When I was in high school there were the usual visits
to the career guidance center. Actually, not so much a center as it was a room
where a counselor would entertain students, listen to their likes and dislikes
and offer some measure of guidance as to what should be considered as a
possible future career path. When it came my turn it was more of a case of
throwing a dart at the board. I was clueless.
However, it was
during my time at Normanhurst Boys High School in suburban Sydney Australia that
the first inklings of where my career might take me surfaced. Inklings, but at
the time not passions, began when family friend took me to an insurance company
as its first computer was being deployed. The year was 1963 and the IBM
mainframe being installed was an IBM 650 - sold in the 1953-1962 period – as
the IBM 360 product line really didn’t get rolling until a year or so later. I
took a souvenir from that visit back to school; a white paper tape full of
holes.
I kept hold of that simple roll of paper tape for a very
long time. Curious about what information was contained in those rows of
punched holes but I never did figure it out. Two years later, as a more mature
student in Form 3 (or year 10 by US count), my father left for Wellsboro,
Pennsylvania, to learn all about a new computerized typesetting system called
the Mergenthaler’s Linofilm. It was a revolutionary system for setting type,
not in lead ingots, but on film that could be transferred to aluminum plates
for enabling offset printing. From a handful of newspapers to being able to
support twenty six local and regional newspapers, it was the first such system
deployed in Australia.
Translation? There was no support in-country apart from
my father so every weekend I tagged along while he performed routine
maintenance. But there it was again, rolls of paper tape but this time they
were much wider form factors. The process was simple. Fonts and size were
represented by those which when processed moved lenses and a carousel (of
fonts) aligning them before a camera that shot them onto film. Little did I
know at the time that the first seeds of passion were being sown!
Finishing high school I went to Sydney University to
study engineering. Every one of my mother’s brothers was an engineer, civil or
mechanical. However, it wasn’t to my taste and after a brief introduction to
architecture, I was done. At the time, computing of any sort wasn’t considered
an academic pursuit. By happenstance, I checked in to a computer aptitude test
IBM was conducting at the University and as the New Year began, I was the sole
candidate selected by IBM. That first seed of passion that had taken root a
couple of years earlier now blossomed.
That passion has sustained me for the past five decades – yes I was still a teenager when IBM advised that I was going to join several other successful candidates from across Australia as a computing apprentice. A trade, no less! Imagine that happening in this century! For two years, I was taught everything from how to write an operating system, how to program a computer channel connecting disks, tape drives, card readers and printers. And for me the charm was learning how to store information in files and then, what passed as the beginnings of the database era as it was in 1971.
However, the passion that was to sustain me through the
years fully blossomed with my time at Tandem Computers. A unique system coupled
to a unique community was all that it took for me to become totally aware of
decisions previously made leading me to what I am doing today. With this post I
am jointly celebrating with Margo the completion of twelve years of our
company, Pyalla Technologies, LLC. Yes, twelve years! Hard to believe and yet,
nothing could have happened without the support from this very unique NonStop
community.
Margo and I do not have a monopoly on passion when it
comes to Tandem. As we continue to be active in the HPE NonStop community, we
remain as passionate as ever but the same can be said for much of the community.
If you need any more evidence of the community’s passion it was only a week ago
that a reunion held in Silicon Valley drew a crowd from all parts of the
America and beyond. Our schedule didn’t allow us to attend but photos from that
reunion have begun to show up on Facebook. If you aren’t already following the
group, Tandem Computers then you many want to take a second look.
As for the photos included in this post they both come
courtesy of Chris Russell – can you spot familiar faces? It really does look
like they have got the band back together!
My passion for computing in general was not a singular
occurrence. If you missed reading my latest post to our social blog, Real Time
View, you will have missed reading about the role my heritage has played in
leading me to the work I now do. Just look for the post, An
anniversary that has come around all too quickly.
Turns out that it wasn’t just a case of my father embracing computers back in
the mid-1960s but rather the fact that this made me a third generation
newspaperman. Yes, I am the eldest son of the eldest son whatever that might
imply. Storytelling apparently runs in the family so there really wasn’t any
escaping my eventual destiny. Passion, heritage and destiny – it’s as if I can
hear the opening overture to an autobiographical movie. Fortunately, that’s not
going to happen. I guess you can put down to passion kicking in once again.
When it comes to IT and to NonStop there are many
members of the community who are passionate about the technology into which
they have immersed themselves. It would be sad to read that passion has left
our industry. In the coming month all of our passions will be on display when
next NonStop Technical Boot Camp (NonStopTBC22) convenes in Burlingame,
California. NonStopTBC22 is sure to cover a variety of topics but perhaps this
year we will witness a sea-change under way. We have written about NonStop
becoming a software solution on numerous occasions but I am anticipating to see
this becoming even more relevant. How about NonStop in a virtual machine that
is containerized and accessible from anywhere.
In his presentation to the CTUG community last month,
HPE hinted at something like this might be on the agenda. For those in IT who
view today’s NonStop system as the epitome of modern servers – servers, mind
you, with the industry’s best level of availability via a fault tolerance
implementation that remains unmatched to this day – it could be a revelation. I
can continue to speculate about what this all might mean, but like everyone
else, I will just have to wait till November.
Paper tapes both narrow and wide form factors are long
gone. Any desire to decode the holes punched into roles of paper tapes having
truly subsided. The passing of such tangible evidence that data was present and
could be touched relegated to the trash can. But the seed that was sown was not
to be ignored and today, celebrating the twelfth anniversary of Pyalla
Technologies and the work that together Margo and I have done and the degree to
which we served the NonStop community, that is as tangible evidence of passion
that can be shared.
Looking forward to seeing you all at NonStopTBC22 and
if as yet you haven’t registered for this free event, make sure you take the
time to do so. Sure would be a shame to miss out on seeing you – there’s still
yet one more story to be told and don’t you want to be a part of that?
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