Forgotten Voice

I joined IBM in 1960 as a lab technician working on 832 Biller Machine circuits and control storage. IBM encouraged me to continue studying for HNC (Higher National Certificate) in electrical Engineering. I was given a day-off with pay and all materials and exam costs paid for by IBM. (A far cry from EMI!)

Spent a couple of years as a 'Patent Engineer' working with IBM UK Patent group and engineers in Hursley Lab. Basic job was to encourage engineers to submit their ideas for consideration of UK and world-wide patent protection. Around the mid-1960's the UK government decided to support patents for for computer programs. As a result of this I attended an in-house programming course (held in the Wedgwood room) and decided to pursue a diagnostic programming career. This, I think, would be around 1967.

I worked on TROS (used in IBM System 360 Model 40) and eventually produced a diagnostic aid for Customer Engineers. I then helped to produce a general System 370 MODEL 30 system diagnostic. This program (ASCP - Automatic System Checkout Program) checked the CPU and attached peripheral equipment (Tapes, Storage Drives, Printers, Card Punch-Reader). The noise was deafening when all devices were up and running in parallel! This program saw me on my first visit to the States.

That first trip, to Poughkeepsie , [It was a travelers-nightmare and deserves a chapter of its own!!!] was in the summer of 1969. This trip was in preparation of handing over ASCP control and release for all System 370 Models. In 1973-74 I was assigned to IBM Kingston Lab, in up-state New York, to help with ASCP hand-over.

Back in the UK I was working on developing the 3790, not sure what to describe it as, other than to say that it enabled some number, (up sixteen?) of typists to prepare documents for printing and storage. Each typist worked quite independent of each other. My area was printing and, later, included archive storage. This project led to another Kingston assignment in 1979-80.

I was employed in a 3790 support center dealing with problems that the CE reported from various customer sites. 'Severity 1' problems meant on-site visits to sort out early teething problems. Some visits enjoyable, others disturbing - Miami-Florida and Hartford-Connecticut come to mind.

I returned to the UK in 1980 (August I think) and was offered a full-time programming job in CICS - Customer Information Control System. I tried it and liked it as it suited my diagnostics skills. I became a CICS functional tester and remained as such to my retirement in May 1993.