Your ICL Reunited letters
Tales of intrigue and romance from the UK IT industry flagship
One week after launching our ICL Reunited site and the stories are already flooding in.
It seems some of you got up to a lot more than work while employed by the former firebrand of UK IT which will be known as Fujistu Services from 2 April.
Office romances, secret sign language conversations and selling technology to the Russians are just some of things that passed for an honest days toil.
I have many happy memories of the ten years I spent at ICL between 1979-89,not least because I met my husband there but that's another story! Ijoined about the same time as Rob Willmot, who was brought into rescue whatwas, at the time, a big operation, heading downwards.
However, I wanted to talk about my top secret, at the time, visit to Moscow in 1985, when the cold war was still icy. Some readers may remember the One per Desk, an all in one desktop phone/organiser/contact management system which was ahead of its time, but unfortunately proprietary.
It caused quite a stir at the time and I was working in the ICL Management Centre where products were showcased and demonstrated. A few months after the product was launched I was asked to go to Moscow with a small delegation to demonstrate the product to an academic institution, as I was experienced in dealing with foreign visitors.
It seemed too good an opportunity to miss so as it was December I set about borrowing various fake fur items and prepared for the trip. It seemed that there were some figures in higher authority involved in this activity - our visas came through in a week - normally it took a few months.
Later on it transpired that Rob Willmot had made a secret visit to Moscow just beforehand and set this whole thing up. Arriving and leaving was intimidating - I was nearly prevented from leaving the country because the passport control guy did not think I looked like my photo!
We spent most of the time in ICL's office but we felt as if we were being watched by the locals.
We eventually did our demonstrations in the institution and then, without warning, were whisked off to a different part of the building to show the product to an unknown government official. We were kept in the dark but it appeared that the OPD was being considered for deployment in various government establishments. It was quite sinister, being involved in an undercover operation, but really was an unforgettable experience.
Ginette Gower
Marketing Manager
Original Software
My late grandfather Larry Crinson had a career with ICL at Kidsgrove in Staffordshire for a number of years.
Had he still been alive today he would have followed your stories of the company with great interest. If any people who worked with him read this, then I pass on my wishes on behalf of my family.
Regards
Duncan Wallace,
Stoke-on-Trent.
I note your plans to mark the passing of ICL. This will be of interest to at least one of the two 'ICL' user groups still extent, namely AXiS which just two years ago celebrated 25 years as a group as well as 25 years of the VME operating system ( not an occasion given much publicity I think).
We were previously known as AMSU(Association of Mainframe System Users), and prior to that Large Systems User Group and originally 2900 User Group. So we are quite using to change of name.
If you wish to know a little more about AXiS visit our web site athttp://www.axis.org.uk
The name AXiS signifies the "Association for the eXploitation of information Systems" but it might soon mean "Association for X-ICL System users"!
Don Folland
AXiS Secretary
Tel: 01603 279402
Back in the ealry 70's I was working for what was then CAP, since became The Sema Group etc.
We were working on a contract for Barclays Bank International producing an International Travellers Cheque System.
The powers that be had decided that to maintain a sense of balance the system would run on IBM 360's in the UK and, would you believe, ICL 1900's in New York. At the time it was believed that the two 1900's were the only ICL computers in the new world. The system was in Cobol but had to be developed on each machine because even in those days incompatibility was the norm.
regards
Rex Wearn
Following the merger of ICT and English Electric Leo Marconi, I foundmyself as ICL's Insurance Area Manager.
Being from the EELM part of the new company, I thought I should visit some of ICT's insurance customers. The IT manager at the Prudential greeted me with enthusiasm as he had a problem with the maintenance of some elderly card punching machines. Being neither 80, 65 or 40 column equipment, with which I had a nodding acquaintance, I expressed ignorance but promised to visit ICT's former HQ in Putney and seek guidance.
In the event, it transpired that ICT had ceased manufacture of thisequipment before the war and given the Pru the engineering diagrams forthem to get spares made by a local engineering jobbing shop.
However, in the course of my discussions with the elderly gentleman atPutney who knew about such things, he went on at some length about theterrible problems caused by the merger. I suggested to him that, considering the huge task of welding together two organisations with such different hardware, software and market approach, and whose staff had only a short time ago been encouraged to knife their new colleagues in the back, the merger had really gone rather well.
"Oh," he said. "I wasn't talking about the creation of ICL, I was referringto the merger between Hollerith and Powers-Samas." There are clearly somememories longer than mine.
Derek Pedder
One of my main memories of ICL in the mid late 70s was the two types ofcustomer service engineer you had.
There was the old ICT guys who could strip and set up an old 1933 barrelprinter blind fold (and setting up the flight times on those was a bugger)and the, newer, 'younger' electronics engineers who could get everything butBBC1 on a scope.
These two types never mixed except on organised maintenance days (for thosePC users in the audience: a biggish site would often give over a morning formaintenance on its machines and the engineers would arrive mob handed and'do' "front fans and filters") where there would be a cold cooperationbetween the two types to get things done.
Obviously there were people that could do both - but luckily these werepromoted out of the field to do important jobs like stapling or sittingstill on a swivel chair.
The other memory is working at the MOD sites. These would be wonderful places to work - lots of late middle aged ex-army blokes wandering around demanding to see your pass. You didn't have a pass and they shot you.
You got a pass by going into the building wandering up to what looked like aportaloo with a window in its front and said to the little old lady inside"ICL engineers - here to do maintenance" and she would give you a pass.Loose the pass and you got shot, but one wondered just how many ICLengineers with thick Russian accents she would see in a day?
Chris Long
In 1973 I moved from working with ICL machinery to IBM. At the ICL sitethe machinery was so loud that the operators had made up their own signlanguage. This sign language became quite vivid, yet succinct, if you gavethem something to run that looped... I told my friends that the move wasbecause I wanted to earn more and buy a better motorcycle, but whatclinched it for me was the comparative quiet of the computer room. If onlyICL could have listened...
Nicholas Blackmore
Ashcott
Somerset
I worked with ICL equipment during the late 80's to early 90's. My memories are largely around the engineers at that time. I started working with thekit at the Regional Health Authority in Bristol in 1988. I was fortunate to work with some of the older equipment that I suspect are only seen now in history books. My first memory was when I attended the interview and was shown the punch card reader, what was that I wondered.
When I returned to my Y.T.S. IT training in Cornwall I asked one of my supervisor's who's initial reaction was one of surprise, but dutifully he explained it's use for me. I took a job as tape librarian and then as a operatorat the site. We had a 2966 and 2955 super dual, along with huge line printers, removable disk packs, open reel tapes and of course the card reader.
The engineers on site had there own room which was a treasure trove of old components and boards. They were always friendly and knowledgeable. I'd often just pop in for chats, hope my old boss doesn't see that. Being new to mainframes it was fascinating to watch them work on the machines and see the inner workings.
Many thanks
Jon Salter
Hi all,
As a ICL user since the late 1970s I've got a few tales...I'm sending these from an anonymous address as some of these people are still alive and many have shotguns.
Also, I still work with Fujisu/ICL today and although they know my opinions, it's not a good idea for me to be heard saying them in a public forum.
In the late 70s - early 80s, I was working for GKN (South Wales) on their 1903s mainframe. We had a famous engineer - Wally. Some of his highlights:
Walking into the key edit (an old data entry machine) area smoking his pipe and setting the sprinklers off.
Having had reported to him that the train printer was leaking oil from the "train" - a band of lead slug characters that went around at a couple of thousand RPM, looking at it for about an hour and then announcing "Don't worry, it'll soon stop". It did, a few days later - seizing and spraying bits of lead shot at high speed all over the inside of the (fortunately sturdy) cover.
Cleaning the air filter designed to protect the internals of the "mill" (CPU) from dust by removing it with the machine running and banging it on the computer room floor right in front of the air intake.
In the early 80s, I moved onto the ME29 machines and became expert on the operating system TME. The area manager for ICL support wanted me for the OS support team for the region. At this time, ICL had a graduate intake only policy, and I had no degree. He requested Alan Rousell (then director UKD) to waive the policy in this "special case". The request was refused. ICL then hired an English graduate (yes, English language) to the post and paid my company for me to train him for 3 months!
At about this time, the DAP (Distributed Array Processor) became available. The company I was working for wanted to investigate this machine as a possible high-speed data processing engine for our complex processing. We had the money, we had the need. ICL refused to even talk to us about one because we were not a university or a weather forecaster and therefore couldn't have a suitable application! The box was eventually sold to Mekito, where it became the "Computing Surface".
Possibly ICL's biggest "triumph" was the "One Per Desk". Launched in a fanfare of publicity, this was to be the machine that was to finally penetrate into the business areas that no-one had gone before - the market that eventually became dominated by the IBM PC and its clones. A classic piece of British innovation.
Based on the Sinclair QL it managed to do what even Sir Clive hadn't achieved - make it 5 times the price and 10 times worse. The QL was a good machine for assembler programmers and had a nice office suite for the time - Psion XChange, some bits of which survive in the EPOC handhelds today. However ICL made a few mistakes....
Sinclair's rather cost-engineered "microdrives" - a 7-second loop of cassette tape holding 128Kb were ported. Unfortunately, ICL's OS implementation neglected to include decent buffering for the tape (Sinclair's QDOS had done so). Hence, every misread block meant a 7-second wait for the tape to go around, leading to unfeasibly large read times and very short tape life.
A 1200 baud modem and facilities for attaching 2 telephone lines were included - one voice, one data. The voice one had a built-in answering machine... This machine answered with a speech synthesiser with a *very* limited vocabulary - about 120 words and sounding like a Texan Darlek. This would answer the phone for you, but couldn't say your name - or take a message! There was a lot of competition both inside and outside of ICL to see who could make it say the most obscene-sounding phrase.
The phone handset was sort of like a fat trimphone. Unfortunately, it had been designed to fit the keyboard not a human face, so unless you were blessed with elfin looks you ended up with the mouthpiece stuck against your cheek...
There is a lot more, but suffice it to say I still have an OPD in the attic - it gets brought out every now and again when I need a comparison to show Microsoft in a good light.
Of course, ICL produced some great stuff, too. George III and VME still stand as two of the best operating systems ever made once the bugs were ironed out. There is a current project porting George III to the PC, and I for one would love to see VME available freeware as a rival to Linux. They were also first to market with a high speed fibre disc connection, presaging today's SANs. Their sort utilities were market leaders, too.
Again, even these were beset by Byzantine marketing and sales options. VME came in two flavours - VME/B and VME/K; later merged into VME/2900 with VME/B commands available as an expensive set of options. Except that they were already there - the "options" consisted of simply a set of bits that unmasked the already existing internal commands. The compiler for the language used to write VME, S3 was the only thing that could run at some of the higher privilege levels, but was a six-figure cost option.
The saddest development of all, however, was CAFS - Content Addressable File Store. This was built into the disc units and could parallel-process at disc rotation speed up to 16 conditions on data giving unheard of speeds on large, low-hit rate data searches. Since it was built-in, many people didn't know it existed. To use it, one needed to buy one or more of three software options - all expensive. Despite its superb market lead, ICL never really managed to successfully market it and eventually sold the technology to IBM.
So that's my memories - one of the most innovative, impossible to deal with companies I remember. A classic British story really, great back-room developments let down by poor management and marketing.
Cheers,
Anon
. I feel there has to be recognition of the important work undertaken by ICL in introducing poor Industrial Trainees into the real world.
I worked at ICL UK HQ in Bracknell - in what was known as the International Management Center (IMC) for about 18 months around 1993. The main highlight has to be the Bracknell Graduate & Industrial Trainee (GRIT) Club.
I was fortunate enough to be on "the committee" helping to organize the events that often resulted in a number of comatose employees expelling the content of their stomachs around the streets of Wokingham, or over the side of certain boats into the Thames!! (obviously not me). Yep, ICL definitely made those of us who still considered ourselves "students" right at home...
Other memories include the "Swan Group" - a number of ICL employees volunteering to protect swans & signets from the near by pond from meeting untimely ends by using the main road as a runway!.
Finally, the wonderful ICL Bar in "BRA01" - I secured a bar job there - but only lasted one night due to my (northern) lack of understanding of what a "larger top" was - I really couldn't help my reaction when a certain manager complained that I hadn't put a "splash of lemonade (in his larger) to take the bitterness away"! ooh those halcyon days!.
With regard to the romances going on - well there were far too many to listAnyway - Hi to all those ICL people I had the pleasure of working with during my time at the IMC. (I still have the toaster presented to me on my 21st Birthday - inscribed with "A 21st Birthday "toast" from all at the IMC and CSAC!!!! - what comedians we all were!!)
Dave Riley
National IT Support Manager
HLB Kidsons
36 George StManchester0161 236 7733 It seems most of you letters so far are Mainframe related so I thought I ought to mention the Servers Division in Bracknell.
I worked there for a number of years and spent many of them as a "third line engineer" which means something isn't working we don't know what and they are going to sue us so go and fix it - a decision normally taken at lunch time on a Friday, and the customer was normally about 10 hours flying time away.
I have several storied ranging from Mad, Bad, Sad to down right daft. This one is from the latter category.
The location is a state in the former Soviet Bloc soon after the Russians had been persuaded to leave. This was fairly obvious by the fact that the airport was littered with blown up MIGs and the terminal building was a large(ish) wooden shed with trestle tables for passport and customs control, order being kept by nervous young soldiers pointing Kalashnikovs at anybody who so much as cleared their throat - The silence was profound.
The customer was the newly created State Bank who had been granted European money to get computerised, wisely they chose to buy ICL servers, stupidly we sold them to them.
The calls for assistance started to come in within days of the servers arriving at the bank. Apparently the main servers which were the largest machines we made at the time had failed within 48 hours of being switched on and now would not even power up correctly.
I was despatched with instructions to meet up with a Finnish engineer who had a grasp of the Russian language and who would help with the software problems on the smaller servers, which obviously did power up but had problems.
We both arrived late at night at the only hotel in town which had not been burnt down, although the top three floors had no windows left, we got on really well and in fact are still friends now some ten years later and I learnt to drink vodka Finnish style that night which was not the best preparation for a long weekend fixing servers.
The next morning a taxi collected us and took us through town to a grim looking building with armed guards at the doors. We were them taken to the bank director's office which was decorated in 1950s opulent style. There we were told that the equipment we had sold them was a disgrace and we were guilty of shoddy workmanship which would never be allowed in his country, it went on a bit longer than this but you get the idea I am sure.
We were then taken to the top floor to see the big servers that were failing to power on, and I assure you that the following is absolutely true I have not embellished it at all and can produce witnesses.
The room was large with broken sash windows. The servers were wired to an ancient two pin wall socket with cotton covered twin core flex, just like your mum's old floor lamp.
But the feature of the room that made our jaws drop was the roaring COAL FIRE in the enormous grate and the amount of smoke billowing across the room to the broken windows. The only sign that the servers were powered on was the humming of the large cooling fans in the base which were sucking the smoke in and blowing it out the top vents.
With barely concealed horror we opened the cases and revealed a thick layer of soot covering every surface within the poor machines. The bank officials asked what all the black powder was so we pointed out as carefully and calmly as possible that soot was carbon, carbon was conductive, electricity like conductors and will play happily with them all day. And by the way your warranty is void - And your servers are dead. Please take us to the airport - NOW!
The former Soviet state is now much richer and wiser and about to join the EU, their central bank is happily running on Fujitsu-Siemens computers.
Regards to all my old mates.
Paul Honor
On one occasion when I visited ICL at Kidsgrove there was building workgoing on - under the 1970's pastel facade, literally carved in stone, wasthe company name "Imperial Calculators and Tabulators Limited".
AndyD 8-)#