Computing before computers
When I was 10years old I passed the new ‘selective’ test, the 11 plus, to go to the best Grammar School in our county. I wanted to go on to University. My headmistress had told my mother that she expected my friend Kathleen & I to go to Oxford or Cambridge and get a PhD.
My mother had other ideas. She already resented the costly uniform that I had to wear. She had left school at 13. She said it didn’t do her any harm. Girls were meant to marry and have babies.
My science teacher told me if I got a job with the civil service they would give me time off to study and if I worked hard I would get a place at a university. The British Meteorological Office was recruiting ‘Scientific Assistants’, the lowest grade, and it was offering time off to study. In 1956, I applied and was accepted.
There seemed to be a lot of complex mathematical calculations in Meteorology. I loved Maths and enjoyed learning about how school maths was used in all sorts of calculations such as estimating the optimum place to site a reservoir or the calculation of how many gallons of water flowed over Teddington Weir each month, the furthest place from the mouth of the river Thames that was tidal. This latter statistic was published in Times newspaper each month.
My first job was to calculate how many hours of sun each town that provided such stats had each month. This involved preparing a sunshine diagram of how much sun could be expected taking into account trees and buildings that might block the sun and the different inclination of the sun as it varied from month to month throughout the year.
Most of our calculations were done on slide rules and there were mechanical adding machines that could add, subtract or even multiply by adding a number of times. The day came when we were to get an electric calculator, a Monroe. Only the top scientists were allowed to use the Monroe which in addition to adding, subtracting, and multiplying, could divide and calculate sums of squares. It cost £4000, a huge amount. My first (3 bedroom) house which we bought a couple of years later after I had married only cost £2000.
About 10 years later calculators the size of a credit card were often given away free. They could do all the things the Monroe could do and were powered by a solar cell which was part of the body of the calculator. Magic!!!
My boss, Dr Grindley, was writing a book on statistics in Chinese for the Chinese market. If anyone came into our room he would hide his hand written script under a large blotter. He taught me how to do his work and taught me how to use the Monroe.
Part of Dr Grindley’s work was to travel the country inspecting government Meteorological equipment. While he was away I did all his work. The day came to do the calculation of the flow of the Thames at Teddington weir for the Times newspaper. I’d done it several times before but never on the Monroe and always had it checked by Dr Grindley before it was sent to the Times. I completed the calculation and to my horror the result was 5 with many noughts. 5 what???. I pondered then thought it must be 5 gallons. I sent the result to the Times. When Dr Grindley returned he was laughing. He held out a pile of letters. The Times had published my figure and received many, many letters from readers pointing out that the figure I’d given them was many times too low. Dr Grindley said “Ann, you are usually right but this time you really stuffed up”.
Shortly after that Dr Grindley got a letter saying that the Met Office was going to buy a computer. The 4 people at Dr Grindley’s level plus the head of the Met Office, Dr Alouisious Bleesedale, were to go on a course at Bletchley Park to learn all about the new computer. Dr Grindley said he couldn’t possibly go as his book was overdue to get to the publisher. I should go. After much argument, and because I had passed my forecaster exams and got accepted to start a Maths degree at London University, I was allowed to go in his stead.
It was 1958. there were only about 300 computers in the world. I didn’t ever go on the course. A cycling accident left me with a severely fractured skull and I learned I would be a ‘vegetable’ for at least 2 years. To find out how I got into computing 6 months later you will have to read my book.