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During our weekly Skype sessions ‘Jeff of Willington’ and I discuss World affairs. We can’t lay claim to having solved a lot, but it passes time.
‘Jeff of Willington’ in International Discussions with Geoff of the U.S.A.
We sometimes struggle with names of people and places from yesteryear. So we tend to throw in a name we can remember. It doesn’t always fit the subject matter but makes us look as though we still have our marbles. On Monday Jeff mentioned the Super Computer, at Bletchley Park, used to break the Germans WWII Enigma code. It was huge being assembled from telephone exchange parts. Hence the name Colossus.
A reconstruction of Colossus
I hadn’t heard of the Enigma code but, trying to sound intelligent, I recalled studying Elgar’s Enigma Variations at School. That must have been where the Germans got the name. It pays to sound authoritative.
Turning to the Egyptian up-rising we acted like Statesmen, deferring a final statement until our fact-finding mission was complete, but noted the longevity of Mubarak’s reign. Regarding his current banning of Internet access we noted he didn’t take this action when he came to power, 30 years ago. That would have been difficult. Few people realise how comparatively recent the advent of the internet really was. And also, the common use of the Personal Computer (PC).
Last year the man credited as the inventor of the PC, Dr. H. Edward Roberts, died quietly in a Hospital in Macon, Georgia.
H. Edward Roberts
Months before his death a youngster he had met, now a grown man, began calling Roberts and flew down to be at his bedside shortly before he died. The two had collaborated in earlier times, with Roberts becoming the young man’s employer and mentor. In later times there had been ill will between them.
Roberts had pioneered his MITS Altair PC and this young man had asked if he could try a computer programme he had written, on the PC. Actually the young man had a co-writer in developing the programme. When it was found to work successfully, the two moved to Albuquerque to work for Roberts.
Roberts, an imposing character at 6 feet 4 inches took no guff from his employees but this young lad who dropped out of Harvard to take up this opportunity, was a scrappy little guy who WAS ALWAYS RIGHT. His name was Bill Gates.
A young Bill Gates
The other member of the duo, Paul G. Allen, left Honeywell to go to Albuquerque. Together they wrote the software ‘Microsoft Basic’.
Allen and Gates
Soon after this Roberts sold the business, becoming a millionaire and returning to University to pursue his first love, medicine. He became a doctor setting up practice in a small town in Georgia.
The duo formed Microsoft and became billionaires. Allen eventually distanced himself from Microsoft but retains a king’s ransom of stock and acts as a consultant. Along the way he bought various major sports teams such as the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks and the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers, building a new stadium for the latter.
He too called Roberts in his final months.
Rose Garden, Home of the Trailblazers
Both became philanthropists giving billions to charitable causes.
Microsoft was all about software. Others produced the computers such as IBM, Dell, HP etc. Eventually Steve Jobs, a co-founder of Apple, despite a troubled company history, would pioneer the Mac and go on to innovate revolutionary devices. The iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. An enigmatic man, in early days he slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. He also went to India and became a Buddhist.
He once stated.
My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people.
This became the standard for industry in the 90s, reflected in “There is no “I” in the word “TEAM”.
Steve Jobs
I bought a PC in 1985, but soon sold it due to limited potential. A step forward was the ability to backspace to delete mistakes, helping typists who re-typed the whole page, or used white-out and then carefully typed over it.
Talking of typists, the young men probably never realised the enormity of their product on society. When PCs reached popularity in offices in the eighties, typist’s work became a breeze. But the push for cost reduction and increased profits in the nineties, saw the typist pools disbanded.
Typist’s Pool. Note no computers.
Many became secretaries, or in the P.C. (Politically Correct) environment, evolved into Administrative Assistants or multi-taskers.
Though great for certain applications, it was not yet a communication tool. Companies linked PCs internally on a local area network (LAN) but like the automobile in its infancy, it was somewhat parochial until roads were built, suitable for them to travel farther afield.
I remember Ben Clover, who would become my first boss at Garett, later to become Airesearch/AlliedSignal/Honeywell, telling me a story as he drove me from Frankfurt airport to Garrett GmbH where he would interview me for a job. His dad had driven him, in the 1920s, from Chicago to Los Angeles along dirt roads. Each time they met a car coming the other way, they would exchange information about the route ahead, including mud holes and rock formations to avoid.
Benton Clover
The internet arrived in the mid 1990s allowing communication directly with the customer. Engineers and sales personnel, by necessity, had to embrace the PC with all its vast abilities.
Even more synergies were realised to drive bigger profits. Even the Administrative Assistants were gradually phased out as engineers themselves, now adept at computer use, wrote their own reports and letters.
It also allowed coloured charts to be created and transmitted to far corners of the globe.
Just as babies like to look at colour books, some people in industry became addicted to generating charts. Remember babies have two product outputs, noise and mess which others have to clean up.
Whereas it is essential to measure a product’s success and create plans for the future, too many have taken that addiction to extremes.
When you become over-enamoured with chart production you rob your staff of the time to visualize, create, develop, produce, sell, support and improve the product. Your company suffers, as does the customer.
So we have come a long way in the past 15 years. Different generations use the advances in differing ways. By observation, older people have mastered the PCs and internet to varying degrees. Some write and exchange photos. keeping in touch with family and friends. Some merely forward stuff. Odd FWDs are interesting such as the Burma scene I received from Len, in England.
This was taken on a precise day of the year. Now turn it upright.
Amazing
People thirty upwards use e-mail extensively but teens and twenty-somethings skip this media. For them everything has to be INSTANT. MYFACE, SPACEBOOK, TWITTER plus texting is their format. They can walk a city block and see nothing other than messages on their ‘phones.
No longer is the computer for home and office alone. The general populace too are enlightened to everything on the super highway. Hence the awareness in Egypt. When you invent, you cannot restrict.
Tools are there for all of us. How we use them shapes our lives and the World.
How fitting that I publish this on February 6, the 100th birthday of THE GREAT COMMUNICATOR, Ronald Reagan.
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