Bill Rutherford spent most of his working life at the Electricity Supply Board in information technology roles, but he regards motivating people and enabling them to develop their careers as his most significant achievements. He not only participated in the formative years of computing at the ESB, but also in the later transformation of traditional mainframe operations and jobs.
In 1964 Bill became the third computer programmer in the administrative arm of the company. Five years later he was selected as one of its first systems analysts. From 1980 to 1997 he held a series of IT management posts.
In early 1950s Ireland good clerical jobs were scarce if you did not have a good Leaving Cert. The Christian Brothers schools steered us to the best options. Dublin Corporation was at the bottom of the heap, followed by CIE, the Gas Company and the Port and Docks Board. At the top of the pile was the ESB, which I joined in 1953. I worked in the medical section, superannuation and in central stores, including the pole field on East Wall Road.
If you wanted to “get on” in the ESB you had to have a third level qualification. I did an evening BComm degree at UCD. The wet-behind-the-ears day students thought we were an alien tribe.
Once I qualified I started looking for promotion. I was interviewed for a few jobs but without success. Eventually I applied to an ad for a computer programmer in the accounting machine group at head office. I had no idea what this entailed as no such vacancies had ever been advertised before. I had to take an aptitude test and didn’t think that I had done too well at it. I also knew that I was up against Mick Rochford, who was already doing general administration work in the accounting machine group.
However, I had been working as a wages clerk and they were looking for someone with that experience because they had plans to develop a computerised payroll system. I clinched the job when Frank Malin interviewed me. He asked what I would do if a driver failed to fill in a claim form for a bonus payment he was entitled to. When I said that I wouldn’t give him the extra money and that he would not forget to fill in the form next time, that answer went down well. I think that they wanted someone who would always apply the rules.
There were already two programmers in the accounting machine group. Eamonn Halpin and Tom Bolton had developed a customer billing system for an IBM 650. Eamonn was the guru for this system. When I joined the department in early 1964 it had recently upgraded from the IBM 650 to two IBM 1401s.
Eamonn Halpin, Frank Malin, Bertie Dowling, Tom Bolton and John Kirby, all from the ESB accounting machine group, pictured with a line printer in 1964.
Photograph by Eustace Malcolm courtesy of ESB Archives.
The “machine room” was a sight to behold. Unit record equipment processed all the punched card input for the computer. Boxes of 2,000 cards were ferried continuously in and out of the various machines – sorters, collators and tabulators – amidst a crescendo of noise. The highly skilled ladies who operated this equipment managed to chat to one another by lip reading ! Paddy Price and Bertie Dowling programmed the machines manually, using control panels known as “plugboards“.
All this activity was overseen by the beady eye of John Kirby, who patrolled the room like a sergeant major.
The card control room contained three million punched cards that represented the ESB’s customer database. These were kept in drawer-like boxes stacked around the walls to ceiling height and accessed by ladders where necessary. Staff from the revenue division were responsible for adjustments, additions and deletions to customer accounts. Dan McLaughlin was the mastermind in this empire, ably assisted by Harry Byrne and Michael Kelly.
The data entry room or “punch room” was a regimented operation with 50 ladies working on an array of card punch machines. Una Ryan controlled it to exacting targets. Any of us programmers who required punching services for our program control cards had to run the gauntlet of Miss U Ryan’s eagle-eyed surveillance system.
Finally the computer services unit, where an array of Heath Robinson-like machines folded and enveloped ESB bills, was run like clockwork by Tony O’Toole and his deputy Des Kane.
Martin Dolphin, who was an invisible presence upstairs somewhere, was the head of the accounting machine group. When I arrived in my new job he informed me that the company was sending me to England on a training course. Flights and hotel were already booked. I found myself in an IBM centre somewhere near Lords Cricket Ground for three weeks. All the other trainees were experienced programmers. For them this was a refresher course. I sheltered in my hotel room while I tried to get to grips with the Assembler language. All our work on the 1401 would be done with IBM’s SPS. It was a really painstaking process and we wrote out everything on coding sheets.
After I returned to Dublin, I began working under Frank Malin. Tom Bolton and I developed a payroll system – a task that took six months, including the time that we spent explaining the system to the people who were going to work with it. There was a whole process to be followed for interfacing with the ESB district offices countrywide. Sean O’Neill was the primary liaison person.
My next development project was a system for hire purchase agreements, followed by one for stores. Somewhere along the way the title of the accounting machine group changed to the computer division.
One thing that took a long time to change was the dependence on punched cards. For some reason – I don’t know if it was cost – the ESB never went for tapes. The customer billing program for the IBM 1401 required 4,000 cards, all of which had to be loaded before the software could run. Every customer was represented by a deck of cards that contained names and addresses, meter readings and consumption figures, debtors balances, hire purchase instalments and service repair records.
We had quite a few strikes in the computer division, including one about who should lift the boxes of cards. There was a lot of aggro in the ESB about the grading structures of clerical workers. The unions’ strategy was to involve the computer operators at the start of each strike because their absence was disruptive. There was some resentment among the IT staff that they were used in this way. In August 1969 the machine room operators withdrew in a dispute over two-tier recruitment, which was about grade levels. Talks started, but they went into deadlock and the strike continued until February 1970. When it was finally resolved it took another six months before up to date bills were issued to all customers.
I also remember a later strike when the chief executive hauled up the head of IT to complain that managers could not stand in for computer operators. There was no appreciation of the complexities of the operator’s job.
By the end of the 1960s the computer division was considering the introduction of an IBM System/360 to replace the 1401s. Six new programmers joined our group to prepare for this upgrade. Three of them – Mick Conway, Frank Duffy and Aidan O’Byrne – went on to become our systems software experts under Tom Bolton.
It was still the ESB’s policy to choose programmers internally on the basis of aptitude tests. The quality of these staff was generally good. The organisation had rules about the length of service that it required before promotion, but these were circumvented for some of the new programmers. It never tried to get people to transfer from IBM or other installations. That would have been regarded as an unfair practice.
The introduction of systems analysts was another aspect of preparing for the new mainframe. In 1969 I became one of the first three analysts, along with Sean O’Neill and Pat Ryan. Our role was far-ranging. In addition to software design and maintenance, we would need to think like end users. Our job included communicating with other people outside the computer division about the practicalities and consequences of new systems. I remember looking forward to the development of applications for the System/360 because they would need much more business knowledge than the older systems – knowledge that was usually in short supply in data processing departments.
Bill Rutherford (left) with other members of the computer division (l-r): Bill McCarthy, Ted Dalton, Charlie Lynch, Mick Lawlor, Michael Cummins, Nicholas Gallagher, Eamonn Brosnan, Frank Hamill and Andy Fynn. This group photograph was organised in 1975 to mark their activity as volunteers for the Westland Row Day Centre.
Photographer unknown. Photograph courtesy of Bill Rutherford.
Our initial project as analysts was to convert the customer database for the 360. I was mainly involved with the file for electricity meters – work which included specifying various programs to cater for amendments, deletions and new connections. These functions were relatively small in volume but, due to their complexity, represented 90 per cent of the design requirements. My right hand man on this project was Eddie Coogan.
The IBM System/360 model 40 arrived in 1971, introducing disk and tape drives to the ESB. It took about 18 months to convert the major databases to disk and to phase out the 1401s. We also developed a new costing system for the System/360. IBM was championing PL/I at that time, so the ESB chose PL/I rather than Cobol as the main programming language for the new machine. We prepared for the transition by testing our code on the System/360 in CIE. I remember going there with Frank Duffy for stress testing on the stores software.
I left systems analysis in 1976. I had been looking for a change for years – just because I had been inside the same set-up for so long and wanted experience in some other part of the company. I thought that I would then be able to sell myself for promotion.
Last edit: June 2020
© Bill Rutherford 2020
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