I meet a computer

Having worked for 3 years at Ford Tractors I applied for a transfer to the Computer Centre at Head Office at Warley in 1968. I passed the aptitude test and I was accepted. It was my first encounter with a computer. In those days a computer could fill a very large area. A printer, for example, was almost the size of a small car and was extremely noisy. We used IBM 360's which were run from tapes initially like those in the background here, but first the data often came on punch cards which were converted onto tape on a smaller computer. While I was there the disk drives made their first appearance. The disks were like a stack of LP's and were pretty heavy. I was not allowed to control the IBM 360's of course (done by a keyboard but without a screen, the data was printed on paper).      I started as a tape loader (each machine had about a dozen tape drives which had to be constantly changed) I progressed to a 1401 and then to a slightly larger system. When the photo above was taken I was working on data transmission. No internet in those days of course, but data was sent down the telephone line to the Ford Plants at Langley, Halewood, Southampton etc.

This isn't the actual one, but this is pretty much what it was like.

Eventually we had a more advanced machine to send data to Cologne. A 1 day course was arranged for myself, and some others, in Cologne. We were due to fly out on Ford's own plane from Stanstead, which was a relatively small airport in those days. Having never flown before I was quite excited.
When I got up at 5am to get ready to drive to the airport on a Winter's morning. I looked out only to discover that between my car and the road was about 2 feet of snow. I tried to dig my way out but it was soon obvious I wasn't going to make it in time. I had my doubts that the flight would be able to leave anyway. However it did leave and when I arrived at the computer centre at Warley later that morning I discovered that someone else had gone in my place.

Another course was arranged for me, but this time at Daventry, which was not quite so exciting as a flight to Cologne. We later attempted to send data to Dearborn (part of Detroit) in the USA. However that didn't work. I assume the line wasn't good enough.

I remember the photo above being taken of me in 1969, but didn't really know what it was for until I got a copy of the booklet "Ways into Ford". 42 years later I still have it, and think of it as my little claim to fame.