MONITOR
WCIT History: The Reminiscences Series
3. WCIT Honorary Historian Member Joan Smith
The next phase in my career started in
1971 when I was employed at the
University of Manchester Regional
Computer Centre (UMRCC), which
provided computing facilities for several
universities networked to an ICL 1900
series computer front-ending a CDC 7600
supercomputer. It was whilst there that I
was to commence my work promoting the
use of computers for language – after all,
there was Morse code representing letters
by 0s and 1s, pulse or no pulse . . . . And I
co-founded the international Association
for Literary and Linguistic Computing,
Joan Smith with Past Master Carrington, 2002
editing its publication, being first its
n 1956 I was employed at Avros to Secretary and then Chairman.
work on the Ferranti Mk1* computer,
described as a large-scale scientific By the early 1980s the International
machine, for calculations on the Vulcan Organization for Standardization (ISO)
aircraft in the first instance. Moving to was developing the Standard Generalized
Metrovicks but to work on the newly- Markup Language (SGML) for structured
commissioned University of Manchester information systems, which I led for the
Mercury computer, I saw the last days of UK whilst employed at the National
the Ferranti Mk1 before it was heaved out Computing Centre. Defence systems
of an upper window from the Dover Street provided the first major applications,
initially in the States.
building onto a waiting scrap lorry.
I
I had a break from computing for a while
after my son was born, returning briefly to
be associated with the Ferranti Pegasus
computer housed in an elegant room in
Portland Place, London. One of the
programs run was calculating the mesh
for the large bird cage designed by
Antony Armstrong-Jones for Regent’s
Park Zoo.
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By then I was a Freeman of the WCIT,
and from the first decided to follow my
maxim to ‘make a difference’. Starting
with the Archives (13 boxes went in my
car from the Hall as the first load), my
next tasks were the Histories of the
Company and the Hall going on to list the
Company’s Treasures and then set up the
Information Technologists’ Library.
Books and other documents in the IT
Library document the very early years of
the history of IT as well there being a
selection of those from other Livery
Companies and the City of London. More
recently I have been keen to keep track of
the state of the art for computers and
software and services (hopefully on a
5-year basis), and then there are
Reminiscences of our Founder Members
and other long-standing IT specialists.
Closure could have been said to have
come for me on the 27th June 2015 when
Vulcan flew low overhead before doing
two circuits of Barton Airport, just one mile
distant from my home. The Vulcan was
Chairman of the European company decommissioned at the end of 2015, and I
SGML Technologies Limited was the next now plan to hand over my work, both after
big move for me, the principal client of careers lasting some 60 years.
which was the European Union, the main
application being the European Budget
Please contact eleanor@wcit.org.uk if
produced then in some 12 different
languages I seem to recall, three times you would like to contribute to the
Reminiscences series.
annually.