MONITOR
HISTORY
WCIT History: The Reminiscences Series
4. WCIT Honorary Archivist John Poulter
believe. When it went live after three
years’ development, not a single error
was experienced with it then, nor, I
gather, throughout its entire operational
life subsequently.
Secondly, I conceived and designed a
spreadsheet program for the scientists to
use, which some of them did extensively.
This was well before microcomputers
(later PC’s and Macs) came in and began
to allow individuals to manipulate their
data themselves.
From Left: Past Master David Morriss; Prof Simon Lavington; Past Master Michael
Webster; Prof Dai Edwards; Chris Burton; Honorary Historian Joan Smith; Honorary Archivist
John Poulter; and Past Master John Carrington
M
y first brush with a computer
came in 1959/60, when I and a
group of fellow students were
ushered into the presence of an analogue
machine in one of our college’s
laboratories. Yes, in those days there
were analogue computers as well as
digital ones - and maybe there are still…
Then, after returning for some five or six
years into the world of commercial
computing, which included several trips to
Africa, I moved into consultancy, working
with Post Office Counters and then the
NHS before retiring in 2004. During these
years I sometimes worked with Professor
Peter Checkland, using Soft Systems
Methodology, and I collaborated with him
(in a rather subordinate way, I must say)
as co-author of “Learning for Action”, the
definitive account of this methodology
(the book remains in print and continues
to sell well!).
Programming didn’t thrill me though, so
when my career in computing began in
earnest in 1965 it was as a systems
analyst, firstly in Glasgow and then Corby
in Northamptonshire. This time it was with
IBM 1401 computer, with programs input
via punched cards, but they were still
being run overnight and the
programmers had to be careful not only to
The first computer on which I got my
make no mistakes but also not to exceed,
hands on was a digital one however. That accidentally, the size of the central
was in 1960 and it was a Ferranti
processor.
Pegasus. My programs for it were written
in Autocode, a primitive high-level
Then, in 1967, I moved into the computer
IBM 360
language and fed into the machine on
department of a research laboratory
Computer
paper tape. These programs were run
which was just beginning to use an IBM
overnight, if I was lucky, and I soon
360. There, both programs and data
learned the importance of not making any continued to be input (a word minted, I
mistakes, either in the coding or with the
believe, by the computer industry) via
punching of the tape, if I wanted to see
punched cards. In fact, both programs
meaningful results the next day.
and data were punched twice via card
machines, once on a card-punch machine
and then on a verifier, so that any
IBM 1401 Computer
discrepancies could be identified and
I joined the British Computer Society in
corrected before they would otherwise
ruin that nights run through no fault of the 1975 and the WCIT in 1990, becoming a
Liveryman in 1992, serving on the Court
programmer.
from 2002 to 2004. In joining the WCIT
At the research laboratory there were two my aims were to give something back and
achievements of which I was particularly
to mix with some of the great figures in
proud. Firstly, I was responsible for the
the IT world and see how they operated. I
design and testing of a large database,
believe I’ve done both and richly enjoyed
some
years
before
the
term
was
coined,
I
the experience.
The Ferranti Pegasus Computer
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