Castle Aching

[Hroth]

Enough of this prehistoric networking stuff,

 

Back to the drill hall. Will it have a real drill in it?

 

Image excised, even worse than the modellers...

 

If its an Edwardian Drill Hall, it'll certainly contain a Mandrill!!!

Edited December 4, 2018 by Hroth

[St Enodoc]

Guy

 

Having just read the Wikipedia history of JANET, what I used must have been ‘pre-JANET’, although i’d Swear it was called that. It allowed (sometimes!) access from that famed seat of learning (not!) Croydon College of D&T to computing facilities at, iirc, UCL. Precise access times had to be pre-booked, then a connection established (as I say, I can’t remember how), then initiation of a “run”. I was a mere student, so it was a case of using it for the sake of using it, rather than anything very serious, and when we got a PET (iirc) at work c1980 I started to use that instead, initially moving work that we did using programmable calculators onto it. The office had a single-purpose analogue computer gathering dust on top of a cupboard, that having been used before the programmables.

 

Kevin

I missed all that. Having started with stacks of cards run as batches overnight, then moving on to timesharing using Teletype machines, I then had some minor contact with BR's early CAD program BRIGHTPAD before, joy of joys, we were all given Superbrains (one per depot), which were rapidly superseded by a Sirius. Life was simpler then.

[Regularity]

Btw, The Queen sent her first email in 1975, well before half the population was born!

[Hroth]

I missed all that. Having started with stacks of cards run as batches overnight, then moving on to timesharing using Teletype machines, I then had some minor contact with BR's early CAD program BRIGHTPAD before, joy of joys, we were all given Superbrains (one per depot), which were rapidly superseded by a Sirius. Life was simpler then.

Calling something containing a z80 a "Superbrain" was pushing things a bit far.....

 

 

OTOH my first "personal" computer was a Science of Cambridge Mk14.  Given its spec, I dread to think what previous marks were like. Beads on a wire, I suspect!

Edited December 5, 2018 by Hroth

[James Harrison]

If its an Edwardian Drill Hall, it'll certainly contain a Mandrill!!!

 

Only 'On Approval'. 

 

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Appr827.shtml

Edited December 4, 2018 by James Harrison

[St Enodoc]

Calling something containing a z80 a "Superbrain" was pushing things a bit far...

That's what it said on the front!

[Compound2632]

All this talk of electronic calculating machines is well out of period. Here are some genuine Edwardian computers:

 

 

... the Harvard Computers. Note the male interface.

[runs as required]

I encountered my first computer at about exactly the same time I first discovered Dillon (plus Maggie's Farm) as a window display in Epsteins record shop in Whitechapel, Liverpool (I reckon 1963) when I worked for the Corpy next to a room full of lippy girls who punched in our wages data.

Flows on the horrific proposed City Centre ring motorway were being predicted - which allowed us to fly our alternative 'kiss and ride' rail loops alternative (which only got half approved)

Second time was being hired by Newcastle Uni in 1971 and being shown a huge hole being dug in the ground for their 'super mainframe computer' before being packed off to West Africa for 5 years. On return in '76, I reckon we used also Janet - and I'd just sat in with an undergrad student class and learnt how to 'optimise' using punched cards - I was vastly impressed.

The Future et Arrive!

dh

[Caley Jim]

There's no answer to that!

 

Jim

[Regularity]

But did dh collect the chads for use as bricks?

[DonB]

AHH, those were the days, printed brick papers left a lot to be desired, and I recall seeing the use of chads to create a "more realistic" wall, but can't put a date to seeing it reported in the modelling press. The effort and dexterity needed must have deterred most people as I didn't see a mad rush to copy the technique. 

Interestingly, a similar method is used for tiled roofing by a few (very) patient modellers still.

[St Enodoc]

AHH, those were the days, printed brick papers left a lot to be desired, and I recall seeing the use of chads to create a "more realistic" wall, but can't put a date to seeing it reported in the modelling press. The effort and dexterity needed must have deterred most people as I didn't see a mad rush to copy the technique. 

Interestingly, a similar method is used for tiled roofing by a few (very) patient modellers still.

In my experience nobody has ever bettered Bob Dawson as far as using chads for bricks is concerned.

[Donw]

As a young child I remember my father showing me how to 'program' a punch card reader in his office using patch cords. When the Re-insurance comapny asked the clerks if anyone would like to go on a course to learn about punched card machines my father was the only one interested. He had the laugh on the others as the company moved from one machine to a number of them and a room full of punch girls to a computer folowed by a series of them. Each time they upgraded the machines or increased the staff my father went up a grade at an increased salary end up as assistant General Manager. 

I remember using Fortran at college but never saw the computer. Later I was an operator for ICL we only ran development programs so they usually crashed we used to amuse ourselves tring to work out where the programmer was going wrong.

 

Don

[Hroth]

All this talk of electronic calculating machines is well out of period. Here are some genuine Edwardian computers:

 

 

... the Harvard Computers. Note the male interface.

 

Nowadays there are complaints about the lack of women in computing!

 

Leaping forward a few decades, the novelist Nevil Shute worked for the Vickers company in charge of stress analysis for the R100 airship (the one that worked and didn't crash).  He had a similar collection of Computers to perform the calculations.

 

Anyhow, Airships are definitively Steampunk and fit into the pre-grouping ethos.....

[Guy Rixon]

Was that the "bang" notation, everything separated by a ! commencing with your local node...?

 

Yes, that was it. Way better than no connection at all. Way too clumsy to survive.

[Edwardian]

 

...  the novelist Nevil Shute worked for the Vickers company in charge of stress analysis for the R100 airship (the one that worked and didn't crash).  

 

Hence the plot of No Highway, presumably?

 

 

 

Anyhow, Airships are definitively Steampunk and fit into the pre-grouping ethos.....

 

Indeed they are!

[Tom Burnham]

And of course the more progressive organisations in the Edwardian period would have employed a Lady Type Writer.  I seem to recall one consulted Sherlock Holmes.  Interesting how in both cases the meaning has shifted from the person to the machine.

 

The first computer I came face to face with was an Elliot 803 at Aberdeen University in 1968.  The department I was working for temporarily could only manage to book time on it during the early hours of the morning.

 

Incidentally, I seem to recall that the research organisation that the hero of one of Martin Woodhouse's thrillers worked for was debating whether to continue with using women to do calculations or to invest in a machine...  Would have been in the early 1960s or thereabouts.

[Hroth]

Hence the plot of No Highway, presumably?

 

 

 

Indeed they are!

Cramptons Ahoy!!!

 

Shute was an experienced aeronautical engineer and as well as assisting Barnes Wallis on the design of the R100, had previously been involved in early incarnations of De Havilland (I think!) and was also involved in the formation of Airspeed, who produced some pretty twin engined monoplanes in the mid-30s

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevil_Shute

 

Regarding No Highway, published in 1948, its a pity that the De Havilland designers hadn't read the book before choosing square cabin windows for the Comet...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Highway

[corneliuslundie]

i'd rather meet those lady computers than the re-enacting almshouse residents we saw earlier.

With my mother around there was no need for an adding machine. She got 100 and 99 for maths and arithmetic at Matriculation and then during the war for a while worked in a bank.

My wife's first job was as a computer programmer with Heinz, Punched cards, handed to the computer department to be run, where they would often be dropped and shuffled, leading to a long garbage printout next morning. The "experts" running the computer - mainframe of course - never seemed to grasp that they were wasting everyone's time.

I did a short course in Fortran at university, and I think I once saw into the computer suite where "George" lived. But I never used it.

Our first family computer was an Amstrad 44 complete with cassette drive for loading programs. But it had my first train simulation program, the route from London to Brighton with wireframe buildings etc.

The rest, as they say, is history. Now they have even invaded our modelling.

Jonathan

[Edwardian]

Now they have even invaded our modelling.

 

 

Wives, or computers?

[Nearholmer]

Continuing with calculators: good photo on p743 of Backtrack (12/2018), showing the ‘tabulating room’ of the L&YR, with girls using mechanical desktop calculators in 1917. It is staffed entirely by girls, most of whom look as if they are barely out of junior school, in fact the photo could be mistaken for a schoolroom at first glance. I know the leaving age was 14 then, but was there some dispensation to permit eleven year olds to work during wartime?

 

And, nobody has mentioned telegraphy. That was far more ‘internet-like’ in 1905 than anything else mentioned, and it was exceedingly widespread. I ought to know, but don’t, how/whether routing was carried-out on telegraph circuits: were there circuit exchanges, or were messages re-keyed at major nodes? I do know that time division multiplex was used in telegraphy, with specially skilled clerks able to hear and split messages from time slots at prodigious rates.

[DonB]

In, I think, 1962 I met a BBC technical employee who showed his BBC - issue pocket calculator- we all had ones which added up /subtracted and multiplied/ divided costing about £20 I think.

 

The BBC calculator (Can't remember the maker, might have been Texas) did the whole gamut of calculations.. I was particularly impressed with it's ability to find Square Root !  I was told that the RRP at that time was £400!

[Martin S-C]

 

 

 

Note the male interface.

Which one is that?

[Martin S-C]

 

Indeed they are!

And to prove the cyclical theory of thread evolution proposed a page or three back, there's that horse drawn bus again.

[runs as required]

A conversation between aged Bellringers today touched upon the topic of a new cable under the Channel to import Belgian electricity (just as we're Brexiting) and the technical one amongst us indicated the overal thickness of the cable shewn on TV compared to its actual current bearing core.

I (the Steampunk) took us back to IKB and his Great Eastern laying trans-Atlantic telegraph cable . What was the size of those early undersea cables and how was routing coped with ?

This proved well Beyond Our Ken

My son's old CDT teacher suggested there were ladies seated at switchboards either end in Ireland and N America. who knitted while connecting callers by plug and sockets.

 

Over to some RMweb experts....

dh