The Lay-by

This is the place to pause and reflect on the 'good ole days'. Here you'll find stories pictures and some facts about ICL it's people and its past. You'll also find some images of Curry events.

To make this section live up to the reputation of those great days long forgotten, I need your stories and images. Inclusion is at the discrection of management and its decision is final!

I've included links at the end of the section. Let me know of any that may be suitable.

Les in Window at King's College Chapel Cambridge

"Not too tight, pet, I need to be able to pose like this"

September 17th 2010

November 29th 2009

September 17th 2004 - A Bash

Spot the villains!

Here's some more.

He's there again.

June 17th 2002 - The Summer Bash

Here is HQ. You'd never guess what goes on behind this innocent exterior

Note the unmarked white van

The HQ bar complete with bunting - the world cup was on and England was still in it!

Thank goodness for the English cricket team.

The curry was up to it's usual good form

and the beer seemed to go down well enough

That Graham Gill gets everywhere. Ron, sporting a splendid Bob Dylan tea-shirt, did say that he had been thinking about an away day - just thinking!

Luckily for me Les had had one or six when he tried to take my photo, so it came out all blurred

Those Were The Days

Some say!

There follows a few pictures taken during the commissioning and acceptance of the first 2970 at the DHSS in Longbenton, Newcastle-upon-tyne.

You may recognise some of the villains

The serious pose!

Looking at the tape decks in the background brings back the nightmares of trying to get dynamic switching to work and that famous comment 'Only ICL could design a deck that needed to create a f---ing gale to read a tape'

Sadly, John Dicks is no longer with us.

A well known Old Bugga performing live on the Oper. Didn't think much of the music!

That well know Old Bugga again - seems to be confused about which way was up - things don't change!

He's here again. The caption reads 'What's one of these, pet?'

Photo courtesy of John Sumner

September 29th 2006

Do You Remember

Quality Training

Those happy hours spent playing with our turtles - meetings arranged at odd times like 10:12 and, of course the mandatory wearing of the 'Tick'

Reminds me of a story. A high ranking but very blunt project manager, who shall remain nameless just in case I was given the wrong story, attended a meeting where many senior ICL persons were present. The chairman looked round the room and spotted that our PM wasn't wearing the gong. On being asked, in a very stern manner 'Why aren't you wearing your quality badge?' our man said 'Oh f--k, I've left it on my pyjamas'.

The 2903

The Big Stuff

In this section you'll find more information, however the images are large and could take some time to download, therefore, you'll find a description of the item and a thumbnail image. Click on the thumbnail to get a pop-up window

ICL Learning 1996 - a list of staff members

For the serious, a bit of ICL background

1964 - 1966
In 1964, the Computer Group broke away from the Electrical Engineering Department to form the Department of Computer Science. An undergraduate course in Computer Science was set up in October 1965, with around 30 undergraduates a year. Head of Department was Professor Tom Kilburn, F.R.S. The undergraduate course was to be distinctive relative to most of the Computer Science departments that sprung up after it in the U.K. in that there was a strong emphasis on engineering as well as software and mathematics. Dai Edwards became Professor of Computer Engineering in 1966 and then ICL Professor in 1967 due to the generous support given by ICL as a reward for the work done by the Computer group for them.

1966 - 1979
The last major computer designed and built by Tom Kilburn's team and supported by an SRC grant of £630,000 was MU5. This provided a novel architecture that was geared to the needs of programs written in high-level languages. Professor Derrick Morris took over the software leadership. MU5 first ran in 1972, with the matching operating system and family of compilers fully operational by 1974. The basic architecture design of MU5 was incorporated in the ICL VME2900 series, and could still be seen in ICL products two decades later. MU5 was used in the Department until 1980 supported by a further SRC grant of £130,000 for 1973.

In 1971 the department moved into a purpose-built building costing £1.7M, with the University of Manchester Regional Computing Centre on the ground floor. By now the Computing Service operation, that had built up to a massive operation under Atlas, had become an autonomous University unit, UMRCC. It used independent commercial mainframes now that the Manchester Atlas had reached the end of its life.

If you want more of the above try http://www.chstm.man.ac.uk/nahc/contents/icl.htm

Links

- Friends of ICL