The Computer
This episode of ‘Mill Lane’ rings up the curtain on the very first appearance by…The Computer. Our story begins in the University Archives, which preserve a file of paperwork concerning ‘office mechanisation’:
Letter from A.E.L. Parnis, Esq. [Treasurer, Finance Board] to W.J. Sartain, Esq. [Deputy Secretary-General of the Faculties] dated 20th May, 1961.
He proposes a new Committee to consider: …the use that might be made in the central University Offices of computing machines.
He advises that the Finance Board Office have investigated putting stipends and wages on to: …the Local Examinations Syndicate’s Programme Controlled Computer… and indeed the necessary programme for the stipends has already been more or less written.
But he warns that ‘the Locals’ have not guaranteed enough time on their machines, which in any case are not ideally suited to ‘our sort of work’.
Then there is…the allocation of lecture rooms (as you probably know, the Department of Engineering is already using a computer to work out its lecture list).
And even the Colleges might not be immune: One might indeed foresee a day when a Tutor would never be able to plead incuria since the necessary information would automatically be thrown up by the machine and transmitted to him!
The writer also attended the national Financial Officers’ Conference, where (alas!) there was no very useful discussion of the computer question:
The matter came up rather late on the second day of the Conference and all that we learned was that both Birmingham and Liverpool had turned over to computers that very weekend for doing their pay-rolls, and the Finance officers of both Universities were anxiously awaiting the results!
Cambridge University Library, home to the University Archives.
Another officer, who initialled himself ‘C.H.B.’, subsequently attended a course of Lectures on Computer Appreciation, and dictated this Note dated 16 April 1962:
…mathematical knowledge and a mastery of binary arithmetic is essential only to the back-room boys.
I thought the lectures given by members of the staff of the I.C.T. firm were pretty useless. One introductory lecture accompanied by a film “Time to think” was particularly infantile and scarcely rose above commercial television advertising. [International Computers and Tabulators, or ICT, was a leading British computing firm].
‘C.H.B.’ was also unimpressed by a computer project carried out for Addenbrooke’s Hospital, which analysed 1800 patients into 10 groups:
I am sure that someone like Baldwin [perhaps one of the clerks at the Old Schools] could have done it much quicker and as efficiently as a computer. It was a question of turning a simple job into a quite complicated one by putting it into EDSAC II.
EDSAC and EDSAC II were early programmable computers developed by the University’s computing laboratory, which were subsequently ‘taken up’ commercially.
It [i.e. computerisation] would clearly be frightfully expensive in money, accommodation and top grade officers and assistants. The need would quicken if recruitment of clerks became really critical and if there was a great deal more centralisation than there is at present.
And ‘C.H.B.’ concludes with this darkly dystopian and prescient peroration:
In a fit of nightmare I can foresee a master “University Computing Programmer”, mightier than all the Administrative Officers put together, virtually controlling the whole policy of the University to suit his machine – and it frightens me.
However, a letter dated 17th November 1964 from Mr MacPherson (Treasurer, Finance Board), to Mr Gardner reveals that at the Guildhall the Trojan Horse is already within the gates. Representatives of four computing firms are investigating the operations of the City Accounts Department, where: …they already have punched card equipment and an experienced machine accountant who is probably much better able to talk the language than any of our staff.
And on 9th November 1966 the University Reporter makes this fateful announcement (p.441):
Under the authority of Grace 2 of 13 October 1965 the Finance Board have appointed Miss B. Woodrow to be a Computer Officer in Grade III with tenure from 28 November 1966 for three years.
On 16th November 1966 (Reporter pp.468-9), the General Board Committee for the Co-ordination of Computing Services in the University announces that an I.C.T. 1901 computer has been installed in the Old Schools, rented by the University for administrative purposes. (When not in use, it can be hired by departments for the princely sum of £8 10s per hour). We are informed that the central processor of the ‘1901’ has a storage capacity of 8K!
Computing in the 1960s: the Titan machine room at the University's Computing Laboratory. Copyright Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge. Reproduced by permission.
The Reporter of 22nd May features a lively Discussion dated 7th May 1968 (pp.2069-2074). We learn that the computer has been installed in the only large lecture room in the Law Schools. Law classes have moved to the East Room on the piano nobile, which means that academics who had been accustomed to lunch there have been displaced into the overcrowded Combination Room instead. Predictably, these manoeuvres pleased no-one…
Prof. Glanville Williams (Chairman of the Law Faculty Board) expressed grave concern: It seems to me that it was a great mistake of the University to agree to the installation of this gigantic computer within the ancient Law Schools.
While Dr Hugh Plommer (Faculty of Classics) hurled anathemas:
For the unthinkable has already happened. We have lost the East Room, the best of these rooms, one of the grandest English essays in the High Roman manner and in some ways unique, because we needed – of all things! – to house a ‘Computer’. Nothing is sacred today from the cupidity of prestigitators and technologists.
And, once the University installed this ‘gigantic computer’ within the sacred precincts of the 15th-century Old Schools, the Computer was not slow in making its presence felt in Mill Lane…
Classics Library Report 1967-68:
We have not yet had the final computerised statement of accounts for the financial year 1967-68.
And, Classics Library Report 1968-69:
We have not yet received a statement from the computer section for the year…
Letter from Dorothy Crawford to Dr Peck dated August 7th 1970:
Dear Dr Peck
Perhaps you have already heard from Mrs Kemp [the Faculty Secretary] of the financial crisis we have again brought upon ourselves at the Library. The position is bad, far worse than I feared when I first began to look into it…
We do keep a record in the Library of bills we have sent down to the Faculty Office but this year our accounting has suffered from a large number of foreign invoices which have been paid by the computer without sterling equivalents being sent back to the office.
Dorothy Crawford is Dr Dorothy Thompson, FBA. Arthur Leslie Peck (1902-1974) was an Aristotelian and a Fellow of Christ’s College. And already we see the computer turning into the perfect work-place autocrat!
Having recently discovered (a chance discovery from a misdirected computer sheet) that monthly figures were available and, somewhat worryingly, that these did not entirely agree with our figures in the Library, Miss Ethridge [the full-time Library Assistant] and I went to see Mr Tinkler at the Financial Board to discuss our problems…it may be better that the problems of decimalisation are met before any further change…
The ICT computer, although autocratic, could cope with the monetary system of pounds, shillings and pence which prevailed in Great Britain until February 1971. Hats off to the ingenuity of computer programmers in those days! And hats off, as well, to the helpful Mr Tinkler, who in a Carry On production would certainly be played by the late Charles Hawtrey…
Mr Tinkler gives helpful advice.