[Nottingham] computer history was Re: Bletchley Park Visit - now with actual date!

[Godfrey Nix]

On Monday, July 30, 2012 10:42:03 PM Duncan wrote:
> Given the interest in the museum; Eric Foxley[1] amassed an appreciable
> collection of old computers and parts which he donated to the museum at
> Bletchley.  He lives locally and is willing to give a talk on old computers
> and his former collection if people are interested.  Let me know if you are.
> 
> [1] http://www.chezfred.org.uk/University/ComputerXHistory/index.htm
> 

Grief! That set of pictures takes me back. I have some papertape and program 
printouts from 1970 when I was programming PDP-11 in FOCAL for calculating 
Apollo launch times, oil refinery distillation column dimensions and other 
such engineering esoterica. (And playing 'tunes' using the magnetic brake on 
the high speed papertape reader until it started producing smoke). Pity I did 
not keep any photos from that time though I do remember 'programming' the ROM 
diode matrix board using a pair of wirecutters and a soldering iron. Those 
were the days when an entire program was stored in just a few dozen Kb. 
Graphical printouts were limited to charts using space character on the Y-axis 
and LF/CR for the X-axis with 'x' , 'o' or '.' for the points of the graph.

Godfrey