That's interesting Rose. I think it's important that everyday work processes are recorded for posterity. The head of finance at my place of work told me he remembered working with huge ledger books when he first started work in the late 1950s. Some of these ledgers were still in the university archives. They were massive things, the pages at least twice the size of the old bibles you sometimes see on the lectern in church. It brought to mind Bob Cratchitt in Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"!
Thanks Julie. Yes, I know what you're talking about with the ledger books, but I don't think I've ever seen one "up close"! As I said, I've not been able even to find a photo of these old, first generation computers. They were mind-boggling!
This made me think back to my junior year in high school when I learned how to type on a manual typewriter. It was hard but had such a satisfying clunk when you used the return lever! Fun to read!
Thank you for that Mimi! Yes, I remember learning to type, except in my case, it was a "teach-yourself" job. Hence, there are some things I've never fully mastered. Anyway, I do remember the "clunk" of the keys, and the "ding" of the carriage return. And white-out for mistakes! Thank goodness we've moved on from that.
1968? Holy cow...! I started with them (at AT&T) in 1979 and yeah, they were still monsters then!
For the programmer training class I was assigned to, we of course used keyboards -- with no monitors -- to transcribe our handwritten COBOL programs into card-punch machines. Once we had the program code entered, we'd commonly submit it to be printed out (for debugging) on these gigantic fanfold sheets of paper... and we also had to write the code (in something called Job Control Language, or JCL) to generate the printouts of the program RESULTS. When I did that for my biggest training program, I mis-entered the JCL for the printout of what would have been maybe 100 sheets of fanfold: I generated and received not a printout, but BOXES and BOXES of punch cards -- one card per line of output. I still laugh about that.
We worked at AT&T's corporate computer center in NJ. Because the company had so much riding on the non-interruption of so many critical programs, there was of course plenty of backup power in place. The generator wasn't a simple gasoline-powered thing, though: it was powered (so we were told) an underground JET ENGINE and a massive storage tank of fuel. I never did find out if that was just urban legend, but I always wanted to believe it.
Thank you so much, John, for your comment! I could visualize everything you talked about: the fanfold paper, the card punches with their slotted holes in just the right places. We had a "jogging machine" which was a vibrating box that held those card punch cards and the vibrations were supposed to line them up so they could be inserted into the machines more smoothly. Maybe so one of them wouldn't jam things up? We called those huge fanfold papers MICRS. What that stood for, I don't know, but I do know that there was reconciliation of numbers involved, and sometimes they were easy, and sometimes it was the Devil's Own Job to get the darn thing to balance. I never asked (nor thought about) what the energy source was for these giants as the whirred all day and all night. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a jet engine, as we were on the top floor of commercial building in the centre of Sydney. Again, thank you so much for sharing your experiences!
Thanks for this chapter Rose. You touch down lightly with your personal prose and it is endearing reading.
You have and had trust in the universe and like magic you flew, you landed, found a bed, a job and new friends.
Memoirs have aliveness like yours when they are set in their history and this piece does it beautifully in your descriptions especially of the computer rooms.
A machine now redundant I managed, and also with no experience was a 1960's telephone switchboard. They said I had a smile in my voice! But what I'd not told them was I'd not a clue how to operate it. It was for a large company on Baker St. In London called Burroughs Machines. Early Adding Machines and people rang in with their numerical complaints.
At least then it was recognised machines are fallible unlike now for the people's suffering at not being believed with The Post Office Scandle.
It's been good to recall my forgotten past with your inviting writing. Thanks Rose
Ah, yes, we've both had colourful pasts, haven't we? So many things are forgotten until someone brings them up into our memory again. Thank you for your kind words! Honestly, I can't imagine you in front of one of those enormous switchboards. It would have scared me to death!
That's interesting Rose. I think it's important that everyday work processes are recorded for posterity. The head of finance at my place of work told me he remembered working with huge ledger books when he first started work in the late 1950s. Some of these ledgers were still in the university archives. They were massive things, the pages at least twice the size of the old bibles you sometimes see on the lectern in church. It brought to mind Bob Cratchitt in Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"!
Thanks Julie. Yes, I know what you're talking about with the ledger books, but I don't think I've ever seen one "up close"! As I said, I've not been able even to find a photo of these old, first generation computers. They were mind-boggling!
This made me think back to my junior year in high school when I learned how to type on a manual typewriter. It was hard but had such a satisfying clunk when you used the return lever! Fun to read!
Thank you for that Mimi! Yes, I remember learning to type, except in my case, it was a "teach-yourself" job. Hence, there are some things I've never fully mastered. Anyway, I do remember the "clunk" of the keys, and the "ding" of the carriage return. And white-out for mistakes! Thank goodness we've moved on from that.
1968? Holy cow...! I started with them (at AT&T) in 1979 and yeah, they were still monsters then!
For the programmer training class I was assigned to, we of course used keyboards -- with no monitors -- to transcribe our handwritten COBOL programs into card-punch machines. Once we had the program code entered, we'd commonly submit it to be printed out (for debugging) on these gigantic fanfold sheets of paper... and we also had to write the code (in something called Job Control Language, or JCL) to generate the printouts of the program RESULTS. When I did that for my biggest training program, I mis-entered the JCL for the printout of what would have been maybe 100 sheets of fanfold: I generated and received not a printout, but BOXES and BOXES of punch cards -- one card per line of output. I still laugh about that.
We worked at AT&T's corporate computer center in NJ. Because the company had so much riding on the non-interruption of so many critical programs, there was of course plenty of backup power in place. The generator wasn't a simple gasoline-powered thing, though: it was powered (so we were told) an underground JET ENGINE and a massive storage tank of fuel. I never did find out if that was just urban legend, but I always wanted to believe it.
Thank you so much, John, for your comment! I could visualize everything you talked about: the fanfold paper, the card punches with their slotted holes in just the right places. We had a "jogging machine" which was a vibrating box that held those card punch cards and the vibrations were supposed to line them up so they could be inserted into the machines more smoothly. Maybe so one of them wouldn't jam things up? We called those huge fanfold papers MICRS. What that stood for, I don't know, but I do know that there was reconciliation of numbers involved, and sometimes they were easy, and sometimes it was the Devil's Own Job to get the darn thing to balance. I never asked (nor thought about) what the energy source was for these giants as the whirred all day and all night. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a jet engine, as we were on the top floor of commercial building in the centre of Sydney. Again, thank you so much for sharing your experiences!
Thanks for this chapter Rose. You touch down lightly with your personal prose and it is endearing reading.
You have and had trust in the universe and like magic you flew, you landed, found a bed, a job and new friends.
Memoirs have aliveness like yours when they are set in their history and this piece does it beautifully in your descriptions especially of the computer rooms.
A machine now redundant I managed, and also with no experience was a 1960's telephone switchboard. They said I had a smile in my voice! But what I'd not told them was I'd not a clue how to operate it. It was for a large company on Baker St. In London called Burroughs Machines. Early Adding Machines and people rang in with their numerical complaints.
At least then it was recognised machines are fallible unlike now for the people's suffering at not being believed with The Post Office Scandle.
It's been good to recall my forgotten past with your inviting writing. Thanks Rose
Ah, yes, we've both had colourful pasts, haven't we? So many things are forgotten until someone brings them up into our memory again. Thank you for your kind words! Honestly, I can't imagine you in front of one of those enormous switchboards. It would have scared me to death!