January 1969
1st To minimise suspense, there are four mentions of CICS (not counting this one) in 1969! The law now requires headlamps to be on during the hours of darkness in non built-up areas. The Hursley Park Estate roads meet this description, so lights on, please.
3rd The most complex computer program ever written for America's moon space flight plays a key rôle in getting Apollo 8 to the moon and back. It runs on IBM S/360 75s in the real-time computer complex, calculating all the mid-course corrections and manoeuvres. 80 billion calculations a day. Back on earth, did you know that when the Laboratories Company was formed in 1959, the authorised Share Capital was fixed at £125,000 of which £26,142 was issued to the parent company? Well, with assets costing over £4m, the amount of capital funds to be borrowed has become a problem, so the issued capital is going up to £1.1m with new shares being issued. Data Processing Financial and General Corporation, a leasing company, files a civil anti-trust suit against us. This is felt to be without merit, and will be defended vigorously. (See 11th September 1970.)
8th ICL, with a reported 1968 turnover of £92.18m, expects an increase in turnover and trading surplus, says Chairman Sir John Wall, three weeks before warning of 500 job losses in the Midlands. Sales of the 1900 Series have passed £200m in the last four years. (Ah! The 1900 Series. I will write a self-study training package for its low level language as my first job in ICL, five years from now.)
10th BG Harder, P Mundy, JE Cox, and RA Hartley are all promoted to associate programmer. A Speak Up from a catering assistant admits We do not expect everyone to have the correct money ready (although this would help), but one would expect grown men at least to know which pocket they kept their money in.
11th Richmal (Just William) Crompton dies, aged 79.
16th Computer Weekly says Rolls Royce go all out for IBM and PL/I.
The Retail Price Index is 105.9, so your £1,000 of pay buys only £944.3 this year.
17th CHG Smith is promoted to junior programmer. IBM stock is at $307.50 The US Department of Justice files a major anti-trust suit against IBM (see 8th January 1982). We first clashed with the Department in 1952, when accused in another suit of monopolisation of the punched cards and record business. This latest suit is a dubious heritage for the incoming (Nixon) administration.
19th Czechoslovak Jan Palach burns himself to death in protest against the 1968 Soviet invasion.
24th JH Jones is promoted to associate programmer, ER Long-Fox to instructor. Basinghall Street is looking for a branch administration advisor -- a senior post for which they seek a mature man, so preference will be given to those in the 25 to 30 age bracket. (See 25th April.) The Ford Motor Company unveils the Capri.
29th Get your Hong Kong '68 influenza jab today from the Health Centre. (A slight possibility of side effects exists, including a mild form of 'flu itself.)
30th The Beatles' final live performance on the roof of their London Apple building.
February 1969
3rd Yassir Arafat is the new head of the PLO. NatWest is buying over £3m worth of IBM kit to help it clear 2m cheques per working day. A red purse containing English and American money is found. Claimants are asked to contact F Reader. Boris Karloff dies, at 82.
6th Greenock is allowed a £1.2m expansion.
8th Boeing's 747 "Jumbo" makes its maiden flight.
10th Visible badges are to be re-introduced.
11th DAH Marke is running an introductory programming course in N block. Towards the end of it, students will punch up to 70 cards.
14th RG Dixon tells us we're getting an IBM 1130 and associated plotter. (For chip and logic card design.)
17th The Times tells us of the seven horned beetles held by Brazilian police as accomplices in pilfering, trained to steal plastic tokens out of the fare boxes. Sadly, all seven beetles have now died of starvation.
21st AR Fiske is promoted to associate engineer.
23rd BBC2 begins a TV series called "Civilisation".
24th IBM wins a $15.2m contract from the FAA for the second largest communications system in the world. It involves 6,400 man-months and is probably exceeded in size only by the message switching system used by AT&T for phone calls.
27th IBM France announces the 2750 Voice and Data Switching System. Information can be transmitted by using push-button tones as signals, with spoken answers returned by an audio response unit. The first customer is Texas Instruments.
28th AD Kenny is promoted to project programmer, KJH Hill to associate programming writer.
March 1969
2nd Anglo-French Concorde 001 takes off.
5th M Saward's PL/I group announces the 5th version of its PL/I F compiler.
7th The Queen opens the Victoria Line from Victoria to Walthamstow. CJ Hicks is promoted to associate engineer, RL Hills to ditto programmer.
10th TJ Watson Sr's chauffeur John Persson (84, and retired in Sweden for the last 40 years) gives $2m to cancer research, and still faces an income tax bill of around $30,000 this year. He bought 100 IBM shares in the 1920s...
11th John Wyndham (the man who described "Triffids") dies, aged 65.
12th Paul McCartney marries Linda Eastman. IBM is estimated to hold 72.2% of computer shipments by US manufacturers. The US Justice Department puts our share at 74%. Either way, number 2 was the Univac Division of Sperry Rand with 5.3%.
15th The Economist reports that the British tele-communications industry got a nasty jolt last month when the Post Office encouraged the Swedish firm LM Ericsson to enter the market. But it is nothing like the shock it will get if IBM sells its new breed of switchboard in this country. Dearly as Mr Stonehouse would like to open the market to more foreign competition, particularly as the British manufacturers are as dilatory as ever about delivery dates, it could threaten the PO's monopoly of telecommunications maintenance. A more complicated piece of apparatus like the IBM could not be maintained by GPO engineers. (Adds F Crane, at least one IBM 2750 system was installed in the UK, in Havant, though it never got GPO approval for the reason given.)
20th John Lennon marries Yoko Ono. The Guardian carries one of the infamous "cheque for £0 0s 0d to placate a Gas Board computer" stories.
21st Mrs P Hyde is promoted to senior keypunch operator, Miss SD Hodgkinson to associate programmer. A week later, PC Jones is promoted to senior associate programming writer.
31st IBM joins Boeing and others to bid on the development of the USAF AWACS project.
April 1969
1st Montpellier announces the production of their 1,000th System/360 Model 40.
9th Concorde 002 (the British-built prototype) makes its maiden flight. Britain and France hope to sell over 400, making £4000m by the 1980s.
11th AH Rogers, P Bauchop, and DT Murchie are promoted to project programmer. Half a 10/- note is found. Contact FT Reader if you have the rest.
14th Der Spiegel carries a story about an East German computer technician, working for IBM in Württemberg, who was sentenced secretly, some time ago, to two years in jail for spying.
22nd The QE2 leaves Southampton for America.
23rd The Times reports the fourth anti-trust suit against IBM in the last six months. Applied Data Research (the same people who on 25th June last year were awarded the first US software patent) charge IBM with retarding the growth of the independent software industry. AF Shugart becomes SDD Director of Engineering, having been Product Manager, DASD, in San Jose.
25th J Hockley is promoted to project engineer. OS/360 Release 17 is shipping to customers. We're looking for a young woman, probably between the ages of 20 and 30, to fill the interesting position of editor of Perspective (contrast 24th January, where 25 to 30 marks a man of maturity, fit for a senior post). The BBC ends the radio saga of Mrs ("I'm worried about Jim") Dale after 21 years.
28th The Lab hosts 60 European journalists, and their IBM Communications minder. During their visit Graham Nowell (manager of I/S) describes our Administrative Terminal System here in the Lab. He explains how typewriter terminals scattered around the Lab are used online to a System/360 Model 65. Pam Jobling (who joined the Lab in 1968) answers in January 1991, when asked "Which... job did you enjoy most?" -- Going to the World Health Organisation in Geneva to demonstrate ATS. They subsequently bought 25 terminals. We also learn the extent of IBM's current involvement with NASA -- about 4,500 support personnel. (See 23rd July.)
29th The Financial Times reports that West Sussex County Council has developed the sophistication of its computing far beyond the levels reached by most firms. Its 360/40, linked to 10 teletypewriter terminals in the various departments, has been applied to almost every facet of their activity.
30th The UK government gives its blessing to Britain's first international R&D base at Peterlee, near Newcastle, modelled on the research triangle of North Carolina. IBM plans a scientific centre and computer application development centre to be in operation by 1970, costing £200K to £300K.
May 1969
2nd GW Smales replaces R Ellis as the UK Customer Visits Coördinator. DM Youmans is now a development engineer, CR Stephens a project programmer.
5th Our most recent annual stockholders meeting faced a protest from a group of housewives and mothers about IBM's involvement in sex education through Science Research Associates a publishing subsidiary. Interestingly, TJ Watson Jr said SRA will continue to publish the books but will drop sponsorship of some controversial lectures on the same subject. More seriously, he also confirmed that IBM will vigorously defend itself against the various anti-trust suits.
9th We get an Industrial Development Certificate from the Board of Trade. This allows us to apply for planning permission for more buildings here, though a condition of the IDC is that we must remove our temporary buildings on completion of the new one. Hursley assignees are converting the PL/I F compiler to work under the new TSS/360 extensions. IBM stock is at $327.
16th The Russian space probe Venera 5 sends back data about Venus before crashing there. It appears that the first aid illustration in the internal phone directory (under the heading Unconsciousness) has been shown upside down. DJG Reid is back from assignment in Boulder. Are you single, between 22 and 32, a proficient typist, enthusiastic, and able to get on with people? Do you own a car and hold a current driving licence? Do you like the idea of a starting salary of at least £1,200? Then become an Educational Services Representative in London -- one of a team of highly-trained girls...
18th Graham Hill wins his fifth Monaco Grand Prix.
23rd Dr G Kaye is promoted to project programmer.
? Datamation publishes a cynic's view of the IBM lawsuits: one could muse indefinitely over the philosophical and economic bases and consequences of what seems to be happening... we should confine ourselves to contemplating the irony that the American Dream urges us -- goads us unmercifully, in fact -- to pursue the Sweet Smell of Success. Then it rewards the most successful with voracious attacks... Life is a game of King of the Hill after all, and nobody can find the rule book so we write a new one every year. Paradoxically also the only effective attacks can come from your successful competitors. Bill Norris cries hard about IBM unfair practices, but he cries all the way to the bank, bowed under with CDC revenues and profits. Harvey Goodman screams in pain from the apex of a financial empire that didn't exist five years ago, while he asks IBM for enough money to finance a whole new generation of computers.
25th The Sunday Times colour supplement describes the wife-vetting prevalent among dynamic USA companies. The journalist contacts our Director of Personnel, TGP Rogers, for the UK company's position. His comment seems rather evasive (I'm not prepared to discuss it. We're pretty sensitive to the fact that we don't want to intrude into a person's private affairs) and it prompts a Speak Up asking for the official IBM theory and practice on this odious habit. Guess who gets the job of answering? That's right. Mr Rogers: "Wife-vetting does not take place in any shape or form in IBM UK Ltd or IBM UK Labs Ltd."
26th US space flight Apollo 10 splashes down after 8 days -- the next flight will attempt a landing.
27th Charles E Owen, from Hursley, is one of seven new IBM Fellows appointed in New York. RA Kitchener (manager of catering services) asks us not to use foreign coins in the vending machines.
30th San Francisco architect JS Bolles is to design a two-storey, triangular 245,000ft² Lab at San Jose.
June 1969
1st Car mileage rate for casual users is now 1/- per mile for the first 60 miles, then dropping to 10d.
4th The Lab shows off its IBM Schools Computer.
7th Fire destroys the Maltings concert hall at Snape.
8-11 SDD holds its first Professional Recognition Meeting in Montreal for 650 people, 18 from Hursley, who have "performed their assignments with consistent excellence". A similar gathering (PLAN/70) in Washington DC yields a nice quote from ex-IBMer Dr Frederick P (Mythical man-month) Brooks Jr: "Every truly new product comes from the passionate, personal advocacy of one planner or engineer... "
10th The Financial Times reports a new £2.4m order from Lloyds Bank for 600 IBM terminals and 70 line concentrators. The terminals are 3980s, developed in Hursley, and very extensively tested by various "volunteers" using dummy cash withdrawal cards of various kinds over many, many weeks. So many weeks, in fact, that the phrase "Done your dummy cards today?" is still burned on certain brains around the site.
13th A Hatchard moves from manager, computer operations, to ditto, computer services. He's the chap to ask if you want to know more about the delivery of the Lab's fifth 2314 DASD, which has raised online storage capacity to 1321Mb -- the largest capacity in the UK, and possibly the largest in Europe. The Council of Europe's Commission on Science & Technology, including Ian Lloyd MP spends the morning here. CE Richardson is now a senior programming technician, T Anthias an associate programmer.
20th Ten years after Shell-Esso found a natural gas field off the Dutch coast, a company involved in
exploratory drilling says it has found high-grade crude oil in the North Sea. ER Nixon
announces a new job for Neil Davis (UK Internal Decimalisation Programmes Manager) in readiness
for the change, in February 1971, to decimal currency. The Army Pay Corps centre at Worthy Down will have a £2m IBM
system (plus whatever the special software costs) to handle pay and service records for 175,000 troops
(they get it in May 1974). Gordon Dixon adds The Pay Corps always felt happier to be one
generation behind with their computer technology. In 1963, for instance, they had an IBM 705 (valve) machine, the officer
in charge "wanting no truck with new-fangled transistor-based machines until they had proved their reliability for a few
years." (See December 1989.) What will become better known simply as "La Hulpe" gets approval
from BC Christensen, Vice President, Europe.
Q1: who is the Director of the Raleigh Laboratory?
22nd Judy Garland dies, aged 47.
23rd IBM in the US announces new methods of charging for certain activities, most future computer programs, and most education courses. These services were previously offered without charge. Lease and purchase prices in the US are coming down by about 3%. The initial industry reaction is that IBM's move takes the group further away from the most sensitive areas affected by the anti-trust cases. IBM in the UK is studying the feasibility of applying this "unbundling" and will advise its customers on or before April Fool's Day, 1970.
27th WE Klewe is now a senior associate programmer, SC Harvey a project programming writer. JW Wilkinson is the new Computing Centre manager.
July 1969
4th Ann Jones and Rod Laver are this year's Wimbledon singles champions.
5th Two days after the death of Brian Jones, the Rolling Stones play a free concert in Hyde Park to an estimated 250,000 people.
7th AD Kenny becomes PL/I Standards and Planning manager.
8th IBM says the System/360 Customer Information Control System Program Product 5736-U11 is ready for shipment at PID. The basic control system modules need up to 15,000 bytes of core storage. A system supporting 50 hard copy terminals, three file data sets, 100 programs, 50 transaction types, and 50 queues, needs about 20,000 bytes for the tables and work areas. CICS costs $600 per month. (See 25th November.)
11th D Steventon is promoted to associate engineer. DA Fidler is promoted to accounting specialist. At about this time, incidentally, we have not only a Fidler in Accounts, but also a Swindells, not to mention a Woodbury helping to maintain the site, a Kitchener in Catering, and a Czaykowski as secretary of the Music Club...
12th 25-year-old Tony Jacklin wins the British Open.
17th Seven polar bears escape from Brookfield zoo, Chicago, and raid a snack bar. An official claims they've been casing the snack bar for over a year.
18th MA Marlow and JA Wingate are now associate engineers. We learn how five IBM System/360 Model 75s in Houston form NASA's Real Time Computer Complex, processing flight data throughout the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission. IBM stock is at $323.25
21st That mission reaches its climax as Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon's surface ("like a fine powder") at 3.56am British Summer Time. Six hours before we get a new bound phone book with new 'postal code' numbers for our internal mail.
23rd IBM's part in the Apollo triumph is estimated to have cost NASA at least $614m.
25th 1968 is the most successful ever for IBM UK. Net profits after tax are £17.2m on turnover of £125m. The payroll is 9,701 and we are receiving £17m. Hursley is now the largest Lab outside the USA. The Communications Department is born as part of Lab Manager JS Stanton's major shake-up as he takes line control of development and delegates all non-development activity to our first Assistant Lab Manager -- AD Monkhouse.
30th IBM announces the System/3 in the US. It has the 5444 disk storage (Hursley's "Dolphin", the first such drive developed outside the US, and worked on by people such as John Heath and Leo Rigbey) of up to 9.80 million characters, and uses a new 96-column punched card that is about one third the size of the traditional 80-column card, but which holds 20% more information. "Cycle stealing" in its processing unit lets input/output overlap with processing. Its user programming language is RPG II. (Curiously, an earlier machine designed and produced by an earlier tenant of Hursley House had a very similar part number: the 544 "Scimitar" naval strike fighter designed by the Supermarine Division of Vickers Armstrong in the early 1950s. The prototype was built in the hangar adjacent to the entrance to Hursley Park and children from the neighbouring school got the day off because of the noise from Rolls Royce Avons running at full throttle.) An IBM S/360/44 (a Hursley model) will be installed at one of the regional meteorological centres of the World Weather Watch project in Delhi to prepare weather maps every six hours.
31st The IBM 3940 Data Terminal, developed at Hursley, is at the heart of a new online accounting service for five building societies that is being operated by Centre-File, the computer subsidiary of the National Westminster bank. The IBM S/360/30 at Lanarkshire County Council is the first computer in Scotland to be used to help pick prospective jurors saving officials "a winter of overtime" according to the sheriff clerk.
August 1969
1st DA Goodwin is promoted to senior associate programmer. IBM files its own suit against another computer manufacturer, Cogar Corp, its President (computer genius George R Cogar -- why "genius"? You'd know if you'd programmed his delightful C4 desktop machine, aka the Singer 1500, aka the ICL 1500), and 66 former IBMers all now working for Cogar who have all resigned from our Components Division since last November.
8th Handley Page, our oldest plane maker, is bust. PC Coleman is promoted to associate programmer.
9th Sharon Tate and others die horribly in Hollywood.
13th Professor John Todd of CalTech offers his formula for lectures at a computer symposium at Girton College, Cambridge: For the first 15 minutes talk about something that everybody understands. For the next 15, quote your friends. Especially those in the audience. It then doesn't matter what you say for the remaining half-hour as long as you stop after 15 minutes.
15th Miss R Reader is now a senior associate programmer. Don't pick blackberries on the estate. Toxic sprays are used to control weeds; contamination of the fruit might have resulted.
17th The Woodstock festival ends; about 400,000 fans were there. Gordon Dixon reminds me the festival was actually staged in upstate NY as the residents of Woodstock (near the IBM Kingston plant) protested when they heard of the plans.
20th Mick Jagger is shot while filming Ned Kelly in Australia. IBM in the US announces its most powerful computer yet, the S/360 model 195, and a new department at DPD HQ to support its marketing. How fast is it? Well, light travels only 53 feet per instruction cycle -- you work it out! It can handle up to 15 jobs concurrently and may have as many as 664 components crammed onto a chip less than one eighth of an inch square. It costs from £700,000/month to rent, or £3m to buy.
22nd PC Dean is promoted to computer operator II, H Halliwell and P Quarendon to senior associate programmer. Midland Bank buys two S/360/40s and associated kit for £1.3m. IBM now has its computers in the overseas departments of all the major clearing banks.
25th Rupert Murdoch bids to buy The Sun.
31st Bob Dylan plays to 150,000 fans on the Isle of Wight. Undefeated World heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano dies in a plane crash.
September 1969
1st Gadaffi seizes power in Libya. DC Mounce joins Hawker Siddeley (Aviation) Ltd. K Stares joins IBM [?] on, he claims, £615 per year.
5th RA Selman is a senior associate programmer.
12th BC Christensen talks about pay: To eliminate the "mysterious" element some employees sense in our pay practices, we are now preparing a communication package ... from this presentation, he will understand the basic elements of the IBM practice of establishing and correlating pay with overall job responsibilities. New supplies of Registered Confidential, IBM Confidential and Personal and Confidential rubber stamps are available from the Receptionist in Hursley House.
16th The IBM System/3 is now available in the UK.
19th RN Cuff and DJ Zimmer are promoted to senior associate programmer.
24th ICL makes $14m pre-tax profit on turnover of $277m, spending $34m on R&D.
26th IBM World Trade approves our plan to design a new permanent building. It is to be airconditioned throughout, will have over 111,000 square feet of floor space. (But see 20th August 1971.)
29th Block X is now ready for occupation in its new guise as a "landscaped" open plan office, complete with pausenzone or rest area. It is designed to be satisfactory when occupied to 80% capacity or more (below this, the background noise level will be too low and individual noises, such as the dropping of a pen on a desktop, will be apparent.)
October 1969
1st Concorde 001 (the French one) goes supersonic.
2nd IBM announces a new electric typewriter using magnetic cards holding 5,000 characters each.
5th The BBC transmits the first Monty Python.
10th P Verey is a junior engineer. MP Saward warns us that there has been a noticeable increase recently in the number of persons using computer facilities for unauthorised private use. Examples of this have been gramophone record inventories, shopping lists, computer generated pictures, nursery school notices, to name but a few. The Computer facilities at Hursley cost the Laboratory a considerable amount of real money. Disciplinary action will be initiated by the Computer Centre on any future occurrences of such misuse of our facilities. (So there!) A three minute phone call to New York costs £4 2s 0d. So why not send a 200-word Telex instead, for 4/2d?
14th The 10/- note becomes the 50p coin. Six IBMers from Hursley are at an SDD symposium in New York to hear that "Mechanical products built this company... we have an enormous future dependency on mechanical technology."
17th JE Read is promoted to computer operator II, CJ Roach to senior associate engineer.
21st Jack Kerouac dies, aged 47. Herr Willi Brandt is the new chancellor of West Germany.
24th Tell any of your friends who are business people that IBM make the finest and most useable Dictation Machines. The first 500 orders resulting from your leads each win a portable VHF radio.
31st Thanks to the several US companies that have filed charges against IBM, we can no longer destroy much of the paper which we previously disposed of. The US Court has ruled that the parties in the case must not destroy any records which may be required. Briefly, if you receive a memo, letter or other document which you would normally read and then put into your waste paper basket, then this document is not required to be kept. If the document is put into a drawer or file for future reference, then it must be kept until further notice.
November 1969
3rd Work begins on a new National Theatre, after over a century of arguments and delay. Unrelated to this (?) Dr GW Robinson joins IBM at Hursley. Sue Hodgkinson attempts to teach him programming (for the first, but not the last, time!).
7th KE Davies is a senior associate programmer.
9th Prince Philip, speaking on American TV, says the Queen's allowance (£475,000 per year) is based on costs of 18 years ago, and needs reviewing.
10th The Watson Lab is moving to Yorktown Heights next September. The new A1 size flip chart paper will supersede all existing sizes of flip chart paper used in the Lab; the fixing holes drilled in the new paper will make it compatible with American standards but will necessitate modifications to all Boards in both offices and conference rooms.
14th MH Eacott is promoted to senior associate programmer, AD Jones to associate, RP Seaman to project, and PJ Titman to senior.
19th Electronics Weekly predicts we are to enter the UK time-sharing market next February with a S/360 model 50, "CALL/360," and some very competitive pricing policies. Connection time will be charged at £3 10s per hour and processor time at £5 10s per minute. 3,400 bytes of data can be stored for a month for 10s. (50p)
21st KG Taylor is promoted to associate engineer. Lab Manager JS Stanton is involved in a serious motor accident, about which he says: I therefore expect all staff travelling in the front seats of Company cars or Company-contracted cars to wear seat belts at all times... I would make it obligatory but I can only ask all staff to accept and implement the Company's wish that seat belts be worn whenever possible. (See 31st January 1983.)
IBM stock is at $352.75.
25th The DPD house magazine tells us that Ben Riggins, Gerry Anderson, Carl Leinfelder, and Ray Vander Vliet have recently been given awards for their work in developing CICS. Among CICS users at this time are the Transamerica Corporation, the James Bond movies distributor. (Apart from this snippet, there hasn't been too much about CICS yet, has there?! Read on.)
28th MJ Quick is an associate programmer.
December 1969
3rd The CALL/360 terminal service is demonstrated in a crowded auditorium via a link to a model 50 at the New York Service Bureau.
4th Handing out pieces of lunar rock brought back from the Apollo 11 mission to the governors of the states, President Nixon says that after many politicians have promised the moon he wants the record to show that he's the first one to deliver it.
5th R Watton is a senior associate engineer. IBM stock is at $357.63.
12th GHJ Hocking is a computer operator.
13th The Supreme Court in Washington orders four southern states to end segregation completely.
18th The House of Lords extends the abolition of the death penalty indefinitely.
19th LR Walker is promoted to project programmer. AD Monkhouse tells us a desk received into furniture store in the course of inter-office transfer recently had more than 60 cigarette burns over the top surface, some of which had pierced the veneer. He doesn't believe staff would be so carefree with their own property and asks for greater consideration in the use and care of the Company's equipment. The current issue of Harvard Business Review suggests powerful new display concepts in development at Poughkeepsie will permit top executives to "talk" directly to computers, and provide immediate graphic answers to an executive's intuitive questions about business operations, allowing him to test possible alternatives prior to a decision on the best course of action. IBM stock is at $363.75.
26th SDD President Bob O Evans, speaking at a meeting of Boulder Lab managers, says SDD must be more responsive and flexible: To do this we must return to the laboratories, to the people who really know what needs to be done and how to do it. We are going to transfer more and more responsibility, authority and accountability for product decisions to the labs.
29th JT Czaykowski returns from the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford with a PhD thesis on "The slow viscous flow around a sphere approaching a plane" tucked under the intellectual equivalent of his belt. He is promoted to senior associate programmer (and gets his PhD on 28th November 1970).
31st The PL/I F compiler (V5) is now available. The development team consisted of a mix of Hursley IBMers and people from CAP (Computer Analysts and Programmers).
The Lab has disclosed twice the number of inventions as last year; 23 staff have received Invention Awards. Of these inventions it is said some inventors submitted ideas in the first flush of enthusiasm without the backing of basic calculations or statistics. Before leaving the UK for visits or assignments to other locations where you may have to discuss your ideas, it is wise first to disclose here, in the Lab, anything likely to be inventive. UK inventors cannot legally "swear-back" to witnessed work book entries as can inventors in the USA... A first level invention achievement award is now $1,600 at each set of 12 points attained.