Article by Hon Member David Bradley
Age has advantages when it comes to appreciation of Digital Transformation. Progress continues to be exponential as are the costs of keeping up to date!
Chapter 1 ended in the 1960’s when only urgent transmission of information long distances was via Telex. A specially trained Secretary typed messages into the device that was part of the telephone network and the recipient machine printed the document. The City had one single Telex machine!
The evolution to the Telefax machine was accompanied by falling costs and these machines were soon in every office.
Up to then, Networking still meant people getting together or phoning one another to exchange information; and research was done in libraries with staff and students waiting with bated breath each week for the Mail-ship that brought the latest printed periodicals from England. The regular publication of Abstracts was carefully pored over and selections made for hard-copy that was purchased and received via airmail. Membership of Professional Societies usually brought with it a number of credits that allowed a few free copies a month.
The well established and extremely costly Main Frame Computer used by the Treasury provided the opportunity to experiment with new fangled Networking.
A dedicated pair of copper wires was rented from Telkom (at the time a highly efficient organization). This wire was not routed through exchanges so was for our sole use. The line linked my office in Civic Centre with my Branch Office in Ndabeni (near Pinelands). A programme called Multimate was installed that was an early word-processor. The great day arrived for the switch-on and the huge ICL dumb-terminal incorporating a black and white monitor was switched on and words started appearing literally letter by letter – that was the real-time. My then secretary spent a few minutes and refused to `waste her time’. However it was a very important set-up for continual experimentation by the new breed of budding IT professionals.
City’s first foray into office computers was the second generation so called AT desktops with Multimate Word Processing and dot-matrix printers. Not everyone had a printer, so people took floppy discs to a secretary who had a printer! Tech users like me also had Lotus 1-2-3 for calculations. (Chapter III next week)
