First Love in IT
Dear Editor
I read with great interest the article, "How LEO started it all" (November issue).
I have lived in Canada for the last 25 years but my introduction to commercial IT was in 1967 as an operator on the two LEOIII/60s used by the then Shell-Mex and BP company in Hemel Hemstead, Hertfordshire.
They say you always remember your first love, and in terms of things mechanical - and the LEO was certainly that - I can safely say that no other computer I've worked on in a long career have I held in as much affection as the LEO. I suspect I am not alone in this.
I was aware of the anniversary event, having been in correspondence with David Caminer after reading the highly entertaining and informative book, LEO, the Incredible Story of the World's First Business Computer, which he edited. I had to forgo the event but, rather than miss out completely on the celebrations, I would like to ask any Computer Bulletin readers who shared those halcyon days to contact me to relive some of those grand moments, however vicariously.
Mike Archer, MBCS
mikana@rogers.com
Pickering, Ontario, Canada
Editors Note: We would be
interested to hear of other members' first love in IT. My first encounter as
a trainee programmer was with a Honeywell 6000 mainframe in 1971, which quickly
changed my arts graduate perception of computers as being robots that walked
round with tapes on their chests. It wasn't the physical computer that was impressive
so much as the wonderful challenge of something that responded properly only
to perfect logical sequences of instructions.