Brendan Supple

I qualified with a degree in electrical engineering in 1963. Engineers were in short supply that year, so I was offered a wide array of jobs from a sound engineer with the BBC Third Programme – which fitted with my interest in music – to selling Trident aircraft. I was seduced by an offer from ICT to introduce me to computers in four years time – if I behaved myself and ‘if computers happened’. Although I had specialised in electronics as an engineering student, I had not yet seen a computer at that time; a slide rule was the nearest to one I had ever got.

I arrived at ICT’s training school at Moor Hall in Cookham, Berkshire to discover that computers had happened. I was one of a select batch of 13 graduates who had been selected to spearhead the delivery a batch of 100 computers that ICT had just sourced from Ferranti. The system would be known as the ICT 1500.

We spent 15 weeks in Moor Hall on Course SS107 in what felt like a continuation of university with pay. We learned the basics of systems analysis, systems design and accounting. We scratched the surface of programming, where our instructor never quite managed to keep the requisite one day ahead of us. It must have been appalling trying to cope with such a group of smart-assed know-it-alls.

At the end of the course I was allocated to ICT’s ‘electricity region’ with clients such as the London Electricity Board and the Electricity Council. The company ran 13 ‘regions’ in Britain and each of them received a newcomer from SS107. I worked with systems analysts who had been doing their job for many years and who found it hard to be upstaged by this whipper-snapper. I learned much from such people and learned to appreciate their experience and wisdom. Computers brought flexibility and speed to methods which had been constrained by the punch card. Programs were written in machine code and we were excited by the power of assembler. Languages like Cobol were still in the future.

I lived in Hampstead and shared a flat with Henry Stanley. He had been on ICT’s SS106 graduate training course, which centred on punched card equipment instead of computers. Henry and a number of others from SS106 helped me with the transition of leaving home and settling into life in London.

One morning the postman delivered several very large envelopes addressed to a former resident. It was evident that these had been sent from IBM. They turned out to contain pre-release documentation for IBM’s System/360. As I was aware that ICT was about to launch the ICT 1900, I was the hero of the moment when I rushed down with my prize to our headquarters at Putney Bridge.

A transfer course to the 1900 followed and this coincided with a major event in my life: I became engaged to Siobhan – my wife of over 50 years. She was a teacher living in Dublin and I was aware that most of our potential savings for marriage would be squandered on flights home to see her every couple of weekends. A notice on the board looking for a computer ‘expert’ to supervise the installation of an ICT 1900 for the Tanzanian Government took me far away and provided me with sufficient expenses to live on until the following March. I had a wonderful time in the perpetual sunshine with my own house, car and staff. I also learned how to sail. No wonder I promised to return to ICT in East Africa when I was married.

Brendan in 1965 – ICT’s computer expert in Dar es Salaam

I managed a brief side trip to Dublin on my way back to London and there had a meeting with Peter Mullett, the general manager of ICT Ireland. He suggested that I join them to assist in the installation of an ICT 1902 for Player Wills on the South Circular Road – a newly formed combination of two established tobacco companies with a common parent. Peter squared the move with my temporary manager in ICT International and I had a painful interview with my manager in ICT UK. However, all was sorted out and I returned home to take up my life with my parents and to prepare for my wedding in August. Siobhan had survived the trauma of attendance alone at a marriage counselling course and was most relieved to be able to show off her partner to the other couples.

ICT, which was then housed in Adelaide Road, had secured a £125,000 sale to Player Wills by promising to install an invoicing and statement system as part of the package. This was the norm at the time: hardware was very expensive and the vendors threw in highly customised software for free.

ICT assigned Frank Smith, Julian Jackson and myself to the project. We assembled and trained a small team of neophytes within Player Wills. John Kinsella, Jimmy McKay and Bob McHugh became programmers. Declan Devereux looked after computer operations and Joan Walsh was the punch room supervisor. This was an interesting group. Jimmy played the double bass in a jazz band, while John became the foremost Irish composer of symphonies and string quartets.

We set to work to write the software, travelling to Birmingham every second week to test our programs. Our input medium was paper tape and we became expert at splicing it together. There was no other method for inserting or deleting instructions for our programs. Magnetic tape was our sole storage medium and we installed four tape drives. The tapes had to be changed frequently and processes like sorting required the use of all four drives. Producing an invoice or statement involved a tedious series of steps: data input, sorting, pricing, sorting, customer reference, sorting, printing and so on.

Installation day arrived and the engineers still had a lot of wiring to do to make the machine ready for use. The computer room, which was air-conditioned with an air-lock at the entrance, was the size of a small house. There was a separate room for the sole use of ICT engineers.

We had a dozen or more keyboard operators who punched and verified all the input data. Two more operators were responsible for bursting the print output and separating the two or three part reports produced by our high speed printer.

David Ford from the Imperial Tobacco head office in Bristol ensured that our team had the ear of the Player Wills board and, when necessary, that of the head office also. It was at his suggestion, I believe, that I was offered the post of data processing manager. (Some wag adjusted the notice on the notice board to announce the arrival of Mr Supple, the new P.E. instructor).

Gradually, the constant presence of ICT personnel waned. With the arrival of a new system analyst Tony Banton, who joined us from Midland Bank in London, we became self-sufficient. Tony worked on other applications that were added to the invoicing and statement system.

I arranged stand-by facilities with the computer department of Guinness and discussed the concept of providing a service to Irish Distillers. This computer service concept – or bureau as it came to be known – made complete sense to me. Why spend a huge sum on a computer and then leave it idle for most of the 24 hours ? The incremental cost of operators and electricity was a small price to pay for the use of the facility and it should be possible to make money selling time on our machine. I discussed the concept with company secretary Roger Byers and managing director Alan Buttenshaw. They persuaded the board to present its parent organisation with a proposal to set up a new company.

One of our first bureau customers was the Mass-Radiography Board headed by Peter Rowan. We arranged for its report cards to be shipped to Derry and converted into paper tape by a company owned by a gregarious entrepreneur called Alex Carr. His ambition was boundless and his speed of action was rather faster than that of Imperial. Alex proposed that he, Tony Banton and myself should set up a bureau with an ICT 1902 at a new office in the industrial park in Dean’s Grange near Dun Laoire.

Inspecting a line printer for the Mass X Ray computing project: From left to right: Peter Mullett (ICT general manager in Ireland), Paul Rowan (Mass-Radiography Board chairman) and Brendan Supple.
(Photo source: ICT Computer International May 1968)

On the day that Imperial Tobacco accepted the proposal for a bureau at Player Wills, I resigned in order to set up this new company. Player Wills very graciously allowed me to buy time on their computer at a favourable rate and business began. We added Wavin Pipes, Concrete Products of Ireland and Chadwicks to our customer list. We hired our first programmer, Mike Dunlea, on 1 July 1968.

Then Alex Carr’s business in Derry ceased trading. In a total change of direction I formed a new company called Data Preparation and Processing (DP&P) Ltd, hired Mike Dunlea, took over the computer time arrangement with Player Wills and accepted responsibility for the new customers. We bought additional computer time from Hely Group in Santry and Independent Newspapers in Abbey Street. We added card punching to our data preparation services through an agreement with CIE Computer Services in Oriel Street. We also contracted Mike Dunlea to ICT in order to help with the cash flow.

Our customers now included Hilti and Bryan S. Ryan, where we dealt with Maurice O’Grady. He went on to join ICT as a salesman, set up Nixdorf in Ireland and became director general of the Irish Management Institute.

At around the same time as DP&P began, University Computing Company (UCC) wanted to set up a subsidiary in Ireland. UCC, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, planned to sell computing time on a Univac 1108 in London. The company had a proprietary operating system and had introduced its own Cope communications devices which used punched cards for data input.

UCC had recently taken over Computer Bureau Shannon, which ran a Honeywell system, and changed the name of the business to UCC (Shannon). Its managing director, Mike McMahon, contacted me and offered me the job of MD of UCC (Ireland) Ltd. We agreed that DP&P’s customers should transfer to the Honeywell computer and that Mike Dunlea should join UCC (Shannon).

An Foras Taluntais (also known as AFT or The Agricultural Institute) was in the market for access to a powerful computer such as UCC’s Univac 1108. AFT processed animal genetics, farm management records, milk and cereal production on an Elliott 803B computer which was very small and very slow. I needed an office for UCC (Ireland) and AFT offered me a site in return for a connection to the Univac system. We erected a large cabin on the AFT campus on Sandymount Avenue, which gave us space for offices and a computer room. Technical consultant Gerry Rogers, engineer John O’Keeffe and secretary Pam Hession (who later married one another) joined me in the new organisation. We ordered a Cope 45 terminal and a dedicated leased line to the UCC computer centre on Euston Road in London. Once these were installed we were open for business.

By then UCC’s concepts had attracted attention from other prospective customers. IAWS was interested in analysing milk records. Barra O’Cinneide and Jean Raven at Bord Fáilte wanted to process data from interviews with visitors to Ireland. We met a team at CDPS that included Maurice O’Connell, Gerry Colgan, Michael Cullinane, Kevin Drury and Harry Nally. We also sold a second Cope 45 to Brendan Murphy and Don Dennehy at training authority AnCO, installing it in their offices at Carrisbrook House in Ballsbridge.

Turnaround on the system was excellent and rarely exceeded five minutes from the end of the card input phase to the start of printing. As computer time on the 1108 cost £1500 per hour, a limit card was inserted in each data card pack and normally set at 30 seconds. We had a small number of frantic emergencies where a mis-keyed time limit proved an expensive error. We had no direct control over the 1108 and had to telephone the computer room operators in London to tell them to kill these jobs. One customer wasted his entire month’s budget on this silly mistake.

Visits to London to see the UCC computer centre and the 1108 in action were very popular and helped to grow our business. We rolled out the red carpet for important visitors from CDPS and the Department of Posts and Telegraphs (P&T). The essence of our discussions was a plan to install a Univac 1106 inside CDPS with a number of Cope 45s connected to it, including one in P&T.

In 1970 UCC and CDPS agreed to share use of this mainframe and to split the operating costs. UCC would offer processing services to private companies and the ‘semi-state’ portion of the public sector. These discussions produced a relationship which was acceptable to both sides and John Kason, UCC’s executive vice president in Europe, participated in our meetings in London and recommended the deal to UCC’s headquarters in Dallas. We drew up a contract and sent it to Dallas for signature. Then, for reasons that were never explained to us, UCC president Sam Wyly decided not to accept the arrangement and declined to sign the contract.

Our loss was IBM’s gain. In the years that followed it supplied System/370 mainframes to both CDPS and P&T. IBM thus moved into a commanding position in Irish government computing.

I left UCC in 1971 and joined Cara Computing. I later headed up the newly formed Cara Consulting.

Last edit: December 2016

© Brendan Supple 2016