thomr
Roger
Hi Mike (and Keith Jenney)
I remember you Mike, but I wonder if you will remember me!
My name is Roger Thomas, and I started at GEC Magnet Computer Bureau in Witton in 1967 as a trainee Computer Operator, my manager being Robin Rampling.
Roger Thomas (on the right) on my wedding day in 1972 (about the era we are talking about).
Magnet Computer Bureau was using a Honeywell 800 mainframe computer at the time.
Photo of the badge which I hung onto when the computer was replaced.
This computer would have had less power than a pc today! They then added a Honeywell 200 computer, which was used for small processing and to carry out the printing in an off-line manner. Later a Honeywell 1250 was installed, and was used to run the whole bureau service for the GEC customers. To give an idea of its size and power, it had all of 64k of memory, and the disc drives which were about a half metre in diameter with 6 discs vertically had about the same capacity as a floppy disc!
I graduated to Shift Leader in 1969 and started to teach myself programming by examining the programmer’s listings as I printed them off as an operator. I started working in direct machine language, and later in assembler languages such as ARGOS.
I got a great deal of guidance and help from you, Mike. You were at the time programming for the Payroll team headed up by Dave Roberts, and you had taken a similar career path from Operator to Programmer. I remember that most people, including myself, thought you were a real whiz at programming, which is why, in a moment of nostalgia, I typed “Mike Higgins GEC” into Google to see if you had become famous at somewhere like Microsoft. However, Google did find your name mentioned in this forum.
I find it such a coincidence that only yesterday I thought to do a Google search to see what you were doing now, not really expecting to find anything after 40 years had passed, and I find a posting that you made on this forum only 2 weeks ago asking if anyone remembered you.
You may possibly remember that in 1970, I had a red Morgan 4-seater sports car.
I too remember Dave and Jill Jenney, and I think I met Dave’s brother Keith too, as my wife Margaret Cundall and I had some meals with the Jenney family. Dave Jenney took over from Robin Rampling as Operations Manager, and was my manager throughout the rest of my time in Operations.
My wife Margaret worked in Data Control I think it was called alongside Jill Jenney.
I have a few photos of the time from the GEC Topic newsletter of 1969 which includes one of the Payroll Department, which includes you on it!
The people in the Payroll Department photo were (clockwise):
· Dave Roberts (talking to someone – Wendy?)
· Liz Chambers
· Mike Higgins standing over the desk
· ?
· Margaret Cundall, my wife
· Frank Taylor
· Dave Lywood.
I also have a photo showing the two Directors of Magnet Computer Bureau, Ken Parton and Stan Lumb.
I also have some photos (not very good quality, but not taken by me!) from a GEC Magnet Computer Bureau Witton reunion that took place in 2001. I will post these if I am successful with the other photos.
I then moved out of Operations in 1970 into Computer Programming and Systems Analysis, using the COBOL programming language. I designed the main Project Costing and Financial Accounting system used by the then GEC-Marconi, a system called MARCAS (MARconi Computerised Accounting System). This computer system was in operation from the early 1980's until the early 2000’s. I became Project Leader in 1978 and later Project Manager for the development, support and maintenance of this system in 1987.
It was at GEC Magnet Computer Bureau that I met my wife to be Margaret Cundall, who was working with GEC as a programmer.
The company went through many name changes and locations. GEC Magnet Computer Bureau became Midland Computer Services Ltd and later merged with a computer centre at Stafford to become GEC Computer Services Ltd. I then moved from Witton to Tamebridge near Walsall and later to their head office in Stafford. The company was then merged into EASAMS, which was part of the GEC Marconi Group. In 2000, EASAMS was split into two (Marconi Software Solutions and EASAMS) and the EASAMS part of the company was bought by the Birmingham based company, ITNET. In 2005, ITNET were bought by Serco.
I retired in 2007.
My personal website is www.rogerthomas.co.uk which is all to do with my Genealogy research, but if you click on my name at the top by my photo, you will be sent to a page about me.
