Ireland’s first computers 1956-69

October

The computers of the mid-1950s employed new innovations like vacuum tubes, magnetic core memory and drum storage. By 1956 there were thousands of installations around the world, but none in Ireland.

Public service and in private companies alike operated on a scale that did not need the number crunching capabilities of an electronic computer. The technology was also very expensive, so installing such a system would be a massive investment.

Some of the bigger organisations in the country were, however, starting to evaluate the possibilities.

The Guinness brewery in Dublin was probably the first. In October 1956 Guinness completed a research exercise that found the available options too costly and not yet reliable enough for its operations. Aer Lingus conducted a feasibility study in the following year and reached the same conclusion.

November

IBM established an Irish subsidiary at 24 Fitzwilliam Place. The company’s products included ‘electronic data processing machines’, but its main business was the promotion and sale of ‘unit record equipment’ – electro-mechanical accounting machines that stored information on punched cards. IBM typewriters were already available in Ireland through an agent, JA Miller & Son.

Initially there were three staff in the Dublin office. Pictured here (from left to right) are manager Raymond Girault, secretary Margaret Fitzgerald and salesman Derek Overend. (Photograph courtesy of IBM Ireland)

The company took on more recruits in following year, including John Moriarty who joined as a ‘customer engineer’ in June 1957. He became the first Ireland-based employee who was trained to support IBM’s computer systems.

Read John Moriarty’s testimony

The Irish Sugar Company took delivery of a British Tabulating Machine Company (BTM) computer and housed it in a seed store at the company’s factory in Thurles.

Originally developed by Hollerith Electronic Computers (HEC), this model was known at different times as the HEC 1201, BTM 1201 and ICT 1201. The Sugar Company paid £33,000 for the system. BTM’s agent in Ireland, Calculating & Statistical Services, made the sale. This long-established Dublin firm offered a stock valuation service for businesses and ran a punched card bureau service.

Unlike any other data processing equipment in Ireland, the BTM 1201 was able to store programs. There were programmable plug board systems in operation elsewhere, but this was the only stored program computer in the country.

Irish Sugar had been formed in 1933 as a state-owned company and operated four sugar processing factories. The centrepiece of its activities was the annual gathering of the sugar harvest – an operation known as the ‘beet campaign’. The company supplied seed, fertilisers, materials and support services to sugar beet growers all year round and recouped its expenses at the end of the campaign. After the harvest it calculated the value of each grower’s produce, subtracted its charges and generated an individual statement for every supplier. By the mid-1950s 28,000 farmers were participating in this scheme.

The general manager of the Irish Sugar Company, Michael J Costello, and its chief accountant JP Lawler took the decision to buy the computer. They wanted to speed up the annual payment process and expected that the system would be ready for service in the 1958 campaign.

Norman Frances, a programmer based at BTM’s Liverpool office, wrote the first software application for the first computer in Ireland.

Programming a computer like the BTM 1201 in the Irish Sugar Company was a manual procedure. The machine required detailed instructions on how to place specific information at specific positions in its magnetic drum store, instructions on the arithmetic to be performed with these pieces of data and instructions on the output of results to a line printer or card punch. Frances prepared 20 handwritten code sheets that defined a calculation process for payments to sugar beet growers. His program would use one set of 80-column punched cards with beet details and a second set with farmers’ contact data.

BTM demonstrated this first version of the application to Irish Sugar, but the company’s senior management was not convinced that it was ready to use. The Norman Frances code was never implemented.

September

The Short Brothers and Harland engineering group in Belfast acquired an English Electric Deuce I – a valve-based computer that used a magnetic drum for its main memory.

This machine was more formally known as the Digital Electronic Universal Computing Engine and was directly descended from Alan Turing’s own computer design. English Electric amended his specifications to create a commercial version and launched the product in 1955.

The British computer maker sold 33 Deuce machines between 1955 and 1964.

September

The British Tabulating Machine (BTM) Company hired Trinity College Dublin graduate Gordon Clarke and sent him to Britain for extensive technology training.

Following the sale of a computer to the Irish Sugar Company, the system maker had decided that it should employ its own technical staff in Ireland. Clarke would focus on the BTM 1201, while a second recruit, Michael McMahon, would support its punched card tabulators.

Other Irish people already worked in computer installations in other countries, but Gordon Clarke became the first computing professional who was based inside Ireland. After almost two years of classroom training and work experience in British installations, he returned to Dublin in summer 1960.

Even at that date the Sugar Company had still not used the computer for its intended purpose.

Read Gordon Clarke’s testimony

Mathematician Christine Willies, a former BTM employee, achieved several computing firsts when she wrote a regression analysis program for Irish Sugar in 1958.

Working freelance, she produced a least squares fit program on the BTM 1201 to meet one of the company’s technical requirements. This project was not only the first practical use of the system in Thurles. It was also the first scientific computing project in the country. And Christine had made history as the first woman to create software in Ireland.

Some months later, when the Electricity Supply Board was considering the acquisition of a computer, it also drew on the knowledge of Christine Willies. She delivered an introductory course on programming to two officials from its accounting machine group in early 1959. She thus became the first computing trainer in Ireland as well.

Christine lived in Britain, but spent time in Ireland after BTM assigned her husband, Alec Willies, to provide technical support on the computer in Thurles.

(Photograph by Gordon Clarke, reproduced with permission)

January

The British Tabulating Machine Company (BTM) combined with former rival Powers-Samas to create International Computers and Tabulators (ICT).

Summing up its achievements at the time of the merger, BTM boasted that it had ‘over 40 computer installations now in action’. Including the word ‘computers’ in the name of the new firm was, no doubt, a signal of its ambitions.

Unlike BTM, ICT would operate a subsidiary of its own in Ireland. It took over C&SS, the former representative of BTM, in the early 1960s.

Cosmic physicists from the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies (DIAS) visited Thurles to evaluate the only electronic computer in the country. They wanted to assess its suitability for their scientific research. They learned how to program the BTM system and successfully used it to fit experimental results to a theoretical curve.

The main finding from this exercise was that the data preparation effort was much more demanding than the researchers had expected. They therefore decided to focus on alternative data processing methods and approaches. For example, DIAS subsequently developed a much simpler device for the analysis of microscope readings.

Electronic computers were just too labour-intensive.

The Irish Sugar Company had failed to get its computer up and running in 1958 and 1959, despite the best efforts of its accounting department and the assistance provided by BTM/ICT. In 1960 it tried a different approach and concentrated on acquiring in-house expertise.

First it appointed commerce graduate Eoghan Busteed to take overall charge of the project. The title of his job was ’manager, central accounts’ but his responsibilities focused on the computer.

Next, in spring 1960, the company selected four of its employees – Niall Buckley, Peadar O’Donnell, Dermot Sheehan and Tim Walsh – for training as programmers. It chose these individuals by an aptitude test, then sent them to ICT’s training centre at Bradenham Manor in England to study programming and computer operations.

Most of the other computing staff at Irish Sugar were female. Some 20 women punched holes in the cards that controlled the computer, balanced the accounts and ran a mailroom. The standard practice for card preparation was to punch every batch twice over and then identify errors by comparing the two sets.

The Ministry of Finance in Belfast became the first government organisation on the island of Ireland to introduce computing equipment.

Once again, International Computers and Tabulators was the successful vendor. The selected model was an ICT 1202.

ICT already had a direct presence in Northern Ireland. Its predecessor BTM had manufactured Hollerith tabulators at Castlereagh in east Belfast since 1949.

October

The Northern Irish government and the US Office of Naval Research announced an agreement that would enable Queens University Belfast (QUB) to acquire an English Electric Deuce digital computer valued at £50,000. Their plans also included the provision of a new building to house the machine, a lectureship in digital computing and the employment of additional research staff at the university.

QUB personnel had already gained access to the Deuce computer at Short Brothers and Harland and assessed its capabilities.

The American connection came about because upper atmosphere research was a research priority subject for the government authorities there and the applied mathematics department at Queens had expertise in this field. Mathematics professor Alexander Dalgarno became the first director of the QUB computer laboratory and used the Deuce system to model complex atomic and molecular processes.

November

The ICT 1201 in the Irish Sugar Company delivered practical results at last during the beet campaign of 1960. The computer calculated payments due to sugar growers with software developed by the company’s in-house programmers.

ICT delegated its computer adviser Gordon Clarke, along with two on-site engineers and a punch card specialist, to support the processing effort.

There was more downtime than operational time in the computer room and re-runs were frequent. But, three years after its arrival in Thurles, the system performed its intended task.

December

The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) took delivery of an IBM 650 computer along with six new IBM accounting machines. The department of the chief accountant was responsible for operating this equipment. An accounting machine group in this department already had decades of data processing experience, because the ESB had used punched card technology since 1932. ICT was the longstanding supplier of this equipment, so the computer deal was something of a coup for IBM.

The IBM 650 was a relatively old system. It had started to ship back in 1954 and IBM generally referred to it as an ‘automatic calculator’. The machine did, however, offer the program storing functionality that defined a true computer.

It was not only the first IBM computer in Ireland. The ESB also set up the first computer installation in Dublin.

This photograph shows IBM employees Ehud Rubenstein, John Moriarty and George Connolly at the arrival of the aircraft that transported the computer. (Photograph by Dick Deegan courtesy of John Moriarty)

Read John Moriarty’s testimony
Read The first computer installation in Dublin

June

Aer Lingus took its first steps towards the introduction of a computer-based flight reservation system.

The airline formed an implementation team for this project, led by its sales manager Finbar Donovan. Its plans were closely modelled on an initiative in the US – the Sabre online travel reservations system which IBM and American Airlines were building.

International Computers and Tabulators set up a computing bureau in Dublin, offering to run accounting and payroll processing applications for customers on a second-hand ICT 1202. Easons and Tynagh Mines were among the companies that availed of this service.

Calculating & Statistical Services (C&SS), which had previously acted as the company’s agency in Ireland, had a long history of bureau operations that involved tabulators and comptometers. After ICT assumed direct control of C&SS, it saw a computing bureau as a logical successor to these services.

The manager of the new bureau, Charlie O’Brien, had previously worked on payroll processing services at LEO Computers – a company in England that had started a computing bureau back in 1956.

March

University College Dublin installed an IBM 1620 – a model that IBM marketed internationally as an inexpensive ‘scientific computer’.

UCD’s computing strategy was initiated and led by its science faculty.

June

As with UCD, the first computer at Trinity College Dublin was an IBM 1620. Brendan Scaife recorded its arrival at the university on 16 June 1962 in a series of colour photographs. This picture shows how the hardware was lifted through a first floor window at 21 Lincoln Place. (Photograph courtesy of TCD School of Computer Science and Statistics)

In contrast with UCD, it was the engineering school at Trinity that took charge of the computer. In 1963 the university launched an MSc course in computer applications for an initial group of six students. This course marked the beginning of computer studies in Ireland’s higher education system.

In 1967 TCD acquired an IBM 1130 – the successor to the IBM 1620 – and transferred the older machine to Dunsink Observatory for use by the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies. In 1974 the IBM 1620 moved again and was installed at Dundalk Regional Technological College.

Read Mike Rogers’s testimony

The Business Equipment Suppliers Association organised a ‘computer exposition’ at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS).

ICT was among the exhibitors. This photograph shows Pat Rafter (left) and Charles Cooke (third from left) presenting the company’s products. The equipment in the foreground is a tabulator with input and output slots for punched cards. The machine behind it is an electronic calculator. (Photograph by Gordon Clarke, reproduced with permission)

The ICT bureau diversified into technical computing when it undertook program evaluation and review technique (PERT) projects for two construction companies – O’Neills and Cramptons.

PERT was a recently developed methodology for project management. ICT assisted its customers to identify and analyse the sequence of tasks required to complete their work on specific buildings.

The Sugar Company – Ireland’s first computer user – replaced its ICT 1201 in Thurles with an ICT 1300. The new system proved to be much more reliable and, unlike its predecessor, could access data on magnetic tapes.

ICT had launched the 1300 series in 1960, introducing technologies like germanium transistors and core memory. The first member of this family was the ICT 1301, while a second model with lower specifications was designated the ICT 1300. Both were able to perform British currency calculations in their hardware. The system’s arithmetic unit had no binary mode. Users could choose between decimal calculations or working with pounds, shillings and pence.

The system designers at ICT had not, however, anticipated the idiosyncrasies of the electricity supply in Thurles. Something made the magnetic tapes stretch and malfunction in a way that the computer firm had never encountered before. Engineers eventually discovered cattle in a nearby field rubbing themselves against the poles that held up the electricity cable. Those vibrations were causing irregularities in the current.

Goulding Fertilisers became the first organisation in Ireland to acquire an IBM computer from the 1400 series when it selected an IBM 1401. This long-established company was founded in Cork in the mid-19th century and operated several factories around the country in the 1960s.

IBM had launched the transistor-based 1401 mainframe in 1959, pitching it at business customers as a replacement for tabulating machines. At one stage in the 1960s more than half of the world’s computers were IBM 1401s. It was sold with the IBM 1311 disk drive, whose removable packs could each store 2 MB of data.

In October 1962 IBM announced the IBM 1440 as a new configuration for smaller companies. IBM Ireland ran a launch event in the Shelbourne Hotel for this machine in 1963.

Qeleq was established in Dundalk to develop and manufacture linear programming analogue computers. It developed and patented a technique for calculating the least expensive formulations for animal feed production.

The company sold about 200 of its feed-mix computers around the world before it closed in 1978.

June

The Office of the Revenue Commissioners installed an ICT 1301 mainframe, making it the first government organisation in the Republic to embrace computing. Operations started three months later in the central Dublin office of the Collector-General. Revenue leased this system, including punched card peripherals and printers, at an annual cost of £25,134.

Revenue selected two of its staff, Dermot Treacy and Margaret Cooney, to take a training course in computer programming at an ICT facility in England. Additional trainees, including Seamus Clince, attended subsequent courses and the first group of programmers in the Irish civil service got down to work.

The ICT machine supported the introduction of a new ‘turnover tax’ in November 1963 and was used to pilot applications for the assessment and collection of income tax.

This photograph shows Donal Shanahan and Elizabeth English with the ICT 1301 in 1964. (Image source: ‘The civil service – An introduction’ booklet published in 1965)

Read Seamus Clince’s testimony

August

Two years after Aer Lingus created an in-house team to establish a computer-based reservation system, IBM formed a development group that would bring more software expertise into the project.

IBM chose engineers with international experience. Fred Kennedy, who had previously worked for IBM World Trade in New York, moved to Dublin as the technical manager for this project. He picked Brendan Byrne, Tom McGovern and Kris Padmanabhan as his design and analysis team.

At this stage the intended platform for the Aer Lingus reservations system was the IBM 7010 – a mainframe based on the architecture of the IBM 1400 series.

Following its shipment of an ICT 1300 to the Irish Sugar Company, ICT won more orders for this system from manufacturing and distribution firms in 1963.

The Jacob’s biscuit factory in Bishop Street, Dublin installed an ICT 1300 system to manage its accounts and payroll. It also introduced a specially developed application for van loading. This enabled the factory to plan routes for its vehicles at a time when its products were usually shipped in ‘square tins’.

Cigarette manufacturer PJ Carroll installed an ICT 1300 at its head office in Dublin.

The Irish subsidiary of oil company Esso took delivery of an ICT 1301 in September. Jim Donovan was the company’s computing manager. Esso also employed Kevin O’Donnell, who had personal experience of scientific computing. He had worked in the 1950s on EDSAC, an early electronic computer at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England.

October

The RDS hosted a four-day exhibition ‘to show, particularly to the younger people, the nature and scope of scientific and technical research and investigation in Ireland.’

This Scientific & Technical Exhibition was influenced by a series of similar events that the RDS had run in the 1930s and included presentations of technological activity in Irish universities.

Trinity College lent its IBM 1620 computer to the RDS for one of the displays.

The Department of Education commissioned IBM Ireland to provide processing services for a study of the most frequently used words in the Irish language. This project aimed to compile a basic vocabulary for language courses.

April

IBM introduced the System/360 and initially offered five types of CPU with the same design. This common architecture was hailed as a major technological advance. Until now it had always been necessary to rewrite the code for a computer application in order to run it on a second machine. As IBM’s first family of compatible computers, the System/360 made software transferable in a way that had not been known before.

The new computer also used the Cobol programming language which simplified the instructions for data input and output. Experienced programmers felt that Cobol took much of the thrill and challenge out of their work.

IBM studied the potential market for the System/360 in Ireland and concluded that just fourteen organisations were large enough for it to target. These included four universities and the two major banks. All the other candidates were in the public sector with commercial state companies offering the best prospects

Aer Lingus scrapped its plan to develop a reservations system on the IBM 7010. When IBM launched the System/360, it adopted a new strategy based on this more advanced platform.

As a stopgap solution the airline installed a second-hand Bunker-Ramo Teleregister airline inventory system. This machine handled numerical data only. It was able to manage the company’s seat availability, but could not hold any passenger name records.

The airline compensated for this shortcoming by acquiring an IBM 1440 and using it to store alphabetic information. It went on to install a second 1440 for accounts management and for maintaining age records for all the replaceable parts on its aircraft.

Read Mike Rogers’s testimony

University College Cork installed an IBM 1620 model 2 in its electrical engineering building.

June

A major upgrade of the Electricity Supply Board’s computing operations saw the establishment of separate groups to handle commercial and technical data processing.

The ESB acquired two IBM 1401s to manage customer billing and accounts, housing them at East James Street in Dublin. This was now the largest computer installation in Ireland.

Speaking at an official switch-on ceremony for these systems, IBM Ireland managing director Raymond Girault stated that the number of computers in the country had risen to 20. Not all of these, of course, were IBM machines.

Some years later IBM supplied a System/360 model 40 to take over the billing operations in East James Street.

The ESB also set up a dedicated technical computing group for its engineering projects and installed an IBM 1620 ‘scientific computer’ in 1964 to simulate the future customer demand for electricity. It replaced this system with an IBM 1130 computer in 1967. The second machine was suitable for compute-intensive applications and assisted the engineers to plan increases in generating capacity and to improve the design of ESB tariffs.

The division of computing operations across two autonomous units became an entrenched feature of the organisational culture at the electricity provider.

Read Bill Rutherford’s testimony
Read Rodney Senior’s testimony

Clondalkin Paper Mills ordered an ICT 1300 system, following an evaluation of computing by accountant Des Tannam who had taken a personal interest in the technology since the mid-1950s. The company’s priority was to computerise its accounts and payroll.

In addition to these operations, the paper supplier subsequently used the ICT 1300 to process data for other businesses that it had acquired. In the late 1960s, however, the company’s senior management rejected a proposal by its computer department to expand these activities into a bureau service for a wider range of customers.

Irish Life and Lore made audio recordings in which Des Tannam and two of his former colleagues, Derek Breen and Hugh O’Sullivan, recalled these events.

Cork-based textile manufacturer Sunbeam Wolsey installed an ICT 1300 computer for order processing and production control.

Sean Kelly, an accountant at the company, oversaw the introduction of this system.

Read Don Dennehy’s testimony

Computer Bureau Shannon started to offer data preparation and batch processing services to foreign corporations.

The new business was established with the assistance of Shannon Free Airport Development Company. It was headed by Michael McMahon who had previously worked for ICT in Dublin.

In its early years the bureau used spare computing capacity in other organisations to deliver data processing services. It acquired its own Honeywell H200 model 120 in 1967.

The Player Wills cigarette factory in Dublin installed an ICT 1902, marking the first appearance in Ireland of the new ICT 1900 series.

This range, which ICT had announced in September 1964, supported multiprogramming – the ability to run more than one program at a time and thus reduce the delays associated with accessing peripherals. ICT also promised programming compatibility across all seven models in the family. The 1900 was effectively ICT’s response to the IBM System/360.

The parent organisation of Player Wills in Britain had placed the order for the new computer. The deal was worth £135,000 and, in addition to the equipment for the installation, included the development of sales accounting software.

Brendan Supple, who had worked for ICT in London, joined Player & Wills Ireland as data processing manager in 1966.

Read Brendan Supple’s testimony

A group of medical professionals formed the Dublin Hospital Medical Records Committee and conducted a feasibility study on computerised records.

Professor Wilson of Trinity College Dublin chaired this committee.

November

Irish Shell & BP installed an ICT 1901 with punched card peripherals and magnetic tape drives.

Its programmers wrote applications with Plan – ICT’s equivalent to IBM Assembler.

The Gateaux bakery in Finglas installed an IBM 1130.

This company specialised in cake production during an era when the price of bread was subject to government control. It grew to become a major exporter. Gateaux’s factory processes were largely automated and it was a long-standing user of IBM’s older data processing technologies.

When IBM launched the 1130 in 1965 it became the vendor’s least expensive computer. The system could perform floating point arithmetic and was therefore targeted at educational and technical users. Gateaux, however, ran accounting operations on its machine.

July

Two government organisations – the Land Commission and the Department of Defence – placed orders for IBM System/360 model 20s. The computer maker delivered these computers in 1967.

The Land Commission, which was responsible for acquiring agricultural land and allocating it to local farmers, used its system to process the collection of farmers’ payments. The Commission also agreed to make half of the computer’s capacity available to other civil service departments.

Gerry Colgan at the Department of Finance played a key role in the selection of the Land Commission computer, which replaced an ICT tabulator. The department retrained three of its officials as programmers and established a management services unit that acted as a technology consulting service for government offices. These moves paved the way for public service computing on a broader scale in later years.

The Department of Defence installed its System/360 model 20 to run the army payroll. This computer was the first data processing equipment of any type inside the department.

Read Hubert Kearns’s testimony
Read Declan McCarthy’s testimony

September

The Guinness brewery in Dublin installed an ICT 1902. The system was initially used for trade sales accounting and a payroll application. Both went live in 1967.

This photograph shows the specially refurbished and air conditioned computer room in the accountants’ department at the brewery. Systems analyst Clive Brownlee is seated in the foreground. Michael Ward, the head of operations, is standing at the printer. (Photograph courtesy of Diageo)

Read Paper-based computing comes to Guinness

October

A five-day science exhibition at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) provided evidence that the teaching profession was starting to take an interest in computing.

The exhibition, which aimed to raise awareness of science and technology among school and university students, was organised by the RDS in collaboration with government departments, state agencies, educational institutions and professional associations. Some private companies participated, but none of these came from the computer industry.

The Irish Mathematics Teachers Association’s stand focused on computing concepts. According to the exhibition catalogue it presented: ‘Simple switching circuits, logic circuits and Boolean Algebra demonstrating the elements of digital computers. Simple demonstration on an educational analogue computer and apparatus for teaching mathematics in primary schools. Use of desk calculators.’

IBM Ireland named Des MacMorrow as its new managing director. He had previously headed the company’s data processing sales division.

Raymond Girault, who had managed IBM’s operations in Ireland for more than a decade, moved to a new position at the corporation’s European headquarters in Paris.

US computer maker Honeywell entered the Irish systems trade by selling a dual-processor H200 model 1200 to the Office of the Revenue Commissioners. This machine replaced Revenue’s ICT 1301. Honeywell had recruited Pat Rafter from the ICT sales team to work on its bid for the Revenue contract.

The new computer not only took over existing tax assessment applications but also enabled Revenue to automate its pay-as-you-earn income tax processes. Unlike the ICT system, on which all software had to be written in machine code, the H200 ran Cobol programs. It used paper tape for input and magnetic tapes for data storage. Revenue increased its processing capacity in 1969 by installing two independent H200 model 2200s.

Peter McGrath, Matt Farrelly, Paddy Maguire and Darragh McArdle – who had worked together at the ICT bureau in Dublin – set up Independent Computer Bureau Services (ICBS).

The company would be ‘independent’ in the sense that its services would not be affiliated with a specific system vendor. ICBS would thus be subject to fewer constraints than a bureau owned by a computer manufacturer, especially when it came to turning down deals with a low profit margin. Its initial preference, however, was for Honeywell technology and it acquired a pair of H200s.

ICBS was subsequently acquired by Aer Lingus in November 1972. It became a core resource for the airline’s Cara computer services subsidiary.

A group of computing professionals met in the RAF Club on Earlsfort Terrace and agreed to form the Irish Computer Society.

Paddy Little (ICT), John Hourihane (Craig Gardner), Bruce Lyster (Craig Gardner), Aidan O’Meara (PJ Carroll), Eddie Clarke (PJ Carroll) and Dudley Dolan (Irish Cement) took part in this discussion.

An initial meeting of the professional association at PJ Carroll’s offices sent out an invitation for members to join. Paddy Doyle (ex-IBM) and Joe Daly (CIE) became involved at this stage.

Transport authority Córas Iompair Éireann (CIE) installed an IBM System/360 model 40 to run payroll, billing and stores management software. Including data preparation staff, it took around 200 people to build and operate these first applications.

The CIE computer was the first System/360 to be delivered in Ireland.

Read Brian Rothery’s testimony

June

The board of Player & Wills Ireland approved a proposal to sell spare capacity on the company’s ICT computer to other organisations. This facilitated the launch of a new bureau service managed by Brendan Supple.

The Mass Radiography Board, which ran a national scheme for the diagnosis of tuberculosis, was the first customer for this service.

IBM supplied a System/360 model 20 with disk drives to Cadbury Ireland. The confectionery manufacturer’s parent organisation in Britain, in contrast, had chosen ICT as its computer vendor.

Cadbury Ireland had previously used IBM unit record equipment.

IBM extended its dominance in academic computing when University College Galway installed an IBM 1800 data acquisition and control system.

Office equipment supplier Bryan S Ryan announced the availability of the Olivetti Programma 101 desktop computer in Ireland.

First unveiled by its manufacturer in 1964, this programmable calculator was classified as a computer because it contained internal memory and was programmed in an alphanumeric assembler language. Its delay-line memory could store 240 bytes of information. The Programma 101 cost about £2,000, which was a fraction of the price of a mainframe computer.

The statistical department at the British and Irish Steam Packet Company installed the first Olivetti Programma 101 in Ireland in January 1968. Bryan S Ryan won several more orders for the desktop system that year.

Read Hilary Louis Doyle’s testimony

Cement Limited acquired an IBM System/360 Model 20 to handle sales invoicing, stores control and payroll processing.

The company hired IBM Ireland systems engineer Dudley Dolan as its first data processing manager.

Read Dudley Dolan’s testimony

The Glen Abbey clothing factory in Tallaght acquired an IBM System/360 model 20 with an IBM 2560 Multi-Function Card Machine that combined the functions of a card reader, card punch, collator, interpreter and card document printer. This input-output device was later supplemented with two hard disk drives.

Glen Abbey used the System/360 to manage its accounts and billing.

IBM delivered a System/360 model 30 to insurance company Irish Life. Joe Daly was the executive in charge of the computer, which featured tape drives and hard disks. It was used for policy administration.

Irish Life also ran an NCR computer in the late 1960s. Among other applications, this second machine managed the company’s payroll.

After Gateaux installed the first IBM 1130 in the country, IBM Ireland found other businesses that wanted to run commercial applications on its low-cost technical computing platform. The 1130 was designed to support the Fortran language and some customers sourced commercial subroutines from Massachusetts Institute of Technology which enabled them to use other programming languages on the system as well.

Jack Toohey & Co was a Dublin-based clothing manufacturer and exporter. It introduced a Fortran-based order processing system for an IBM 1130. As its sales grew in the 1970s the company divided its customers into two groups – those whose names began from A to M and those starting with N to Z – and updated their accounts in alternate weeks.

The St John of God religious order acquired an IBM 1130 to computerise an existing fundraising activity – the Order of Hospitallers Pools. In 1967 it also established a new company, EDP Bureau, so that it could earn additional money by renting out computer time to other organisations.

Mike Corby, who headed EDP Bureau, launched a successor company, EDP Services, in 1975. It sourced another previously owned IBM 1130 and wrote its own payroll  system and other business software, which it initially offered to small and medium Irish businesses on a bureau basis. This machine remained in operation until 1984.

January

Queens University Belfast installed an ICT 1907 processor with six magnetic tapes and two disk drives – a more powerful computer than any of the other ICT 1900s on the island of Ireland.

This system was one of several that ICT delivered to UK universities through a scheme that aimed to establish a common standard for assembling and archiving student records. It stored personal information for each student along with details of their examination results.

Wallace Ewart, head of the data processing department at Queens, chaired an inter-university working group that developed the student records standard.

January

ICT announced that it had won an order from Irish Biscuits (formerly known as Jacob’s) for an ICT 1901 computer.

Its production management software would support the operation of automated conveyor systems. The computer would also run payroll and accounting applications and ICT’s Vantran package for vehicle scheduling and routing.

The new system was not scheduled for delivery to the company’s factory in Dublin until May 1969.

Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) recorded its first Irish computer installation at the Air/Ground Communications Station at Ballygirreeen near Shannon Airport.

The station provided real-time teletype communications between the Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunication Network and aircraft as they crossed the North Atlantic. The Department of Posts and Telegraphs was responsible for aviation radio services and its engineers installed a message switching system based on dual DEC PDP-8 computers.

The term ‘minicomputer’ was coming into vogue to describe smaller general purpose computers that were significantly less expensive than contemporary mainframes. Digital Equipment was already the leading vendor in this category and the PDP-8 was its flagship product.

The communications station was therefore the first minicomputer user in Ireland.

Pharmaceutical distributor May Roberts installed an ICT 1901 at its premises in Dublin but outsourced the management of its processing operations to Irish Computer Bureau Services.

By the standards of the time this was seen as a very rapid implementation project. ICT delivered the computer just over five months after May Roberts placed the order.

The Irish Ropes facility in Newbridge took delivery of an IBM 1401H.

The Hely Group, a publishing and office supplies business that had diversified into a wide range of distribution activities, installed an ICT 1901 at its premises in Santry.

The company recruited Malachi Doherty from ICT to manage its new system.

Jefferson Smurfit Group acquired the Hely Group in 1970.

De Beers Industrial Diamonds in Shannon installed an IBM 1800 data acquisition and control system to monitor its production process.

The 1800 was based on the IBM 1130 with extra capabilities for process control and ruggedised features for an industrial environment.

De Beers subsequently donated its IBM 1800 to the engineering department at University College Galway.

April

System Dynamics was registered at the Companies Registration Office on 29 April 1968. The new venture opened its first office at 62 Northumberland Road in August.

The firm offered technical consulting and computer implementation services. Because these services included the development of bespoke applications it was, in effect, Ireland’s first software company.

The founders of System Dynamics had previously worked together at IBM. They included Paddy Doyle, who became its first managing director, and Tom McGovern, who took over the role in 1970 and ran the business until his death in 1994.

Brendan Byrne and Nick Spalding were also on the staff when the company started operations.

Read ‘A stimulating environment in which to exercise the highest professional competence’

The IBM Computer Users Association (IBMCUA) began to facilitate dialogue between the company and its Irish customers.

In 1968 IBM was still a unit record equipment supplier as well as a computer vendor. But the System/360 was now shipping and the number of computing installations in Ireland was rising steadily. In the absence of alternative sources of systems and support these users depended on IBM Ireland to provide software support, technical training and maintenance services.

IBM customer organisations already existed in other countries – the model originated in the US in the mid-1950s – and the IBMCUA in Ireland learned from these precedents.

General Electric (GE) installed one of its own computers to run accounting applications at its EI Company subsidiary in Shannon.

The US corporation had developed computers since the 1950s. During the following decade it launched three families of general purpose computers – the GE 200, GE 400, and GE 600 series – as well as a number of special purpose computers.

GE established the manufacturing operation in Shannon in 1963. EI stood for ‘Emerald Isle’. The facility’s output included television components and, in subsequent years, smoke detection products.

The Irish Dunlop tyre factory in Cork installed an IBM System/360 model 25.

The Department of Posts and Telegraphs appointed Phil Coburn to develop an administrative computing strategy. He had previously been responsible for managing unit record equipment at the Post Office Savings Bank.

The engineering branch of the department, meanwhile, formed a group headed by Des Victor-Byrne to work on software related to the telephone network.

Both of these units trained staff for computing projects, but contracted out their data processing to bureau services. In 1971 they were combined into a single computing organisation that became one of the largest in the country. The department opened its own computer centre two years later and installed an IBM System/370 mainframe.

July

International Computers Limited (ICL) was created through the and combination of ICT with EEC – itself a recent merger of Elliott Automation and English Electric Leo Marconi.

The British government facilitated the creation of ICL through its industrial rationalisation programme and held a ten per cent stake in the amalgamated company.

Shortly before this restructuring, an ICT publication reported that the company had installed, or received orders for, 24 computers in the Republic of Ireland. Elliott Automation had just one installation: the six-year-old computer at An Foras Taluntais.

July

Dallas-based University Computing Company (UCC) bought Computer Bureau Shannon.

This company was an early implementer of online computing services. UCC equipped customers with its Cope terminals, which included a high-speed punched card reader, a printer and a modem. This terminal communicated with one of UCC’s mainframes. Irish customers were offered links to a Univac 1108 in London.

Two months after its acquisition in the midwest UCC set up a Dublin office on the grounds of An Foras Taluntais (AFT) in Sandymount. Brendan Supple, who had developed a bureau service in the ICL installation at Player Wills, had recently joined UCC and signed up AFT as a new customer.

Bord Fáilte, AnCO (the national training authority) and the Irish Agricultural Wholesale Society also installed UCC terminals on their premises and accessed the company’s Univac computer in London over leased lines.

Read Brendan Supple’s testimony

September

Independent Newspapers took delivery of an ICL 1901 – the first time that a newspaper publisher in Ireland had introduced a computer.

The company installed the machine to run commercial and administrative applications, starting with a payroll system.

It recruited two senior staff with computing experience: data processing manager Paul McCarthy and systems analyst Derek Sneddon-Kaye. All the other positions in the new department were filled by members of the existing workforce, selected by aptitude test.

This photograph shows Dennis Moore, the company’s first computer operator, at work on the new system in 1968. (Photograph courtesy of John Ryan)

Read Harry McCarthy’s testimony
Read John Ryan’s testimony

Sunbeam Wolsey installed an ICL 1901A at its premises in Cork. Unlike the earlier ICT 1300 in this installation, the new machine provided disk-based data storage.

September

ICL delivered a 1901 computer to New Ireland Assurance – a long-term user of punched card technologies supplied by its predecessor companies.

The New Ireland Group included the Irish National Insurance Company, which offered general insurance policies.

October

Aer Lingus launched its long-awaited real-time reservations system, which was now known as Advanced System of Telecommunications and Reservations for Aer Lingus (Astral) and ran on two IBM System/360 model 50s.

These processors were the most powerful that IBM had sold in Ireland, but IBM had cautioned the airline that the selected models might not be powerful enough to support online reservations. Other airlines were implementing similar reservations systems on high-end System/360s. In the end the Aer Lingus configuration worked well, connecting more than 200 user terminals in 18 cities around Europe and North America to the new mainframes.

The Astral software was based on IBM’s IPARS application, which in turn had originated inside American Airlines. Aer Lingus also installed special modems so that it could handle communications protocols from the US over European lines.

This photograph features Thérèse Burke, who dealt with reservations on the phone from the public and from travel agents. She worked in a group that moved from the Bunker-Ramo system to Astral. (Image source: Nora O’Rourke. The photograph was originally published in an Aer Lingus brochure)

Read Brian Dent’s testimony
Read David Kennedy’s testimony
Read John McEneaney’s testimony
Read Robert Poynton’s testimony
Read 100,000 missing passengers at Dublin Airport

November

Trinity College Dublin installed an IBM System/360 model 44 in a prefabricated building in the Fellows Garden that became known as the TCD Computer Laboratory.

IBM sold model 44 as a system for scientific and real-time computing and for process control. Most of the demand for data processing came from the college’s engineers and scientists and from the department of statistics.

The arrival of this system, however, extended computing activities into other areas of the university. The broader academic community, the library service and central administration could now request time on the machine.

In addition, TCD established a department of computer science in 1969. Initially this had just three staff – John Byrne, Neville Harris and Francis Neelamkavil.

Read John Moriarty’s testimony

NCR became the latest US computer vendor to win customers in Ireland.

The company, which had positioned its NCR 500 as a low-cost mainframe, delivered systems to Irish Permanent Building Society, Chase and Bank of Ireland, Chivers and Irish Life.

December

Aer Lingus entered the computer bureau business by establishing a systems services division.

This new unit offered data processing services on the two IBM System/360 model 50s at the airline’s computer centre in Dublin airport. Its early customers included the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, which implemented telephone billing and savings bank applications on one of the model 50s.

The Aer Lingus bureau was later renamed Cara Data Processing.

December

IBM announced its intention to introduce separate prices for the first time for the different components of its computer business. This marked the end of a pricing strategy that treated the corporation’s software and support services as no-charge extras for the purchasers of its computer hardware, thus making it uneconomic for the customers to choose alternative suppliers.

The new business model originated in the United States, where rival vendors had been lobbying for reform. The US Justice Department filed an antitrust suit against IBM in January 1969. The corporation responded five months later by announcing new prices for its software products and for its systems engineering, equipment maintenance, customer education and custom programming services.

This ‘unbundling’ of IBM’s fees enabled independent software vendors and technical service providers to bid for business that IBM had previously reserved for itself. The structure of the computer industry was transformed forever.

PJ Carroll acquired an IBM System/360 model 30 to replace a six-year-old ICT 1300.

The cigarette company’s decision to change its computer supplier was unusual at this time. Most installations were still tightly bound to one or other of the two leading hardware vendors.

Robert McLaughlin, James Magowan and Fabian Monds – all based at Queens University Belfast – set up Medical & Scientific Computer Services (MSCS) to deliver technical processing services on a commercial basis.

MSCS provided laboratory result digitisation and reporting to the Royal Victoria Hospital Belfast, developing its own software and running an IBM 1130 computer.

State-owned peatland development company Bord Na Móna installed an ICL 1901A.

July

IBM announced the IBM System/3, which was designed to run business applications and was said to cost less than half as much as the smallest member of its System/360 mainframe family.

The System/3 inaugurated IBM’s midrange category of computers and was initially promoted as a suitable replacement for IBM ‘unit record equipment’ – its long established electromechanical accounting machines.

The new hardware was accompanied by the RPG II programming language which emulated the punched card management procedures associated with unit record equipment. This capability would facilitate the transfer of existing transaction records from mechanical systems to electronic minicomputers.

IBM had struggled in the 1960s to identify potential customers in Ireland for its mainframes, but would be able to target a much larger number of candidate organisations with the general purpose System/3. Midrange computers would become the backbone of the corporation’s activity in Ireland over the next decade.

August

Aer Lingus Systems Services Division – the company’s computing services unit – signed a contract with the Voluntary Health Insurance Board to develop applications and to supply data processing services.

The airline’s bureau designed new systems for the insurer’s registrations and renewals and for the analysis of its claims statistics.

October

IBM supplied a System/360 model 50 to University College Dublin. UCD also installed a smaller computer, a Singer System Ten, for use by its commerce students.

Read George Morgan’s testimony

October

Hewlett-Packard participated in the Science Exhibition in the RDS, whose primary purpose was to stimulate the interest of young people in science and technology. The company had not yet established sales and support capabilities in Ireland and was represented by its office in Slough, England.

HP had already entered the minicomputer trade at this date, but its presentation in Dublin focused on a programmable electronic calculator. According to the exhibition catalogue, this device was designed for ‘the manipulation of complex numbers and the processing of data in all the sciences and in engineering’.

The company subsequently shipped its calculators to commercial, government and academic customers in Ireland. These machines ran application specific software, stored data on magnetic cards and supported a variety of data input and output peripherals.

The Irish Sugar Company transferred all of its computing operations from a facility in Thurles to its group head office at Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin. The company installed a new ICL 1903A mainframe on these premises.

This move marked the closure of the country’s first computer installation. The Sugar Company had chosen Thurles as its data processing location when it acquired a BTM machine twelve years earlier.

References to the following computer installations also exist. All are believed to date from the 1960s, but it has not been possible to establish the years in which these systems were sold or delivered:

The Henry Ford & Sons factory in Cork, where some 1,000 employees assembled cars and commercial vehicles for sale in Ireland, acquired an IBM System/360.

IBM shipped System/360 model 20s to chemicals producer Albright and Wilson and fuel distributor Texaco. The Arnotts department store ran a System/360 model 25. Goulding Fertilisers replaced its IBM 1401 with a System/360 model 30.

IBM Ireland also installed an System/360 model 40 for its own use, while its service bureau operated two IBM 1401s.

Food company Batchelors, car assembler Brittain Dublin, Merchants Warehousing and engineering group Unidare introduced ICL 1901s.

Honeywell supplied H200s to Belfast Co-Op, Gallaher Group, Hospitals Trust and Roadstone Group.

Please make contact if you can provide further information about any of these computers or if you know of other systems and projects that should be featured on this timeline.