For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Ephesians 2:10
Following 4 years at the middle school where I had (among a few trivial other things), been taught the basics of computer programming, I moved up into the neighbouring secondary school (The Meridian School). At the middle school, we had received real horror stories about how strict they were and how difficult the subject matter was including unimaginable amounts of homework. This was simply kids being kids and it was soon clear that the teaching at this school was quite definitely, survivable (and there wasn’t a gang of psycho bullies committed to beating the living daylights out of anyone who was unfortunate enough to be younger than them, which was another nefarious rumour).
We were living in a world where things were changing more rapidly than they had ever done before. While I was at that secondary school, the pocket calculator arrived in the shops and I was probably part of the last generation to have to use slide rules and logarithm books for maths calculations at school. It is sobering to think that the tools we were using at O-Level (equivalent to today’s GCSE) would be obsolete before we had finished A-Levels.
You might have thought that there, my computer skills would be taken to the next level but not so. The head of maths there was not so passionate about computers. His view that they didn’t have a place in school, and it wasn’t something worth investing time or money into.
There was quite a lot of pressure however, to provide around 3 of us with some way of developing our computer skills and so the school arranged for us to enrol on an evening class each week down the road in Cambridge; the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, CCAT, now known as the Anglia Ruskin University. This enabled us to have a lot more access to the computer because we could catch the train to Cambridge each Wednesday evening and then spend a couple of hours in front of a computer terminal.
The College had a computer called a Data General Eclipse. This was now the late 1970s and this computer was more modern than the old PDP 10 that we had used at middle school. It was one of a new generation of “mini” computers which were as the name suggested, smaller in size to their mainframe cousins and many could work in an ordinary office rather than need a special air conditioned room.
One rather exciting aspect of that computer centre there was that they had VDUs (Visual Display Units) in addition to the older clunky teletypes so that text would be displayed on a monitor rather than printed out onto a roll of paper. This meant that you could interact with the computer silently and without producing reams of paper. They also had a pen plotter which could be used to create graphs and diagrams. This was a big thing sat in the computer room which could produce pictures up to around A2 in size. I wrote some software to create flowcharts which looked good at the end but must have driven the operators mad with the number of failed attempts which were needed to get the output right.
I also wrote a crude chess program. All this could really do was play a game by the rules but I was really pleased one day, when the computer took one of my pieces by a move that I had missed. The other project I attempted was to work out Pi to a large number of decimal places. However, the amount of computer power available (and to some extent the inefficiency of my approach), meant that I only reached around 30 decimal places.
Even though the head of Maths at school didn’t really see it, a tsunami of change was coming. Advancements in electronics had produced the ability to put the whole core of a computer onto a small piece of silicon, the so-called “chip”. The result opened up the prospect of using miniature computers in every day life, and the real game changer that was the personal computer. The impact of this cannot be understated. What used to occupy rooms and be confined to the largest corporations and colleges could now be available in a box that could fit on a desktop and even be packaged for use in a home! I remember seeing the first reports of home computers in news programs on the TV. They showed a computer called a Commodore PET which had an integral screen, keyboard and cassette recorder for the storage and retrieval of programs. The first application that I saw demonstrated was the calculation of how much paint would be required to paint a room giving the rooms dimensions. This might seem to be a bizarrely trivial application, but this said more for the lack of understanding of the individuals doing the demonstration than the impact of the technology. The other mainstream home computers at the time were the Tandy TRS80 and, the Apple II. These things costed several hundred pounds and in today’s money that would relate to several thousand. This meant such things were way beyond the reach of modest secondary school students. Regardless of this, computer magazines started appearing in newsagents and choosing a career in computing didn’t seem such a rubbish idea after all.
At the time, there was a seminal episode of BBCs Horizon documentary called “The Chips are Down”. This prophesied that the world was about to change fundamentally because of advances in computer technology and in particular, the “silicon chip”. You can look at this programme today on YouTube and you will see that although it got some of the details of what was about to happen wrong, it was inciteful in that it predicted things were going to change forever.
Regardless of this, even though then the first school computers were a reality, my school still didn’t see it and didn’t think a school computer would be a wise investment. (this was just prior to the BBC Micro – the first UK programme of computers in schools together with a government commitment to put a computer in every school).
So it was time for the run-of-the-mill life and curriculum of a 1970s rural secondary school and it wasn’t bad at all. We had some amazing teachers and the school leadership did a very good job of nurturing talent and producing good outcomes in the increasingly fraught job market (this was a time of economic crisis and hyper inflation, unemployment was on the rise). My objective was a university place (computer science of course) and the gateway would be three A-Levels: Chemistry, Physics and Maths. I was happy with these subjects, less so with English. English Language O-Level was required by quite a few universities and I struggled to get this. The School was really supportive, and I ended up sitting exams from multiple awarding bodies, in the hope I would eventually pass one. By the end of sixth-from I managed finally to achieve a B in English at the 6th time of trying. Bear in mind that at this time, only around 1 in 7 people attended a university and entry criteria were extremely tough.
Because I was interested in entering Industry, I was advised to look for a Sandwich Course, nothing to do with what we had for lunch, but named because it would be a 4 year course and include a year’s placement with a suitable employer. It was also suggested that I look for an employer to sponsor me, which had significant benefits. In those days, university fees were paid for by the state and even living expenses for students were covered by a grant, means-tested against your parents’ income (i.e. if the parents could afford it, they were expected to pay some or all of your living expenses). A sponsorship would guarantee your sandwich course placement and also provide a top-up income to supplement your basic living expenses.
One of the “go to” sponsors of computing at university at the time was International Computers Limited (ICL), the main UK based computer manufacturer. ICL had a very good sponsorship scheme and although I applied to other companies, ICL was seen as an excellent option. The ICL office in Stevenage, where I got the interview was a short train ride away from where I lived and the day is pretty vivid in my memories. There were about 6 candidates on the day and we were each interviewed one to one by a guy whose job title was “Manager, Trainee Programmes”. We were then taken into a room where we had to complete an aptitude test. This was something that had to be completed against the clock and had logic problems and a speed arithmetic test where you had a big sum and had to choose from a number of different solutions. After the test, we waited on seats by the reception area next to a spiral staircase wating to be given the results of the assessment. We would hear on the day whether or not we had been successful in our application. When about 3 of the candidates were called upstairs, we all thought that would be it, they were the successful ones and the rest of us would be sent home. After a few minutes however, they all came back stomping downstairs holding their coats, heading out the door. Those of us who remained were told that we had been successful in our applications and were offered sponsorship by ICL. Later, the interviewer told me that he was impressed that I was particularly interested in software and was able to articulate why, in other words knew what I was talking about. Today, even though the building has been comprehensively refurbished, the spiral staircase still stands. In all my career, whenever I walked by that spiral staircase, I would always remember that first interview.
Getting the sponsorship didn’t really help get a university place but did limit the choices to those offering a 4 year “thick” sandwich course. I wanted to go to Loughborough but didn’t quite get the grades. My second choice was Bradford which had a good reputation for computer science and other “industrial” subjects.
Richard Mann 