the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke

My first interaction with computers, at least that I am aware of, came in 1972 when, in my job as a stock controller working in the regional depot of a national wholesale chain, I received print outs on the piano paper that we used back then. I also had to start using product codes rather than descriptions when ordering stock. Neither activity made much difference to my life either way, for I did not have any direct involvement with the magic box in far off Swindon, I just filled in forms.

A couple of years later I went to work in the TV rental business. Yes, a lot of people rented their televisions back then and every High Street in every town would have around half a dozen TV rental chains fighting for your business. There we again had no direct contact with the computers, but all the documentation that we filled in on multi-part pads had to be done in little grids, one letter or number per space, and letters had to be capitals. That, by the way, caused me to lose the ability to do joined up writing after nearly three years working there, but I digress. The computers at head office in Watford churned out all sorts of things for us to do. The machines were taking over my life.

I moved on, as we did in the Seventies, and machine-readable forms were all around. They had become omni-present in the world of commerce, and as I moved around the corporate monolith that I had joined computers lurked somewhere around, heard perhaps, but never seen. We used a service called Comshare (I don’t know how it was spelt) and every afternoon the call would go up from the team working opposite me that the bar had been lifted and they would all start to key in data, racing against the moment when our slot ended. I made sure that none of that nonsense sullied my working day.

By then I had a daughter and we had bought one of those tennis games that you plugged into your TV, my own first contact with the beast. That was soon followed by a games console, an Atari if I remember correctly, for which we bought various game cartridges, including the inevitable Space Invaders.

But it was around then, late 1981, that jobs as computer programmes were advertised at work. The business was recruiting computer professionals from outside but wanted to enlist some of their own people. I applied, went through a series of tests, passed them, and went on for interviews and aptitude tests before being told that I had one of the jobs. A colleague in the engineering team lent me a Sinclair ZX device (plus manual), but that left me somewhat confused, and apprehensive. What had I got myself into?

Reporting for work I found that I was to train as a programmer using a computer language called COBOL. I passed my City and Guilds of London exams and came back to work. In those three months I did not see a single computer. The nearest that I got was when I had my coding done and was allowed to book time on a terminal to input my work and then wait for the, inevitable, error report.

Back in the office we had all sorts of midi-computers lying around: Manufacturers were lending us kit to try and persuade us to buy their wares. I was no problem to find one to play with and we were encouraged to try our hand. One early project was to set up a programme to collate and report on a pub darts league. For this we were using a machine about the size of a large domestic fridge-freezer. No-one batted an eyelid.

I had been allocated to a project that had not yet started and my role was to be more of a business analyst with the software being supplied by an outside agency. With the spec in hand, I wrote one part of the intended system using COBOL on the same NCR machine that I had done the darts programme. There was something of a thrill to work out what you had to tell the machine to do in order for it to produce the desired results but, having demonstrated that I could do it to an acceptable standard, the business had found that I had other skills within the IT sphere. My programming days were not over, but I was destined for other things.

By now I was working with minicomputers, but these were the size of the sort of washing machine that you would find in a launderette. Home computers were around, the BBC, Commodore and such, but we treated these with some contempt, they were just toys as far as we were concerned, and we dealt with the real thing. 

Perceptions amongst our peers were odd though. We had a demonstration room where we could show colleagues, customers and other worthies (and more than a few unworthies) what we were up to. I had been drafted as lead demonstrator and, on my first rehearsal, the PR people (the floppy hanky brigade as we called them) decided that all of the backroom kit was boring. I drafted in a couple of old tape drive units, the sort that would just about block a doorway, and wrote a few lines of codes to make them whir and spin their tapes every few seconds, even throwing in some flashing lights for good measure. The floppy hankies were thrilled…

My project lasted just under two years and then I was lost in the pool of programmers and analysts waiting for The Next Big Thing. I would have settled for anything and did, getting involved in evaluating ATMs and voice recognition software. The latter was a hoot, and we had a press day to show off our prowess in such things. The morning session went very well with not a beat missed and so we retired to the wine bar for a quick lunch before a second demo in the afternoon. None of us realised how much effect alcohol had on one’s vocal functions and the bloody software had to be retrained before we could proceed and, of course, drinking water while we did it started to bring our voices back, so we were in a state of flux. That project was quietly forgotten.

I decided that I did not want to be a decent sized fish in an ocean and headed to Swindon where, for those of you paying attention, my first computing encounter had been driven from. Here I joined a team who were, in management speak, the Informed Client. That meant that we sat between the IT team (the one that I had just left, or, at least, the local branch thereof, and the various departments at that outpost of headquarters. It would take me a couple of years, but I was to become a decent sized fish in a modest pond, and to spend some of my happiest years at work there.

If you’re still here, thanks for hanging in there and I’ll be part with part two next Monday.