FP2

Early September, 2002 I was surfing and found a site which recorded various happenings at Putney during the appearance of the first 1900 there - the FP2:

I'm Mike Curley, and probably preceded FP2 by a couple of years. I started operating ICT 1300's in Bridge House North, then moved to 1500's in Bridge House South, and can remember FP2 being moved in and one of our contingent Dave Wilgoss being moved from 1300 to FP2 - and all he did for the first few weeks/months seemed to be - to create paper tape. Program testing etc.. seemed to be just reading in paper tape - and punching it out - also the small size of the thing meant that Dave got a fair bit of ribbing "call that a computer?? occupies only one tenth the space of our 1300/1500's"

There was an engineer from Stevenage that used to "emulate" a 1900 inside a 1300 - and then run test programs - I thought that was pretty neat - I can remember the 600 line per minute barrel printer, pattering away during some of his tests - and he explained - he was using it to emulate the 1900 console.

We have similar histories.. I got into Freelancing/Contracting in 1972, and thoroughly enjoyed it - can remember the various attempts by the Government to "tax" us - much manouvering there!! - and retired a couple of years ago - bowing out managing a Y2K project - which I thought really rounded everything off very well - spent years creating the problem and finish up getting very well paid - to fix it!!

Thanks very much for your message. You're only the second person of my acquaintance who remembers the FP2, the other being an ex-1900 programmer that I correspond with after making contact via Friends Reunited. Are you a member? There's quite a lot of old timers listed from BHN and BHS, some names that I remember but plenty that I don't. It's incredible that the FP2 was ever considered the baby of the family! What would we have thought of the PC? They say the past's a different country and I believe it. I remember a Dave Reeder from BHS, was it him you're referring to?

Paper tape - ICT's preferred medium, versus IBM's 80-column cards, but the customers thought differently. However, many programmers preferred paper tape and some of the fast readers could load at what appeared to be lightning speeds. Two sounds I'll never forget; the "raindrops" of an ICT barrel printer outputting from a 1901 struggling with a complex calculation and the "machine gun" of an IBM 1403 chain printer being operated with the sound-proofing cover up. I was forever telling one of my ops "put the bloody cover down" - he's probably stone deaf now.

Freelancing was great and gave me a lifestyle that I'd never have got as a permie. I bowed out last summer after a 5?-year contract for an IT services company, managing the supply of server and PC analysts to Ford Motor Company and its subsidiaries. As time went on, Ford became only interested in price, not quality, so we lost business to "bums-on-seats" operations who put in kiddies with little more than home PC experience. Coupled with that, the company I was contracted to signed a single-sourcing agreement with a general staff agency, meaning that I could no longer use the specialist suppliers who'd constantly come up with first-class people at competitive rates. There was also the matter of IR35 that's ruined the contract market in the UK - I'm sure you're aware of that malicious piece of ill-thought out legislation. I took two paces backward, surveyed the situation and decided it was time to go.

Apart from returning for 3 weeks to assist with some emergency recruitment (i.e. someone falling down on their job), I've been happily retired for over a year. My wife hung up her coding pencil (remember those?) a week ago and we're about to spend our daughter's inheritance.

PS 1. Please note the change of email address. I'm canning the Demon one as it's constantly being bombarded with spam. The same applies to my web site, which is now http://www.brentwoodit.co.uk

PS 2. Just returned from your web site where several names ring a bell. Wally Pears for one - he was senior op at ISIS when I was with Cossor Electronics, remote testing there before we got our 1901. We had a lot of fun acting the goat in the front window at 15 Lime Street - computers were objects to gawp at in those days. I even moonlighted at ISIS, doing night shifts for Ray Jenner before driving post-haste back to Harlow for my day's work at Cossor.

PS 3. Don't know whether to curse it or bless it but it was at ISIS that I met Eileen, my wife, who was testing there from STC Harlow, together with colleagues such as Willy Henderson whose name figures in your annals of 1900 Programming. Other names I recognise are Brian Stoate and Dave Burchell, via my old mate Les King who's been skulking around IT since the Flood. There are plenty of other names which sound vaguely familiar but I don't know why. It truly is a small world!