I've enjoyed looking through your pictures at http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/roger.broughton/oldpht/people.htm ,
- thankyou very much.

On your web site, you do say:
"Additions and corrections are welcomed, email roger.broughton@ncl.ac.uk."
So this email from me, is offered in that spirit,
and I hope you will remember in what follows, that: You Did Ask.

I see that someone else must be doing the same as me and responding
to you, because you've now remembered George Brown's name -
or maybe you remembered it for yourself.
But I have a couple of more details of names etc for you, if you like.

John Aspden left the Lab for Canada about 1990/1991,
so the rather good pictures of him and Jill must be some time before then.

Incidentally, that's a super picture of Eric at
http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/roger.broughton/oldpht/images/34930001.jpg:
I'd forgotten how much hair he used to have!!

Also a very good picture of Pete Lomas. In your caption to that,
of course the WPR ring in his hand is a Write PERMIT Ring (not protect).
With the ring in, the tape could be written on.
I'm quite sure you know that, and so yes, I'm nitpicking aren't I,
but you like to be exact about these things, don't you.

On the first of the four pictures at
http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/roger.broughton/oldpht/operators.htm ,
this little account is by the way, just for your interest and not intended
as a correction, it was not just beer that got made
but wine also - Bill, and Jeff, and even I made some,
my first attempt at winemaking - and I took the bottled result home
and we drunk it, on Christmas day too.
About 1990 or so, that was. But I didn't make much wine in the Lab,
and I can tell you why. Once the wine had cleared,
there was a lovely cool "cellar" which was the space under
the bottom of the winding spiral staircase emergency exit
which led out of the back of SB4;
the one that brings you out onto the grass outside
Elizabeth's/Ewan's/Paul's office.
(You remember this staircase was part of the escape route for
the microwave burglars when they pinched that, from the kitchen in the mid-1980's.)
The temperature there was ideal for settling and clearing the wine,
just as SB6 was good for fermenting.
Until, one day, Norman Harper, lecturer from Architecture,
wanted to show off the architecture of Claremont Tower to his students
(as a good example of how not to do things, I suppose),
and he got a hold of the key to the Alice in Wonderland glass door
from the grass outside Elizabeth's office,
and his class all trooped down the stairs and found my wine clearing,
under the bottom of the staircase. And I thought it would be safe there,
and no-one would ever find it; so much for what I thought.
That put me off keeping my wine in the Lab.

Looking at this picture of you, anyone who looks closely at the swivel chair,
can see why you might prefer to sit on the box.
Pity the poor ops (and data prep staff) who had to sit on
those awful things for so many years.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the corrections and additions.

On the third picture of four:
for Ada: following the order you use for everyone else,
shouldn't that read Ada Chrisp (Davison)? and not the other way round,
i.e Miss Chrisp became Mrs Davison.
(I remember someone - Dave Armstrong, it was - amusedly pointing out
that a new operator was starting, and she was "A. Chrisp", poor girl.)
I think she married about 1973, which is probably round about the time
this picture was taken.
Ann McGruther's married name was Muers, not Mears.
Val Crossley did become Valerie Ragan; but she left about 1979,
and then - is this right? - didn't she come back in about 1985
as Val Douglas? having spent some time in Japan?
If that's correct, I suppose she may prefer to be known as Mrs Douglas,
now, and not Mrs Ragan.
But I don't know any details of her private life and perhaps my
memory is at fault here.

By the way, I think I recognise the dapper looking young chap in the
background of no. 3 (and, I'm the only feller in this picture who's had a
haircut or knows what a barber is for, by the look of it too).
Oh, but give me those days back again ...

On the fourth picture. Now here I'm going to stick my tender neck out
and take issue with you (always a risky venture, in my experience).

The girl holding the disk, I don't think that is Jo Knapper as you say
(who incidentally, became Mrs Jo Richards before she left?
but this picture was one of those specially taken to show off the machine room
soon after the 360 was accepted in 1968,
so I think she would have still been single Jo Knapper at that time).
I think that is Dorothy Baird holding the disk pack.
Now I know memory plays tricks, so I may be wrong and you may be right,
but I remember Jo Knapper as having a (brother? I think) who had algebra homework,
and once or twice she brought that in for me to look at,
and I helped her with it. I don't know how that helped her brother,
if at all. Jo Knapper had reddish-brown hair,
she was someone I found easy to talk to; I never got to know Dorothy Baird,
who was much more blonde, like the girl in the picture so obviously is.

And at the console, where you have a question mark in your text,
that I think is Eleanor Beeckmans.
I (and others) called her Ann, if I remember, don't know why for sure but
I think that may have been because her name was actually Eleanor Ann.
She too got married, maybe about or soon after the time this picture was taken,
to become Mrs Roberts, and I think she eventually left about 1971
to have a baby if I remember correctly.

Memory does play tricks after more than 30 years.
So I might be wrong. If I'm wrong, I apologise!
But if you think it's possible I could be right but aren't sure about it;
then you could do a lot worse than ask Eric, or Pete, or Denis,
because they were around then (even Denis was, until later in 1968
when he went off to Edmonton for a while).
And it's just occurred to me, you could also ask Elizabeth too, I presume you can email her,
she always did use to say that "staff were her priority"
so she might remember who the young women are in that picture.

I think I remember the day when these pictures were taken.
The photographer (was it Mr Ridley, from the department which was
the forerunner of Audio Visual? it used just to be called Photography then,
and the Computer Typesetting Project was a sub-department of that, too;
Keith Heron worked at the CTP at that time), anyway,
whoever the photographer was, I remember he borrowed the trestle ladder,
the original first one which used to be kept in the m/c room,
and climbed up that to get the angle he wanted,
looking down on the blue boxes.

I wonder if the clock on the wall is showing the correct time in this
picture :) Just trying to wind you up, Roger.

Also in picture no. 4, I think the 2301 drum (the paging drum),
visible to the right of the 2314's, might be worth a passing mention?
But I'm sorry I can't remember its capacity though;
a 2314 disk was about 20Mb as I'm sure you know,
I don't think the drum was as big. But it was quite a bit faster,
because there was no seek time? one head per track, is that right?
I remember the big kerfuffle when the actual 2301 drum itself,
had to be replaced, can't remember why, maybe because it proved faulty,
after only about a year's use; about four IBM SE's huddled around it,
with a miniature crane hoist rigged up over the top to lift the old one out
and lower the new one into place. Not something they did every day.
We ordinary mortals were kept well away.

Moving on, on page
http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/roger.broughton/oldpht/power.htm
near the bottom, it's a 370/168 of course, not a 270 (sorry about that, Roger).

And on page http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/roger.broughton/oldpht/acplant.htm,
surely Plant B was installed 1975 not 1985?
Jeff and Kevin are Messrs Craig and Renney, respectively,
but Jeff will be able to tell you much more about his former colleagues
of course, but I don't know if he wants to be reminded of his days/tussles
with the Air Conditioning plant though.
Ask him what it was like, carting ten 1cwt bags of salt
from where they were dumped on the ground floor,
up to the top of the Tower, every few months.

Incidentally Roger, about this last picture, it might be interesting or
amusing to point out that this room containing Plant B, room SB4,
was originally the main lecture room in the Computing Laboratory
when the department first moved from Kensington Terrace to Claremont Tower.
The first IBM seminar was held in there, (September 1968);
departmental meetings were held there, with almost everyone
in the dept. at that time, present; and lots of other lectures,
some of them given by quite distinguished speakers besides, etc.,
for quite a few years until it was taken over for the machinery.
Brian Randell could probably tell you more.
I don't know if that's worth a mention?
Some of the existing ISS staff today might have a lot of trouble
believing that, if the room still looks like it did three or four years
ago when I last saw it.

--------

Finally... for more pictures. You will no doubt wish to add to your
collection. I believe you might be interested in having the negatives of
useful pictures of people, machines, etc?

I don't have much. Maybe, nothing useful. What I can offer is this.
In 1985 in the autumn, Derek and Rod retired, as you know.
And there was the usual party with silly presentations, etc. arranged.
There are two collections of pictures associated with that.

As part of the beforehand preparation for the event, I was pressed into
organising a slideshow for Brian Randell to deliver at the party, depicting
the kinds of things that Derek and Rod did; including the parts of the
building that other lesser mortals never saw, nor wanted to! (your good self
not counted in that, of course). Well, Bill Foggo and I went round places
like the Fan Room, chiller room, L/T switch room etc, looking for the tide
marks left by the floods, the cascade of water down the L/T switchroom back
wall right beside where all the building power came in, and other similar
good horror stories; jungles of pipes, wires, Rod's wiring, the old Reliance
telephone rack, etc. etc. And Bill, him being the photographer, took a lot
of photos, 48 of them (35mm colour slides, not negatives) in all, and I
wrote some notes, and some of this got used by Brian Randell in his
"lecture" at the party. Now: I haven't got those slides. I've looked all
over at home, but I'm fairly sure that they were handed back to Ann Laybourn
after the party - they weren't my slides in any case, as Bill took the
pictures. But they may, just may, still be around somewhere. So, if you
have access these days to the Cupboards of Ancient Curiosities and Old
Rubbish in Computing Science, someone there might just remember having seen
a dusty collection of slides, individually numbered with little paper spots
from 473 - 520 inclusive, dating from the time just before Rod and Derek's
party of 1985. If you do manage to lay your hands on them through one of
your contacts, then I do still have my notes that I wrote for Brian at the
time, and of course you'd be welcome to those, for what they're worth. A
few of those slides could have some minor historical value, though some of
them were taken just for the jokey effect.

The second collection of pictures, is from the party itself, and I guess you
probably won't be interested in those. I went round the party with our own
camera from home, I think I was the only one who did, and shot off a roll of
film showing the usual scenes; presentations and people sitting around, the
usual sorts of party groups. Not everyone is on the pics, and I can't see
you anywhere so maybe you didn't go, but there's a fair collection of
assorted Computing Laboratory people and guests, Derek and Rod not least,
but all in their posh clothes of course, and not actually at work, the party
being in the evening over in the SCR. I have those negatives, 35mm colour.
Not having a scanner at home, I'm sorry that I can't (in this email) show
you examples of these pics. I don't know how they would fit in with the
other material on your web site, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear
you say that they are no use to you. But if you're interested, let me know.

Anyway, thanks again for the trip down memory lane. Happy days? Maybe I'll
catch up with you sometime. Hope you and Marge are well and enjoying life
(even if you're not actually enjoying having the builders in)