Also Innovators: How One Computer Salesman Contributed
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ALSO INNOVATORS How one computer salesman contributed to the digital revolution ALSO INNOVATORS How one computer salesman contributed to the digital revolution Christopher B. Yardley, PhD Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] Available to download for free at press.anu.edu.au ISBN (print): 9781760462987 ISBN (online): 9781760462994 WorldCat (print): 1099184186 WorldCat (online): 1099184654 DOI: 10.22459/AI.2019 This title is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). The full licence terms are available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode Cover design and layout by ANU Press. Cover photographs: Marcin Wichary via flic.kr/p/bXqtAs and flic.kr/p/4AftJ1. First edition 2016 This edition © 2019 ANU Press Contents Preface . vii 1 . ‘A proper job’ . 1 2 . Once were cowboys . 23 3 . A working ‘home away from home’ . 41 4 . A taste of Northern bitter . 53 5 . Eddie French’s rainbow . 73 6 . The brewer’s assistant . 95 7 . Pursuing my own rainbow’s end . 105 8 . The tallyman and other endeavours . 115 9 . Adventures in Southeast Asia . 125 10 . As far south as we could go . 203 11 . Working with the airlines in the Australasia-Pacific region . 223 12 . The ups and downs of a contractor . 257 13 . Not a multinational this time . 267 Afterword . 281 Preface I have relished my working life in the computer industry. I enjoyed every day. I was lucky enough to be at the front-end of the developing business of data processing, working in small, focused units selling systems. For half of my working life, I was with the Sperry Corporation (through many name changes), before it merged with the Burroughs Organisation in the late 1980s to form Unisys. I do not know if it was deliberate policy, but every two years or so my sales role within Sperry changed, from salesman, to technician, to manager. I was never confused, but as I was to learn this was not common practice at Unisys, which had problems putting me into a neat box. I have always thought of myself as a salesman, although job titles may have obscured that simple definition and I did not always conform to my own definition of a salesman. I was certainly never any good at telling jokes, although for a short while I did make notes of some punchlines for what I thought were good things to remember. For me, this was a mistake. My strength was in sharing my experiences in the industry, which became particularly relevant as computers evolved through designated generations and the same mistakes were repeated with each cycle. I was a mainframe salesman, and remain a novice in understanding the full potential of my PC. Every work opportunity that came up was more than likely accepted by my wife and me. We moved home 14 times, and lived and worked in five different countries with our two boys. I managed to resist the challenge of working for myself until 2001. Opportunities arose, but I was happy to keep working in a multinational organisation, where experts were available if you had the courage to ask for help. When running my own small software shop, with limited resources, I was caught out by my lack of training and preparedness for protracted legal disputes, although in the early days as a salesman I was confident enough to draft customer contracts. vii ALSO INNOVatoRS I decided to retire in 2005. In preparation for retirement, while I reduced the number of days in my working week, I wrote the following story. I was testing myself to remember events and names. Most of the events have survived the process of editing, but many names have been cut, and I need to apologise to a few hundred or so work colleagues. The question I had to ask myself in preparing the book for publication was: does the name make a significant contribution to the story? If it did not, it was cast aside. But all those names still live in my memory. I was not quite sure what my book was trying to describe until I read Walter Isaacson’s book, The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. Isaacson’s story follows the ups and downs of the innovators of computing and programming through to the challenges presented by the internet. I was interested to read about a few persons I knew, one or two I had the privilege of meeting, as well as others who were just famous names. I got to thinking about the purpose-built computing machines of the World War II and their development into the general purpose entities initially described by Alan Turing in the 1930s. My first experience of a computer was as a university undergraduate writing a simple formula for determining the amount of reinforcing steel needed in a beam to carry a specific load. We had been taught how to use a translation set of rules called Fortran — short for ‘formula translation’. Our scribbles were encoded in paper-tape, as were the results from the computer, which required another human– machine intervention to view. Today we expect to see such a result within seconds on the PC or tablet on our desk. Such has been the development of technology. Walter Isaacson’s book features a number of key designers and visionaries who were seen as driving this technological change. My perspective is that the laboratory designer who strove to get a circuit to run at its fastest was certainly an enabler, but that the everyday user — in my case, the computer salesman — is also an innovator. Under pressure to sell products, I had to derive and sell the solutions to problems. In this, the development of my career has run in parallel to the development of computing. I hope you enjoy the narrative. Christopher B. Yardley September 2016 [email protected] viii 1 ‘A proper job’ A career in computing was not planned. I had worked towards joining the (UK) Royal Navy, as a lad attending the Skinners’ School in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in the 1950s. I was a member of the school cadet corps, and as a 16-year-old I had signed up to the school and university branch of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. I was called for service in 1956 while still at school, and only escaped going to war when the captain of HMS Ocean, on his way to the Suez engagement, realised he had schoolchildren on board. We were unloaded onto HMS Vanguard, the only battleship in the British fleet, and kept in a secure environment for two weeks, as Prime Minister Anthony Eden had not publicly declared that he was sending gunboats to Egypt. At the time, Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies was negotiating for a peaceful resolution to the crisis. The experience of being aboard the Vanguard further whetted my ambition to be a sailor. My ambition was partly satisfied when in 1958 I was offered a place, and officer training, in the navy. My dad had served in the Royal Air Force during World War II, qualifying as a codes and cyphers specialist; he had to sign my application. He was, however, loathe to sign the mandatory 29-year service agreement, asking what would I do when I demobilised as a 47-year-old lieutenant commander. He suggested I undertake a university course and then decide if I felt the same way. With the study I had taken to get into the navy, I was able to procure a place at the University of Leeds, studying civil engineering. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Leeds, but was unsure about spending the rest of my life in Wellington boots in and around building sites. 1 ALSO INNOVatoRS Figure 1.1: Schoolboy and sailor, Royal Naval Reserve service on HMS Zest, 1957. Source: Author’s collection . 2 1 . ‘A PROPER JOb’ ‘Grow up, son. Get a proper job, the same as everyone else.’ That was mum and dad’s resolution to my uncertainty when I arrived home at Tunbridge Wells in 1961, after three years at the University of Leeds, with a shiny new civil engineering BSc and an understanding of the design of hyperparabolic shells. I also had a girlfriend, Audrey, who I hoped would be my wife. I had fulfilled the two principal ambitions I took to the North of England as an undergraduate. At Leeds I had also taken the coursework of a new curriculum BSc (Econ.) in business management and I had passed these final examinations in addition to the degree course — not well, but passed. What to do next? I had spoken to the faculties of medicine and law at Leeds and made enquiries of Kent County Council for an extension of my education grants. I was keen but unrealistic in thinking that events would let me drift into continuing my student lifestyle. It was not to be. That one sensible conversation with mum and dad had me back in the real world. What was a proper job? I targeted Friday’s Daily Telegraph employment pages and responded to four generic advertisements that were seeking ‘an ambitious graduate’. I was invited to two interviews. IBM was looking for trainee salesmen. At the time, IBM was the world’s largest information technology company, with 80 per cent of the market of what was then called ‘electronic data processing’. IBM had placed three of the advertisements I had answered, with slight variances in the text and reply addresses, and was not offended that I had picked it out more than once.