Fifty Years Ago .... from the pages of Computer Weekly
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Autumn 1972 computing, compiled by TNMOC volunteer archivist, Brian Aldous.
A selection of stories from Computer Weekly from the Autumn of 1972. The full archive of Computer Weekly can be seen at TNMOC, where there are special rolling displays of front pages from 25 and 40 years ago.
HP satellite system goes to NPL:
In a further move away from its traditional scientific and industrial role, Hewlett-Packard has entered the lists of the commercial data processing market with a powerful satellite processing system and a real time supermarket system. Both systems have been developed in the UK and are based on the company’s 2100A computer. The satellite system, the HP 3799 Satellite Computer System, is based on the 2100A. It can have magnetic discs, tapes and a wide range of other peripherals, and be linked to Univac, CDC or ICL mainframes. The first 3799 system worth £20,000, has been ordered by the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington. This will have a 16K processor 4.8 million bytes of disc, a paper tape and card reader, line printer and a graph plotter. The second new system, also based on the 2100A has been specially developed for a large Dutch industrial group known as SHV. The group has installed one H-P system in a wholesale cash-and-carry store in Utrecht, Holland, and another at the Kirkby, Liverpool, cash-and-carry stores of its British subsidiary, Makro. (CW 21/09/1972 p1)
£500,000 Sat One order:
A substantial order for 24 Computer Technology Satellite One Model 10 terminals together valued at nearly £500,000 has been placed by the Computer Board. The terminals are intended for use in universities and colleges throughout the UK, and the first to go on-line is now undergoing trials at London’s City University. It is linked to London University’s large complex of Control Data 7600, 6600 and 6400 machines, as eventually will seven more of the terminals at Oxford, Reading, Southampton, Sussex, Kent, Surrey and Brunel Universities now in various stages of installation. (CW 21/09/1972 p1)
Low Cost Graphics System Launched by Digital:
Announced at the ONLINE 72 exhibition by Digital Equipment Co, is the GT40, a low cost graphic unit incorporating a PDP-11/65 processor, enabling it to be used either as a terminal or as a stand-alone computer graphics system. Used as a terminal the GT40 can be programmed to handle data in the format employed by the host computer. It is thus possible to link the GT40 to a DEC system or to other manufacturers’ processors which use industry-standard communications codes. As a stand-alone system the GT40 can be expanded with PDP-11 memory and peripherals to give more complex configurations. However, the basic GT40, comprising a 4K processor, a display controller, a 12-inch CRT, an upper and lower case keyboard, a light pen, a set of display subroutines, and DL11 - a communications interface with separate receive and transmit speeds of up to 9,600 baud, is itself a useful graphics system at a cost of only £5,620. (CW 21/09/1972 p3)
Customs start for Honeywell:
Computer systems developed by Honeywell to take account of VAT are now ready to run, after examination by Customs and Excise officials for conformity to official requirements. As companies using computer systems have to submit their total business systems for Customs approval, Honeywell will have saved customers some of the burden; the computer elements of their accounting procedures will be accepted immediately. (CW 21/09/1972 p5)
Air Information Display based on GEC 2050:
Making their debut in the lucrative world market for large scale information display systems, GEC-Elliott Process Automation Ltd have introduced the Infolux system with the announcement of a £200,000 order for an installation at Manchester Airport. Based on a GEC 2050, Infolux provides a highly flexible illuminated display with characters ranging in size from 100mm down to 40mm. The system is available in three models, 16/5, 16/9 and 16/13, but configurations and display areas can be varied to suit customer requirements. Maximum screen width is about 13 feet. Messages can also be repeated on closed circuit TV systems by means of a direct character regeneration link. The display area consists of a matrix of holes in an opaque screen sandwiched between sheets of clear plastic mounted in front of a light source. The holes are spaced about three to the inch and can be opened or obscured by a metal disc which is operated by an electromagnetic actuator controlled by the 2050. (CW 21/09/1972 p12)
ASK System keeps Oil Vessels on Station:
Keeping oil-drilling vessels stable in deep offshore areas is a considerable problem, as it is not always possible to use anchors in the deeper drilling areas. Honeywell’s Marine Systems Centre in Seattle has produced a solution with ASK, the Automatic Station Keeping system. Centred on a Honeywell H-316 processor, ASK provides dynamic control of the vessel’s propulsion system. Primary positioning input is via a Honeywell RS-5 acoustic position indicator which provides placement information relative to a single acoustic beacon placed near the sea-floor drilling position. Heading information is provided by the ship’s gyrocompass. ASK can be used in water depths up to nearly four miles. (CW 21/09/1972 p12)
Automatic Spectrum Analyser Launched:
A general purpose frequency-domain automatic spectrum analyser operating under the control of a small stored-program digital processor has been announced by Hewlett-Packard. The Model 8580A operates as a calibrated programmable receiver with user written application programs commanding the receiver to tune, alter its bandwidth, and measure signal level to gather spectral density data while unattended. The system can be applied to characterising components and subsystems for their transfer characteristics (gain, attenuation and distortion) and input/output characteristics (reflection coefficients). It is also suited to surveillance applications in electromagnetic compatibility work, communications system monitoring at both microwave and intermediate frequency ranges. (CW 21/09/1972 p19)
PO outlines its plans for Packet-Switching Network:
Proposals for establishing a packet-switching data transmission network on an experimental basis have now been outlined by Professor J. H. H. Merriman, the Post Office Corporation’s Board Member for Technology. The project, which will be known as the experimental packet-switching service (EPSS), is seen as a joint venture between computer users, manufacturers and the Post Office. It will form part of studies by the Post Office into the development of networks using digital data transmission techniques, in contrast to the analogue technique currently used. Referring to the advantages of packet-switching, Prof Merriman said: “In particular, overall economic advantage is claimed by allowing a large number of low capacity connections to a multi-access computer to be replaced by a single high-capacity connection. “To achieve this will involve both the Post Office and users in additional investment, but the experiment will permit both to assess the overall cost benefits of packet working. In addition, packet working provides improved error performance and enables a terminal working at a particular data rate to communicate with another working at a different data rate”. As the basis of the new service, the Post Office is to set up three packet-switching exchanges (PSEs) which will be interconnected by circuits operating at 48K bits per second. It is currently planned to establish these exchanges in London, Manchester and Glasgow, although Birmingham, Bristol Leeds and Edinburgh are possible alternatives, depending on the location of those taking part in the experiment. (CW 21/09/1972 p21)
Plan for European Data System Progresses:
A year almost to the day after a preliminary agreement to commission a study of European data transmission requirements was signed by members of the Conference European des Administrations des Postes et des Telecommunications, CEPT, it has been announced that France is to join the study. The original agreement was delayed while a French decision to join the study was awaited but this did not come and the study went ahead without the French participation. Now France has decided formally to join the CEPT Eurodata study and has, in fact, already been exchanging information with the original study members. Independently of the CEPT group the French telecommunications authorities commissioned Generale de Service Informatique, GSI, to carry out its own market study of French data communications demands and according to the secretary of CEPT’s special committee for the Eurodata study, Mr R. Naeslund, “Owing to good cooperation on both sides it has been possible to bring the two studies together in terms of approach and methodology.” Italy, which like France has been holding out for a separate contract, also joined the group at the end of last year and work for the Italian PTT authorities has been carried out by the Italsiel organisation. Beset by numerous delays from the outset, the Eurodata study at last got off the ground when 14 members signed a £500,000 contract with Britain’s PA Management Consultants in association with Quantum Science Corp of New York. Commenting on the latest French moves, Derek Maclaren, PA Management Consultants international director who negotiated the contract with the Eurodata authorities last October, said, “We are very happy that with the co-operation of the French authorities the Eurodata study will now provide complete coverage throughout Europe, as originally envisaged.” (CW 28/09/1972 p13)
Custom built cores for CMC:
Custom-built core memory systems, worth about £500,000, have been ordered from Data Products Core Memories, of Dublin, by the Computer Machinery Co. The memories will be used in CMC’s Keyprocessing key-to-disc data preparation systems. The CMC order, which covers a two-year period, is, in fact, made up of two almost equal orders, one from CMC Ltd in the UK and the other from CMC France. It is understood that these European orders with Data Products could be followed by further CMC orders from the US which could be worth up to £1.5 million. At the moment CMC’s Keyprocessing range for Europe is manufactured in Britain at its Hemel Hempstead factory. However, the French subsidiary is already assembling systems and plans to begin manufacture in the near future. The company’s current European Keyprocessing range is made up of the CMC 5, 7, 9 and 10 - the 10 being sold only in the UK. Deliveries of the new Data Products memories will begin in January. According to CMC the volume is sufficient to enable to at least keep pace with current production at Hemel Hempstead of about eight CMC 5s and four CMC 7s, 9s or 10s. (CW 05/10/1972 p1)
Argus 500 to aid air safety:
To help experiments aimed at reducing the minimum possible separation distances, thus allowing a larger number of aircraft to use a confined air corridor with no loss of safety, a Ferranti Argus 500 system has been ordered by the Ministry of Defence for the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, Hants. By-products of this research include the improvement in safety when flying over mountainous areas and the enhancement of routeing flexibility. This latest RAE project is ground-based and is intended to speed up airborne experiments. The Argus has 16K words of 24 bit core memory and peripherals include a Ferranti WD 126 alphanumeric CRT display. Ferranti has a long history of involvement with computerised aviation projects, including formative work on Concorde. (CW 12/10/1972 p1)
370/125 and OCR reader from IBM:
The announcement of the long-awaited IBM 370/125 last week has been swiftly followed by news of a new IBM optical character reader, the 3886. Two models will be available, Model 1 for on-line use with System 370 and Model 2 for off-line use in conjunction with an IBM 3410 tape unit. The 3886 is a general purpose reader capable of handling multiple founts, and will be considerably cheaper than previous IBM OCR readers, although at present UK prices are not known. It will be manufactured at Greenock in Scotland. The 3886 can read OCR-A, OCR-B, numbers printed by hand and 3/16 inch gothic characters. as well as bar marks. Reading is governed by special timing marks which can be pre-printed, computer printed, typed or hand written, with up to a maximum of 33 marks per page. (CW 12/10/1972 p1)
Lundy’s bid for Reader market:
In a bid to regain a healthy share of the potentially enormous worldwide market for low-cost OCR data capture systems, Lundy-Farrington have now announced the Editor 8000 single fount page reader. The machine is designed to meet the requirements of a market which Lundy believe they have identified after extensive investigations, following their acquisition of the ailing Farrington OCR division last year. Lundy believe that most potential OCR users are much more attracted by low cost and reliability than high throughput and a multiple fount capability. The 8000 system will read pages at about 240 characters per second, compared to 400 chps for the Farrington 3030, and will read only one fount; but a complete 8000 system, with a tape deck, teletype and 8K Varian 620 computer could cost as little as £23,000, compared to about £80,000 for a 3030. The 8000 employs a photocell array and matrix matching process for reading and recognition, a radically-different and much more advanced technique than the Nipkow disc and feature stroke analysis used with the 3030 and one which should give a significantly lower reject rate, thus enabling the 8000 to read visibly degraded print such as photo or carbon copies. (CW 12/10/1972 p24)
Front end COM in RAF system:
A Datagraphix 4460 computer output microfilm recorder, estimated to be worth over £100,000, has been ordered by the RAF for use in its new centralised supplies control system at Hendon. The RAF ’s COM system will, say the manufacturers, be the first in the world to use “front end COM”. This technique will involve the use of an enlarged integrated computer in the system for random overlay of different forms design and headings on alphanumeric data previously generated by a mainframe computer - in this case one of two ICL 4/72s. In order to cope with the front end system, the RAF 4460 will incorporate a 16K word processor, twice the normal capacity. The RAF plan to use COM as the prime medium for hard copy output for the control of stock and supplies held or required by all RAF stations. Up to 1,350,000 supplies items will be involved and anticipated hard copy output on COM film will be in the region of 35,000 documents each day. The stores and supplies system is being developed at RAF Hendon and earlier this year over 1,000 Cossor terminal units worth about £1.3 million, were ordered to handle on-line inquiries. This represented one of the largest terminal orders ever placed in the UK and when fully installed the system will be capable of handling about 80,000 inquiries each day. (CW 19/10/1972 p12)
Transport cassette for PDP-8, PDP-11 use:
A dual transport tape cassette unit designated the TU60 DECcassette has been announced by Digital Equipment Corp for use with the PDP-8 and PDP-11. Built by the company, special attention was paid to reliability of the unit, and a special cassette has been designed to enhance this. Of the Philips type, the cassette has a tape thickness of twice the recording path, to minimise errors caused by dirt and wear, and is treated with a special coating to allow its use in environmental extremes. Digital guarantee a life of 1,000 passes and say a typical unit will last 3,000 to 6,000 passes. The transport mechanism incorporates direct reel-to-reel drive without the belts, capstans, pulleys and clutches found in conventional drives. The system stores 87K bytes per cassette using 256 byte blocks and features a hardware redundancy check for error control. (CW 26/10/1972 p23)
Traffic system expands:
The computerised traffic control scheme in Liverpool is to be extended in a £300,000 plan to cover a much wider area, and the contract for this project has gone like the earlier one, to Plessey Traffic and Instrumentation. It will be the first system in this country to use satellite processors to control sub-areas. Six of these will be supplied, one for each of two central areas and four outer districts. They will transmit to two computers acting as front-end processors to the existing two Plessey XL9s, which control the city centre and Mersey Tunnel bound traffic. Plessey’s Liverpool Exchange factory will be carrying out over three quarters of the engineering and production work. Delivery is scheduled for late next year, with the system coming into operation in mid-1974. (CW 02/11/1972 p1)
Digital’s UK launch for 700/800 range:
From its strong position in the scientific and technological applications field, Digital Equipment is seeking to extend its share of the UK commercial data processing market with the impending announcement of two new systems, the DEC Datasystems 700 and 800. These two machines have already been announced in the US where they are supplemented by the smaller Datasystems 300 and 500, which are also new, although they are not to be unveiled in the UK, at least for the time being. DEC first ventured into the commercial DP market just over a year ago with its DECsystem 10 which is based on PDP-10 processors, and the new Datasystem range also makes use of existing DEC CPUs. The Datasystem 700, which will be exhibited at Computer 72, is, in its basic form, based on a PDP-11/40 with up to 124K of CPU memory and is designed for use as an interactive time sharing aid for on-line data management. At the top end of the new Datasystem range is the Model 800 which uses either PDP-11 or the larger PDP-15 processors to provide data management systems capable of on-line information storage and retrieval. (CW 02/11/1972 p1)
Hewlett-Packard launches desktop system:
Under the slightly misleading and currently fashionable title of "programmable calculator", Hewlett-Packard has announced a low cost desktop computer which is programmable in Basic and can be used as a time sharing terminal. Known as the HP Series 9800 Model 30, the new system incorporates a 1,760 16-bit word read/write memory expandable to 3,808 words, a built-in 40K cassette memory, and up to 8K words of plug-in read only memory. It also has a built-in alphanumeric keyboard with 10 function keys and a 32 character display. The concept of programmable calculators using the Basic interactive language is new to the European and UK markets. Costing some £3,000 in its basic form, £4,500 with line printer, the HP Model 30 has been designed to bridge the gap between the traditional calculator and minicomputer and in its stand-alone form provides a low cost alternative to a time sharing terminal. The Model 30 is aimed at both the commercial and scientific engineering markets. According to Robin Mansfield, HP's calculator group manager, "It is expected to prove extremely popular in many areas of business, commerce and R&D". A wide range of peripherals is available with the system including a high speed 80-column card reader, high and low speed paper tape readers, a digitiser, X-Y plotter, typewriter and paper tape punch. Up to nine peripheral cassette units can also be operated. A disc memory unit is expected to be announced shortly. The 8K of ROM available with the Model 30 is designed to cover a number of specialist applications. A matrix operations ROM, for example, allows engineers, physicists and statisticians to perform mathematical operations on matrices. Other ROMs are available for string variable calculations, control of a peripheral plotter and for extended I/O capabilities when using a large number of peripherals. (CW 16/11/1972 p1)
FM1600B to aid army DP:
Investigations into the use of data processing techniques by an army in the field will be the main task of a Ferranti FM 1600B computer and display system which has been delivered to the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment at Fort Halstead, Sevenoaks, Kent. Equipped with a 16K 24-bit word processor and a Sperry eight-megabit drum, the new computer system is mounted on a three-ton Army lorry to enable it to be moved to Army headquarters in the UK and Germany. Provision has been made for expansion of the core store to 40K and the addition of three further magnetic drums. The display system includes an experimental map display unit comprising a 24-inch rear port CRT fitted with a computer-controlled film traction and optical projection system, a 17-inch visual display which is used for display of text and tabulated information, a light pen, tracker ball and keyboards which are used for input and output. According to Ferranti, the map display unit is of particular interest in Army applications where an essential requirement is the display of data against a map background. The rear port CRT enables the map background to be projected by optical projection through the rear port onto the phosphor screen on the face of the tube. The optical projection system works on similar principles to those in the Ferranti moving map displays already in service with RAF and other air forces. (CW 16/11/1972 p1)
Crosfield sorters for Bank of England:
A contract to supply a number of specially developed computer-controlled banknote sorters to the Bank of England printing works at Loughton, Essex, has been won by Crosfield Business Machines Ltd, of Watford. The initial order is for 15 systems worth a total of about £500,000. Two bar code reader sorters from Recognition Equipment Ltd, UK subsidiary of REI, of Dallas, are already in use at the printing works sorting £5 notes, and the Crosfield systems will be used for sorting spoilt notes from batches of newly printed £1 and £5 notes. Based on Crosfield’s well established 9300 three-pocket, high-speed document transport, the new systems incorporate a special mark detector and an automatic banding mechanism both of which have been developed jointly by Crosfield and the Bank. Each sorter will operate at speeds similar to the maximum 72,000 documents an hour read by the 9300, and will be controlled by an 8K Honeywell 316 minicomputer. After the extraction of spoilt notes, the notes for issue will be banded automatically with plastic tape in bundles of 100. The computer will account by number for each note in the banded 100s and also for the spoilt notes extracted. (CW 16/11/1972 p1)
IBA develops digital colour TV converter:
The Independent Broadcasting Authority has developed a new digital converter for changing colour television signals from American and Japanese conventions to European standards. The television signals are converted from the normal analogue wave form to a stream of binary digits to be stored and processed by the converter, which uses MOS field effect transistors. This process is said to provide a cheaper and more reliable method of transforming signals without picture degradation than previous optical and analogue converters. The new converter is a further development of IBA research into the use of digital television techniques. Last year a converter for black and white signals was completed and earlier this year they introduced the SLICE systems which enables data, such as the source of the subsequent picture, to be transmitted and output without interfering with the picture. For black and white pictures, the main problem is converting 625 into 405 line pictures but colour pictures also need to be altered from a 30 pictures a second system, such as in America, to the 25 pictures a second system used in Europe. The new converter will assist in improving the quality of television pictures in the UK and help IBA companies to become more competitive in world markets by enabling them to make recordings for sale both in America and the UK. (CW 23/11/1972 p8)