions to a little window where it was given to the computer operator who would run the job. You may have to wait 24 hours for the job to run, then when you got the result back you may have made a small mistake on the punch card and had to retype it and then run the job again. How things have changed.

Of course I saw all sorts of changes over time.

At first nobody had a computer monitor (only the computer operators), then a few mainframe monitors began to appear on peoples desks, then we all got or own "sign on" so we could do computer searches in IBMs database of problems to try to find and fix "known problems". We still had to share the monitor though.

Eventualy in IBM we all got a mainframe monitors on our desk and were able to logon to different mainframes and run mainframe applications and do basic email. This was about the early to mid 1980s.

I then moved into software and eventually got my first PC (mid to late 1980s?). A huge heavy thing with no hard disk and 2 floppy disk drives. It ran DOS.

My next PC had a hard disk, but only 10Mb in size. Wow.

Then my first laptop came along (mid 1990s?). I think it had a 40Mb hard drive and weighed a ton. I used to lug it around the world giving presentations.

Then I remember the first time someone showed me the Mosiac browser and they showed me how to search this thing called the internet (I had no idea what it was at the time). This must have been late 1990s.

Now of course the interent is everywhere. and many of us access it on a daily basis.

How things have changed since I touched my first computer in 1973. I had no idea at the time how "lucky" I was that I had joined a business that would change the world.
 
warren said:
wow old thread!
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As I put my small collection of photos back where they were on BHF I'm finding and re-reading the old threads.

I played with a Spectrum (my son swapped his Lego Set for it) and remember a game 'Jet-Set-Willy' - battled to get him through to the end and seem to remember he put his head down a toilet !

I worked for GKN and our PET came from GKN Heath Street. They charged us £800 for a programing/instruction manual which we naturally didn't read.

I used a VAX mainframe for years but never saw it because it was somewhere else 20 miles away.

Also had a few of Lord Sugar's early computers.
I've still got a Vic20 and C64 in the loft...:)
 
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A couple of years ago, my son got me a lap top he was living in Greece at the time, phone calls were a bit pricey, and I said to him I don't even know how to switch it on, he left me notes, really, because I kept forgetting, oh and rhe keyboard was different because it came from Greece, well I switch on now without notes, so there's progress.:redface:
 
We always had a computer from when the boys were young in the early 80's. The first was an Amstrad. I went to work in an office in the late 80's at an Oil Terminal in Oldbury. Part of my job was to put the loads of fuel in the computer for the drivers to load. I hadn't a clue when I started but with help soon had it sorted. Michael taught me how to use one at home in 2000. I manage quite well now but do rely on my son's when I get in a mess...lol
 
We bought an Amstrad word processor about 1984 ish, wasn't interested till I got some desk top publishing software!! I also got an accounting package and kept the books for my then husband's company. I taught myself to use it, it was easy enough.. I remember my first scanner, a little unit that clipped on the bail bar of the (Star LC10 dot matrix) printer!!
 
hello i had a spectrum complete with printer.that lasted well.then in 1988 i got a ibm xt 8086.and a star printer.wow 640 memory.and a 5 inch floppy disk.and green screen,10 mhz hard drive.that was driven by the bios.
 
Was up in loft adjusting an aerial and found my 1st and 2nd computers. The top one in 1st photo is a Vic20 which had 3.5k memory but I notice a memory expander is plugged in which upped the memory to 6.5k. I bought it in 1984 from a well known computer supplier 'Boots the Chemist'.
I stayed up all night programming it only stopped at daybreak...:rolleyes:
The lower one in the photo was a Commodore C64 with a massive memory of 64k until one looked at the screen which showed only 39k was available for use.
Happy days when things were so simple...no virus...so spyware...but no internet....:)
Vic20_C64.jpg
C64Screen.jpg
 
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Anybody remember the old telephone modems where you had to dial a number on an actual GPO-style telephone then place the receiver in a rubber cup on top of the modem when you had the connection? Those were the days when "the computer" usually resided in a room somewhere (at Uni in 1974 it was several miles away from our annexe) and all you had were remote modem/teletype terminals to access it. And programming in Fortran - deep joy!!! :sorrow:

That made me realise what a step forward BASIC was. I remember gazing longingly through shop windows at the little green screen Commodore PETs on sale up the Tottenham Court Road in London. :love-struck:

Nowadays a singing birthday card probably has more raw computing power!

Happy days, eh?
 
glynis said:
We bought an Amstrad word processor about 1984 ish, wasn't interested till I got some desk top publishing software!! I also got an accounting package and kept the books for my then husband's company. I taught myself to use it, it was easy enough.. I remember my first scanner, a little unit that clipped on the bail bar of the (Star LC10 dot matrix) printer!!
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I was an Amstrad 8256 perso., bought in 1983 it did my accounts, and payroll and word processing. Glynis you were very advanced to have a scanner.

I joined Lucas' at Gt King St as a commercial apprentice in 1965 and spent time in the computer room...all those puched cards and the carbon pencil to write on cards. Went to visit Shaftsmoor Lane where they were just puttining in the IBM 360....with screens!!!!!!.
Later on at Unipart Oxford we had a modem(Rubber piece on earpiece) and someone demonstrated an "Adventure Game" which I logged on to. Eventually a bill came for the depaertment for £800, as the phone call went via sattelite to Boeing Seattle's computer...I never owned up.
 
You're right el-stano - I've still got one in the garage which I used to use back in the 80's to connect to various mainframes when I worked for Honeywell as a field engineer. I worked for them from 79 to 2007 - by which time they had morphed into Bull Computers. I had used computers back in 69/70 when I was an engineering student in Manchester - programming in Fortran on a teletype machine with paper tape. One of the first computers I worked on was at the Midlands Computer Bureau at GEC Elecctric Avenue. That machine had spent some time in Australia before its life in Brum. The front panel had been patched up with car body filler after some ozzie operator had lost his rag with it and blasted it with a shotgun! The system only had 16k of magnetic core memory (still got a piece in the garage) but managed to do some decent work. Happy days -sigh
 
Hi Frank,
I can top that, just. I started as a programmer in 1965 on an ICT (later ICL) 1902, also with 16k of core store. I finished in 2006, taking early retirement as an IT manager, but was still programming right to the end. The facility to devise and then feed instructions to a machine to make it do pretty much whatever is required still amazes me. Perhaps the majority of people don't quite appreciate that, without the billions of computers (including microchips in all sorts of things, such as phones, domestic equipment, spaceships, hospitals, etc) all of which are programmed in some way, the world would simply never have reached it's current state of development. In the early 1950s it was commonly thought that the total world computer market amounted to 3, 5 or 50 machines depending on which (mis)quote you prefer.
My working life was pretty interesting and enjoyable with one downside: ALL the software I ever produced became obsolete. But I suppose that's the price of working in a progressive industry...

Cheers,
Stan
 
el-stano said:
My working life was pretty interesting and enjoyable with one downside: ALL the software I ever produced became obsolete. But I suppose that's the price of working in a progressive industry...
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I updated earlier to say I had spent 30 years at IBM, and like you, all the products I spent so long working on, testing, showing to customers, writing courses for, are all now long obsolete.

Still it gave me a good working life, I earned a good salary (and have a good pension), and travelled all over the world so cant complain.

(I guess it is the same as a person who say makes cars, every car they ever made is now probably a pile of rusting metal somewhere).
 
Fortran a 'blast from the past' !
I used a CAD program called DOGS which ran on a remote VAX. Later upgraded to ProEngineer which ran in Unix and later in Windows NT. I had ProEngineer Lite in my desktop but lost the key and PTC won't issue new ones. Nearest I can get to it these days is Google's SketchUp 8 which keeps me amused, and I saw an old Hillman Imp on the M6 last weekend - it was probably rusting but it was going.
 
When I was site engineer at Birm Uni computer dept in early - mid 80's ( Big Multics system - forerunner of Unix ) they had a Cad/Cam room where they had machines running DOGS ( Drawing Office Graphics System? ) and also Swans and Pigs - don't know what those acronyms stood for, but at the time the kit was state of the art. I'd never seen a colour graphics screen before then - very impressive then but now old hat.
 
Phil said:
I had the one of the first on the market, Clive Sinclair's ZX81 with all of 1k of memory. I later bought the 16k expansion pack. After graduating through all the computer technology of the ensuing years all 29 of them and acquiring new machines as I went, I still know as much about them now as I did back then with my ZX81.

Phil
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Same here Phil, first one I ever laid a finger on.

sinclair_zx81_1s.jpg
 
The Sinclair ZX Spectrum is 30 years old today !
I remember the fun of playing with it even though I bought it for my son. The strange sound it made as a program was loaded from a cassette tape recorder.
The mysteries of Basic and Machine code.
oldmohawk
_spectrum.jpg
 
Never had the slightest interest interest in PC's, too wrapped up in painting and other interests and could not see the point of purchasing one, but after I lost my Wife and then stopped exhibiting my paintings I found I had more time on my hands so purchased my first PC in 2003. Am now on my 4th PC and could not be without it,pay all my bills on line, use on line banking, tax my car etc... and best of all found this Forum (which rekindled my interest in painting) and now on it every day. Its only drawback in my opinion is it can become addictive, I'm on it now when I should be cutting the grass !!! Eric
 
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You can get a rough idea of what my first computer looked like at https://www.museumwaalsdorp.nl/computer/en/comp741E.html . I started with a warehouse company in 1978 with a recommendation from the unemployment that I should work with computers and these people were buying a new one at the time. They lost the first one in a fire in 1979 and this is roughly what the second one (1980) looked like. I learned programming with that one (iCOBOL) and by 1985 I was the only dedicated computer staff they had. I worked for them 'til 2001 and was there only computer staff for most of that time.
 
cookie273uk said:
Never had the slightest interest interest in PC's, too wrapped up in painting and other interests and could not see the point of purchasing one, but after I lost my Wife and then stopped exhibiting my paintings I found I had more time on my hands so purchased my first PC a mere 5 or 6 years ago. am now on my 4th PC and could not be without it,pay all my bills on line, use on line banking, tax my car etc... and best of all found this Forum (which rekindled my interest in painting) and now on it every day. Its only drawback in my opinion is it can become addictive, I'm on it now when I should be cutting the grass !!! Eric
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Hi Eric, Apart from your paintings , our lives seem to have followed a simular course, I had never seen a PC until three years ago when my daughter bought me one, I was getting depressed after Enids death,
and Stephanie said it would keep my brain working.The members of
this forum have always been very good to me. I keep in touch with
Naomi, my grandaughter at Oxford Uni; via facebook, Bernard
 
It appears so Bernard, even with Face Book, although due to my inexperience that was an utter disaster, had not put any restrictions on my account consequently was getting contacted from all over the world with unwanted messages, even pics from some belly dancer. Thats when I found out how difficult it is to cancel your account on Face Book, took me three weeks and the assistance of my Grandson. They certainly do not want you to leave. Eric
 
The first time I touched a Computer was September 1967. It was a LEO III mainframe for Southalls Alum Rock. Anyone earlier than that? I worked on Computers until December 2008 and still use a laptop constantly - dont' know how we existed without them
 
Hi sheldontony,
I can beat that - Birmingham Co-op, 1965, ICT 1900 programmer.
Finished programming 2006 in Chipping Sodbury and retired (gracefully).
My brother-in-law was an operator at Southalls - Gerry Nash.
Stan
 
Just been sent this picture from an old friend. It must be around 1968 taken at Southalls Alum Rock Computer Centre (SANACO). Its me at the console of an English Electric

LEO III. TonyAtTheHelm (1).jpeg
 
What a cracking photo, who would have thought then that all of that woud be overtaken by a little Lap Top.
 
I suspect that it would be overtaken and more by a relatively simple mobile phone
 
Even as recent as 2007 I was training staff at the Company I worked for on old computer systems that didn't use a mouse. My first instruction was always don't go for the mouse but it was surprising how many people just went for it by instinct. It was a completely different way of thinking. They had to learn to use function keys.
 
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