(This entry was originally posted in Facebook in 2016)
In September 1970 I began my career in computers and my career at SaskTel.
I had graduated from the U of S, Regina Campus (now known as U of R) the previous May. In the absence of any job offers, I worked that summer as a farm hand. When September arrived, I still had no job offers so I registered in the Education Faculty and attended classes for 1½ days before I received the SaskTel offer.
I started my I.T. as a computer operator for SaskTel’s IBM 360-30 with TOS! For you computer geeks, TOS stood for Tape Operating System – it didn’t even have a disk drive! For you non-geeks, if you are reading this on-line you have in your hand, or at your fingertips, a computer that is far more powerful than that was!
In the picture above, I am sitting at the console – a keyboard that is probably the only component still existing in the computers of 2017. I am looking towards the CPU. Under my feet is a raised floor to allow for air conditioning to cool all of the components.
Behind me you can see one of the tape drive units, there were five altogether. The tape reels had 2400 feet of tape and the vacuum columns to allow the tape to move smoothly across the read-write heads. The tape drive that is visible (which is on the left of the bank of five) was the one with the system software. The one at the other end of the five had the application software (the apps, as they are called these days) and in the middle were three data drives.
Not in the picture is the card reader/punch. But I have included a picture of a punch card. The punch cards would be in trays with a capacity of 3000 cards. It was a source of pride for us computer operator types to be able to lift all 3000 out of the tray, at the same time, and set them in the hopper of the reader – without them fanning all over the floor!
Also not in the picture is a high speed printer with print characters spinning on a high speed chain. That printer could create 100’s of pages per minute of fanfold printout.
All of this equipment created a great deal of noise, particularly if the hoods were open. One of the greatest frights I ever experienced was one day at 2 AM when everything was running, and open, and there was a power failure. Instantly my world became pitch black and dead quiet! I slowly backed up, sat down on the chair and concentrated at getting my heart rate down while awaiting the emergency lighting to come on 20 seconds later.
One other vignette. Sometimes I would bring Beverly Boyle in with me and we would do rolling chair races around this million dollars’ worth of equipment!!
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This will no doubt be a surprise. But——in 1950, I started working for Canadian Fire Insurance. Corner of Portage & Main. I started out on the comptometer, but things changed. Along came the Keypunch, made by IBM. As time passed I went from the Keypunch to the Verifier. Those cards you display are very familiar to me. After they were punched they came to me. If any errors the verifier notched the card. They were returned & corrected before going to the big printer you mention. I can’t think what it was called then. Big & noisy. Yes. Most people didn’t want to work in our room. Too noisy.
I always believed that was the beginning of the computer era. It took years before companies in Winnipeg would accept the computers. They finally realized it was people that make errors, not machines.
That is 70 years of progress!
Love,
Aunt Wilma