Typewriter

I have just bought a rather lovely 1980s typewriter. It is an Olympiette Special (made by Olympia). Although it looks a bit shabby it types incredibly well. I took a photograph of some of the typing i did and the type looked like it had been Photoshopped, it was so sharp! What will i do with this typewriter? What do i do with my Brother Deluxe? Not a lot!

Playing fields of dreams

Time for a little nostalgia. I like to walk, it helps me clear my head. One of the nearby locations in Erdington that i like to walk around sometimes are the Spring Lane playing fields. Its a popular spot for dog walkers too, though i go to walk myself. Its a special place for me as the first school that i went to backs onto the playing fields and indeed back in my youth, in the late 1970s and early 1980s the playing fields was where we went and played various kinds of sports and the odd nature trail.

That school in question is St Barnabas Primary School which these days has a good name. I don't really know how good its name was back in the day, i recall my parents forever moaning about it but i don't think i turned out that badly. The school is a typical example of late 1960s architecture which i personally like to be honest. The below photo i took in 2008 and, apart from a few additions in the play ground, the school hasn't changed a great deal. It probably has changed a lot more inside.

I went to the school from the ages of 5 to 11 (there was no nursery class back then though one did form after i started school). The only thing i remember about my first day was that my Mum gave me a banana for lunch. Like most of your memories though they tend to be a blur (as the mundane is easily forgotten). I do remember when Concorde came to Birmingham Airport though, as the approach flightpath went right over our school. We all waited in the play ground and watched it fly over. A truly wonderful sight. Later on the Space Shuttle (atop a 747) made a flyover Birmingham though unfortunately it was a cloudy day and we never got to see anything.

One thing i do remember about school are the various events and shows put on. Often i was in the choir with my angelic voice. I was in the choir in one production of Rumplestiltskin (my Mum kept the programme - my memories of this are vague), one of the older girls was dressed in green including green skin paint. I think that was my first crush. Nicola Carter what are you doing now? Hopefully you are not still green.

I also remember having to sing "The Rainbow Song" on stage at some sort of end of year gala. I was one of a number of classmates who sang the song, each of us represented one colour of the rainbow and had to dress head to toe in that colour. Luckily i was "Blue" which was easy to achieve.

The below photo shows one of the shows my class put on at the school, telling a story by the medium of Chinese dragon dance (or a kind of approximation anyway). The class was split into two groups representing the two factions in the story : a dragon and a panda. I was on Team Panda, i am the one right behind the panda mask carrier in the photo. I've always been tall. I don't actually remember this event apart from a vague memory of creating my mask. A horrible task involving glue and fake fur.

But one day it was all over. The below photo was taken on my last day and shows my last form teacher (and the best teacher i ever had at school) Mr Saunders and the headmaster Mr Bennett. The last year at the school was great. Mr Saunders let us spend most of the year on individual (and barely monitored) projects. One reason for this was that he was rather busy and had many things to do, including planing some new wardrobe doors he had got actually in the classroom in front of us.

Not that i am complaining, this opportunity for personal research i probably found the most valuable of lessons at primary school even if i did spend most of the time filling book after book with pictures of airliners. Most kids completed a book over the course of a year, i filled seventeen. I have always been prolific. School books then, blogs now. 

Even back then i have been nostalgic for the past and melancholic about change. I remember the last Summer at that school very fondly. Often on that playing field, hoping the term would never end and the horrors of big school would never materialise...

The early PC keyboard

An interesting look at the development of the IBM PC keyboard up to the PS/2 in the 1980s when the key layout we often still use today on PC desktops was largely finalised. I've always liked IBM PC keyboards (and I'm not alone, they have a cult following), i remember fondly using XTs at university, pounding away for hours typing Pascal, COBOL and less serious stuff while connected to a minicomputer. Keyboards today are less interesting and certainly quieter! I do have an IBM PS/2 but have no idea what happened to the keyboard...

The rise of the microcomputer

An interesting video from the Open University discussing the rise of the microcomputer in the 1980s. It highlights the great variety of machines which were released as computers became democratised and were within the aim of normal people and not just corporations and universities.

Return of the TwiggyMac

The Twiggy Mac is the stuff of myth surely? What am I talking about? Well the Apple Macintosh, up until a fairly late stage in the project (which was finally released in 1984 of course) was going to use the same 5 1/4 inch "Twiggy" disk drive as used in the Apple Lisa. Unfortunately the Twiggy drive was rubbish and often failed, indeed this was one of the Lisa's Achilles' heels (along with the huge price). Luckily Sony had just bought out their new 3.5 inch floppy drive format which Apple used instead and the rest is history...

It has been assumed that none of the Twiggy drive equipped Macintosh prototypes had survived as Apple had had them all recalled and destroyed in 1983. However one was found and later on another one turned up too!

After some restoration work the Twiggy Macs now work again and could boot from the original Twiggy system disks which included a beta version of Mac OS from August 1983. This version of the eventual first release of Mac OS included some intriguing differences from the final version including "Steve sez" in dialogue boxes. The whole story is recounted in the highly enjoyable Twiggy Mac website.

Heres how it ended up looking, my 512K

Creating the Apple Lisa (and Mac) user interface

How exactly are graphical user interfaces (GUI) created? Obviously it involves quite a lot of advanced programming and design work but where do you start, especially back in the 1970s when there weren't many examples of GUIs to gain inspiration from? This extraordinary page on the Mac Folklore website has a series of photographs how the Apple Lisa GUI developed from the first basic graphic tests to the finished article which shipped in the early 1980s, and later carried on by the Apple Macintosh to the present day.

What is especially interesting how the Apple UI, with elements still familiar and used today such as the menu at the top, evolved. Early in the Lisa GUI development a softkey menu along the bottom of the screen was the direction the developers took before the abrupt change to a window and mouse based design. Inspired / stolen from Xerox PARC? Well various theories abound, i'm sure there was plenty of inspiration taken but some elements of the GUI are said to predate that.

It is interesting that in 1980 the Lisa had a menu on the top of windows (like Microsoft Windows later went with) instead of along the top of the screen as how the final design used.

Blit

The usual history of graphic user interfaces goes like this: Xerox PARC invented them in the 1970s and Apple got inspired to build their own closely followed by X Windows and Microsoft... Well it didn't quite happen that way. Xerox were not the first to develop GUI technology and in the late 1970s and early 1980s there were a number of other GUIs in development.

Blit was a multi-tasking windowing environment developed by AT&T in the early 1980s. It ran on the AT&T 5620 which might be termed more a smart terminal than a computer but it had a M68K processor - like the first Macs - and so was quite powerful for it's day. The 5620 could be connected to a Unix computer via an RS-232 connection. The GUI is familiar but also had some interesting ideas, somewhat similar to Smalltalk systems in some ways and early X Windows. The video is well worth a watch.

Jupiter Ace

One characteristic was common to the microcomputers of the late 1970s and early 1980s, they all tended to have BASIC included on a system ROM. Well there was one notable exception, the Jupiter Ace. It was the first home computer to be based on Forth instead of BASIC [1]. The Ace was developed by British company Jupiter Cantab and released in 1982.

Apart from Forth the Ace was quite typical of the period having a Z80A CPU at it's heart and 1KB of RAM (my Mac has four million times as much memory), in terms of form factor it was not unlike the Sinclair ZX81 though a different colour of course and with rubber keys. It also had quite a different internal arrangement though not unlike the Spectrum in some ways (the designers were ex-Sinclair who had worked on the ZX81 and Spectrum).

Forth was chosen as it was considered ideal for a computer like the Ace being fast and compact and a structured language compared to the BASICs of the time. Unfortunately the Ace didn't catch on, the lack of BASIC ended up being a massive hinderance not a bonus. When you are swimming against the flow you need to be really really good and the Ace, despite some nice features, was not. Its graphics were low resolution black and white (64x48) and it lacked decent sound. Forth was also not as easy for beginners to learn compared to BASIC.

For the average home user it was not really that attractive though the inclusion of Forth and the ability to expand the Ace to 51K meant it had appeal to hobbyists. However there were not enough of them to make it a hit.

Around five thousand of the original Ace and eight hundred of the Ace 4000 with an improved case are reported to have been sold. The Ace was discontinued in 1984.

[1] Max Philips, Microcomputer Catalogue (Marshall Cavendish, 1983) p. 14

Adverts of the 70s/80s... an occasional series

A new irregular series delving into the mysterious world of 1970s and 1980s print advertising.

History of the World in Apple Objects (12) : Macintosh IIci

The Macintosh IIci which was on sale between 1989 and 1993 was a more powerful version of the earlier IIcx and indeed was the most powerful Macintosh for some time. It had a 25Mhz 68030 CPU and at least 1MB of RAM. Now these do not sound much nowadays but back in the day it was a pretty good spec.

It came in a very nice compact case which remains one of my favourite Apple Computer cases. The top is easily removable so you can get at the innards and perform repairs or upgrades. A far cry from today's super locked down units. I'd love a modern Mac in such a case to be honest.

Windows File Manager

The Windows File Manager was the file manager included with Microsoft Windows from version 3.0 until Windows 95 and NT where it was phased out in favour of Windows Explorer. The Windows File Manager was used to perform file management tasks and hence replaced the functionality of MS-DOS (earlier versions of Windows had a simple file manager called MS-DOS Executive).

Why are we talking about File Manager? Well an updated version has been released that will work on Windows 10! You can download it here if that kind of thing floats your boat.

History of the World in Apple Objects (9) : M0001A Mac Plus

The Mac Plus was the third model of Macintosh computer after the 512K. The Mac Plus had a huge 1MB of RAM and could be expanded to a mind boggling (and especially wallet busting in 1986) 4MB! The Mac Plus also introduced the SCSI bus which became the main peripheral port for Macs until USB. Finally the Mac Plus was the first Mac in the Platinum colour which would become standard until the iMac (though earlier ones like mine were still in beige).

Otherwise the Mac Plus followed the same compact format as the two earlier Macs. Also later Macs like the SE and Macintosh II family eclipsed it it remained in production as the (relatively speaking) cheap low-end Mac until 1990. It had the longest production run of any Mac model and was supported until 1997, able to run Mac OS 7.

The British Bus (4) : PTEs and OMOs

As we said in part three of this history of the British bus the industry had been pretty much completely nationalised by the end of the 1960s. The Transport Act of 1968 created five Passenger Transport Executives (PTEs) in the provinces. These PTEs, such as WMPTE in the West Midlands, which took over bus operations from their relevant local authorities. WMPTE for example took over bus operations in Birmingham, Walsall, West Bromwich and Wolverhampton [1]. The PTEs were also responsible for local rail networks and there was an attempt at transport integration with bus-rail tickets and the like.

Bus operations remained in public hands until the 1980s and deregulation. All bus services outside of London and Northern Ireland were taken out of public hands under the Transport Act of 1985. The National Bus Company was split up into smaller units and local authorities and PTEs had to dispose of their bus fleets to private companies (though some remained under the control of local authorities). London followed suit in 1989.

History tends to repeat itself, as with the early days of the horse and motor bus the early says of deregulation saw many new smaller bus companies start up and then gradually concentrate into a smaller number of larger groups like Stagecoach and National Express. To take an example of how the bus industry has changed since the 1960s in Birmingham buses went from Birmingham City Transport to WMPTE operation before being privatised into West Midlands Travel, later Travel West Midlands when it was taken over by National Express and is now National Express West Midlands [2].

Pretty much all buses now are rear engined. The pioneer of this type being the Leyland Atlantean which appeared in 1958 and remained in production until 1986. Other major types of rear engined bus in the pre-regulation era included the Daimler Fleetline, Metro-Cammell Metrobus and Leyland Titan. Thousands were built to form the mainstay of municipal and PTE fleets before being transferred to private ownership.

With the engine at the back this left the front free for a flat front and gave ample space for the driver to also sell tickets. One Man Operation (OMO) as it became known was a major cost saver in the bus industry throughout the 1970s as conductors were no longer required. In London the conductor remained in place longer after the job was virtually extinct elsewhere, not only because the capital remained a last bastion of the half-cab (Routemaster) but rear engined buses often remained crew operated. Some reverting back to crew operation from OMO due to problems with the fare collection machines used [3].

Greater use was also made of single-decker and minibuses in the late pre-regulation and early post-regulation eras. Greater competition for a time did seem like deregulation would be a good thing with a greater variety of services trying to match demand. However the consolidation of the industry and reductions in subsidy has left many areas with inadequate services. Buses have suffered from an image problem for a long time compared to other forms of public transport like light rail which are considered "sexier". Time will tell if this will ever change.

Metrobus of Travel West Midlands, the private successor to the WMPTE bus service

London Northern Leyland Titan

Chase bus Leyland National

West Riding Leyland Lynx

Three Metrobuses in Travel WM, Travel Coventry and WMPTE liveries

[1] Malcolm Keeley, Birmingham Buses Route by Route 1925-1975 (Ian Allan, 2012) p. 11
[2] Andrew Cole, West Midlands PTE and it's Successors (Amberley, 2017) p. 4
[3] Matthew Wharmby & R.C. Riley, London Transport 1970-1984 (Ian Allan, 2013) p. 42

The Prime Computer story

Prime Computer (the name was often written as Pr1me in publications as shown on my copy of the Assembly Language Programmer's Guide right) was a manufacturer of minicomputers in the 1970s and 1980s.

The company was started in 1972 by seven founders and started off with the Prime 200 which was compatible with the Honeywell 316/516 (which had been discontinued). Prime continued to develop minicomputers throughout the decade culminating with the 750 which was known as a "VAX killer" (running at 1.0 MIPS) and this set off Prime into the big league.

By the mid-1980s it was the sixth largest minicomputer manufacturer with many customers in US banking and academia. Primes also had a major use as CAD systems.

In the early 1980s Prime was big enough to be rumoured to be interested in buying Apple (computing today could certainly be different if that had happened!) They also employed the then-Dr Who Tom Baker and Romana (Lalla Ward) for a series of TV adverts!

However, like all the large computer manufacturer they hit turbulance in the late 1980s as customers began to turn away from mainframes and minicomputers and instead went for PCs, workstations and Unix based servers instead. Hardware was becoming a cheap commodity, the real money was in software. Prime bought a CAD software company called Computervision in 1989.

Prime stumbled into the 1990s, surviving hostile takeover attempts but declining revenues were resulting in a number of new system projects being curtailed. Although once Primes had been cutting edge, by the late 1980s they had fallen behind competing systems in terms of processing power. They also failed to join the PC revolution of the 1980s. A Prime PC was developed (or rather bought from another company) but was delayed and by the time it was finally released it was already obsolete.

In the late 1980s Prime tried to break into the lucrative workstation market but the debt mountain finally caused Prime to run out of time in the Summer of 1992. The company was restructured under the Computervision name with hardware projects and manufacturing ceased and most staff were laid off.

Although hardware sales had ended Computervision continued to develop the Prime operating system PRIMOS for a number of years. The last major version (Rev 24) was released in 1994 and the last known update was Rev 24.0.0.R51 released in March 1996. Computervision itself was bought by PTC in 1998.

Nowadays it is unlikely there are any Prime systems still in operation however a number did survive well after the demise of Prime (and indeed Computervision).

Visicalc and the origin of spreadsheets

Spreadsheet programs are one of the major types of application on personal computers today, millions of people use the likes of Excel and Numbers daily. The first spreadsheet for a personal computer however was Visicalc which was written by Daniel Bricklin and Bob Frankston in the late 1970s. The program, released for the Apple II initially and other computers like the IBM PC later on, was an immediate success and is said to have kick started the idea of personal computers as things you could do work on instead of playing games or experimenting/developing.

Visicalc's time in the Sun was fairly short, after a few years it was eclipsed by Lotus 1-2-3 and in turn that was eclipsed by Excel but its place in computing history is safe.

An executable version of Visicalc for DOS (including DOSbox on the Mac) can be downloaded and works fine. Whats fascinating is how Visicalc defined so much of basic spreadsheet usage right at the start. Formulae like @SUM and @COUNT which i still use nowadays in Excel and Numbers were defined by Visicalc. Without fonts and formatting getting in the way its also rather quick to set up a spreadsheet in it too...

The oldest PC DOS

The OS/2 Museum has come into possession of a 160K disk containing what may be the oldest surviving piece of software for the IBM PC. This is PC-DOS 1.0 dating from June 1981, thus predating the official v1.0 release of the IBM PC operating system by a few months. PC-DOS (and MS-DOS - the two were identical for a long time, PC-DOS just being the IBM branded version) ruled the roost in the business computer world in the 1980s and later conquered the home market.

The first PC i had was an Amstrad PC1640 which came with MS-DOS 3.2. Later i bought a copy of MS-DOS 4.0 (which i thought personally was good though it had many critics at the time) and later PCs came with v5.0. DOS was quite a limited operating system and there was a huge industry of add-ons and enhancements, software like Xtree which was highly popular.

Eventually Windows took over and people stopped caring which DOS they were running, especially after Windows 95 replaced it. I can still remember some of the commands though like dir and type.

These days i run Mac OSX however i have DOSbox installed for running old games (something i seldom do to be honest, no time to play!) I can thus open it and type those commands again. And then return to my GUI.

Tektronix 4404 Smalltalk Demo

A fascinating demo of Smalltalk running on the Tektronix 4404. Smalltalk was developed in the early 1970s at Xerox PARC and was hugely influential in the development of graphical user interfaces. There are indeed elements of the interface shown in the video in Mac OSX nowadays (the browser for example). However the freedom and flexibility of the interface seems far beyond what we are allowed to do these days.

The Powerpoint story

Presentation software overlord Powerpoint has a bad name in some quarters (not entirely undeserved), luckily i do not have to use it much in my everyday work though i did use it to create a presentation to accompany my nerve wracking micro-teach when i was training to become a teacher a few years ago (luckily skills and qualifications i have not had to make use of since)...

The genesis of Powerpoint is interesting however as this article details. Powerpoint was developed by a company set up by ex-Apple II and III engineers and came about almost by accident. The company, Forethought, had been trying to create an object orientated GUI for IBM PCs but were running out of cash and time and so needed to change their business plan and bring in some revenue. First they published FileMaker (still a popular Mac app) and later wrote Powerpoint, originally for the Mac only.

Powerpoint was an immediate success when it was released in April 1987. So much so that Microsoft bought the company just 3 months later! It took a few years for Powerpoint to see off its rivals in this area like Harvard Graphics but now it is the undisputed king of presentation software with an estimated 95% of the market!

Columbus' PowerPoint Presentation from David C. Brock on Vimeo.

History of the World in Apple Objects (7) : Macintosh 512K

Following on a few months after the release of the original Macintosh in 1984 was the Macintosh 512K (M0001W). The 512K referring to the memory, a whole half a megabyte of RAM! The original Mac had just 128K of course so the 512K was quite an upgrade. Otherwise the 512K was the same as the original Mac but the extra memory made it a much more useful computer.

Some new applications required the extra memory including Microsoft Excel which was first released for the Mac. The extra memory also enabled an early form of Mac multi-tasking and networking. The 512K remained on sale for 2 years.

The 512K is the oldest Mac in my collection. I use it as a stand for my bedroom clock. The Mac could still work though mine is a US 120v one so would need a converter to use power in this country.

History of the World in Apple Objects (6) : M0130 Macintosh External Floppy Drive

The Macintosh came with a built-in 3.5" floppy drive but in the days before hard drives having two floppy drives was a boon. M0130 was an external floppy drive for the original Macintosh, the follow-on 512K, the Mac Plus and the SE. It would not work with an Apple II.

The disk drive used 400K floppies formatted in the Macintosh File System format. And came in a nice neat beige box to match the original Mac.