Roy Oh happy day working the early lab shift a the ink factory 3 am start so the factory mill could keep running Col.
It was the year the Hillman Imp hit the market, I purchased a hot Imp parts from Ray or may have been Roy North his shop was to top of the railway flyover between Fishburns and Watford Town Hall

Hi Colray, I was driving along St. Albans road (re Fishburn ink) with new eyes yesterday. It is more like a stream going through cliffs with the high rise buildings surrounding it. Watford is the smallest in area of the Parliamentary constituencies we seem to have an equal share of new houses to build so the only way is up!

Our elected Mayor, a nice guy I have met, said last week that during his term of office he has seen 6 PM's and 17 managers of the football club rise and then fade away. His office of elected Mayor is to be eliminated in 2028. I know who he is and the work he has done for the town but apparently we have an MP as well......
Roy

@roycv

ICL had developed a parallel processing or distributed array disc controller which was used by the military and that made gathering all the equipment necessary to go to the Falklands. It speeded up disc searches by a factor of 20!

I remember that. CAFS - Content-Addressable File Store.......

Hi Duncan I was one of the last dinosaurs 95% hardware and later people! I only knew a few s/w guys. I was in ICT then ICL when it went through a name change until 1992, 31 years in total. I joined the day the world found out about the Berlin wall. It has been 34 years, including pension also paid for 34 years, since I left so happy with the money side!

As it happens I keep up with just one friend, we were appointed as managers on the same 'board' but different tasks. That was 54 years ago! We chat 2/3 times a week still trying to make sense of the world and if they had taken our advice it would be a better place.

The 3 managers who ran the board and appointed us consisted of a man later suspected of murdering his wife. Another an HR manager who used to send a fellow worker away on lots of courses so he could sleep with the man's wife and the other got senior and was caught having sex with a clerk in a store room! One retired having the Police visit now and again, the other 2 were encouraged to transition to other opportunities outside of ICL.
Apparently, I tell myself, did they recognise fellow attributions? Were they looking for atonement? But they had very good judgement, in some things!

Roy

I also worked at ICL mainly in software training but was I was very friendly with an engineer called Michael Stansbury. Do either of you remember coming into contact with him on courses etc?

I love that reported conversation with the Marine guard.😀😀
Roy

Ahh! My job was to gather all the spares in ready use boxes for the computers in the warships, were they DRS or System 25's? Anyway all my efforts went down with the Atlantic Conveyor when she was sunk. ICL had developed a parallel processing or distributed array disc controller which was used by the military and that made gathering all the equipment necessary to go to the Falklands. It speeded up disc searches by a factor of 20! I knew a bit about it as my son was sponsored by Inmos for his Phd. for their parallel processing development. It was by-passed eventually with the low instruction set RISC programming.

I was based at Feltham, long since gone now, where we had a very large computing site. By then we had access to much 2nd. hand equipment and on the quiet Barclays and ICL (called Baric) got together to bring in credit cards.

My job was to build a 1903T computer from spares in the spares department. Had a lot of fun doing it as the manager for our spares was parsimonious at the best. When I went to him with an enormous list of parts and a small lorry outside at first he refused. I then pointed to the name and phone number of a Director should there be any problem. Have the f*****g lot he said and stormed off!
Credit cards were brought into the UK quickly as the Banks had loads of money lent out to S. American countries and they were defaulting on loans and the Banks were getting jittery as to where to invest. Credit cards at their current crippling interest rates were just what they wanted!
Roy

@roycv I was there from '79-'83. Turned up just in time for a war. I had not long finished coding the Insert/Delete Vessel command before it was being used for real...

Hi Dodgy, I am sure he was a peripheral eng. at the time.
Roy

@roycv

Did you know my mate Cliff Thomas?

Was he an engineer? It's not a name I recall, but I was a programmer/database specialist at the time, working on the 2960, and we weren't meant to touch any of the hardware!

We had a boss who used to play the pub fruit machines around the area, and he set us to documenting all the reels so that he could know when to nudge them. We used the backs of punched cards for this, and one day one of the team dropped some as he was coming up, in front of one of the Marine guard stations. Unauthorised removal of data from a command centre would, of course, be a major security breach, and of course the punch cards had data on them...

"What are these that you're taking out?"
"Just old cards"
"What do they do?"
"They're old used ones, see? They have lots of holes punched in them."
"Oh. Well, that's all right then..."

Happy days when no one understood computing...

@DodgyGeezer Hi, Down the hole!!! I was scheduled to manage the ICL computer down there then some plans changed and I never went down. Did you know my mate Cliff Thomas?
Roy

@ColRay "....along the A1 towards London destination Mill Hill and that treasure trove of model delights Blunts Model Shop. Anyone remember that shop ? ."

Of course we do! I lived in Edgware and used to cycle, or take the 142 bus to the Broadway if I was expecting to bring back a big box - I still have various items bought from there. North-West London up to Ivinghoe where I used to slope soar, or the Elstree reservoirs where I sailed my Aerokits boats was my stamping ground. Mostly long gone now, of course.

Then I got a job down the 'Hole' at HMS Warrior - the Northwood Navy command and control centre. Unofficially I used to tinker with the card punch machines when they failed, and still have a power supply and some motors off one in my garage....

Hi Col, I know where you mean. When I first worked in Watford I was based at 119A St. Albans road which is opposite, (it is now the midnight motor shop, excellent service by the way).
It was a bureau that would produce punched cards for data processing I was an engineer on the big calculators, about the size of a small car. They worked very well but there were 3 of us electronic specialists and we all loved going out to mend them!
However there was no room for us to sit and wait. So we went to the cafe on the way to the Watford train station and played chess. One of us always had a view of the upstairs window of our call centre looking out for the towel hanging out of the window if we were needed.
Those were the days!
Roy

I recall the planes I could only dream about and timber/metal rack set in the counter Col

Roy For a short while I worked for Fishburn's Printing Inks in Watford.
So, living in Watford your near the north London suburb of Barnet and just over the Great North Road is where I once called home Well End blink and you will miss-it Col

@ColRay Hi, It was on my route home from work for several years, I was a computer engineer working at The Bank of England and lived in Watford, still do. HA Blunt was the shop and there was a nice service road alongside to park. There was always something 'I needed' and frequently bought ahead especially when they had a sale. I remember buying the fittings set for a Billing Mary Ann, I bought the actual kit some years later. I have 2 afloat and another kit waiting.
They also used to manufacture a few kits, the tug Alfred, I have the plans, a nice paddle steamer, Forties off shore oil rig supply ship etc. Staff were nice lovely shop.
My job location changed to Watford and I do not remember returning but nice memories.
Roy