I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.
2 John 1:12
One of the joys of working in ICL and Fujitsu over 40 years has been to know some amazing and inspirational people. One such thinker, who was years ahead of his time was an office systems consultant called Lyndon Morgan.
At the end of the 1970s so called “Office Computing” was a very early concept. Computers were used for processes like stock control, payroll, invoicing etc. The use of them for what you might call office admin jobs like typing letters, sending memos, and managing calendars was something most people hadn’t really thought about. When I started working in Wakefield in the early 1980s, the extent of computers in the office was that each secretary had a dedicated word processor. This was a customised personal computer which had some software that let them type up, save and edit memos and other documents and then print them on a daisy-wheel printer, a printer that was effectively a computer controlled typewriter. The idea that a general office worker, such as a manager or other professional would have to use a keyboard hadn’t really been developed into reality.
Everything in the office was done using handwritten memos and where urgency required it, the telephone or fax was used. We had multi layer memo pads, where what was written on the front would be copied to 2 or three sheets underneath so you could keep a copy or send it to another recipient. Hence the modern term used in email “Carbon Copy” or “CC”. We had re-usable envelopes with spaces for a couple of dozen addresses. You simply crossed out the previous address on the envelope and wrote the new one in underneath. You kept a paper diary so that if anyone wanted to book a meeting date with you they would simply call you up. If you were out of the office for any reason, then your phone would be answered by one of your colleagues, or the team secretary and a message would be written to a sticky note on your desk.
The prospect of doing all of this using information technology was exciting but it was very difficult to actually believe it could all happen.
ICLs approach to this office technology was called The Networked Office (TNO). The concept recognised that you couldn’t just stick a word processor package on a PC, put it in front of a professional worker and say “job’s done”. The Network was the key; if you built an organisation-wide network, where computers all over the office and country could communicate with each other, then this would be the thing that made true office automation possibe.
The most important bit of technology that ICL had created to underpin all of this was called ICL Mail. This was an electronic mail system that could run on nearly every type of computer the company made. So you could compose and send a message on your PC and this would turn up on the secretary’s word processor a few minutes later, regardless of whether that secretary worked in your office or at the other end of the country. Now I know if you are looking at this with 2023-tinted spectacles, it seems rather trivial but this was all truly innovative and new at the time.
The stroke of genius that Lyndon put together was an office scenario that could be used to demonstrate all of this technology. It was a story of an office move, where the project manager would do all of their communication using ICL Mail and other wizzy office computing technologies. This was at the same time, astonishingly clever and also highly far fetched because most people hadn’t even conceived how it was possible to do things this way.
I picked up the job of driving round the Northern Region with a car boot full of software disks (your couldn’t download stuff in those days), building this demo scenario that Linden had come up with in the ICL demonstration centres. What I remember most fondly was the sense that we were showing something of the future, even knowing that the technology we were using would be superseded long before that future was realised.
The first exposure the general population of ICL had of the Networked Office reality was a thing called EXAC (Short I think for Executive Action). This is what I think happened (I could be wrong about this origin story but it sounds good). At the time (pre internet), someone with a computer could only get electronic mail, by using a modem and a dial-up service from an external service provider (e.g. Compuserve). I think the executive team at ICL had been using this as a channel for important communications for some time. Because there was a desire to replace this external service for something in-house, they commissioned the development of an on-line mainframe service that could provide an electronic messaging and diary service that could be used by the top execs. It soon became apparent that this service could be used by any employee who could get access to a mainframe terminal because you didn’t need any complex networking or local personal computers. It was a game-changer for corporate wide communications which rapidly became ubiquitous across the organisation. As I recall, this was in the latter half of the 1980s.
Of course for its time, EXAC was quite a compelling application and so it was sold as an ICL product and integrated with the wider ICL Mail solution.
I can’t quite remember when we started using the term email to refer to electronic mail but it must have been around this time between 1985 and 1990. Of course at that time, the concept of sending an email to someone outside ICL (e.g. a customer) wasn’t an option and not even a concept that would have occurred to most people. A postal strike in the early 1980s had precipitated every office to buy fax machines and this became the standard method of electronic communication between companies for at least a decade.
What happened next regarding the office automation story? That will have to wait because the next chapter of my career was about to begin.
Richard Mann 