DEUCE PEOPLE AND PLACES
The following is a list of people associated with the
English Electric DEUCE COMPUTER in those early days,
as they come to mind, from the memories of those listed here or they contact me
after visiting this website.
There
a now over 490 names in the database. (JB September 2010)
Latest Updates and Additions to the website here
http://users.tpg.com.au/eedeuce/updates.html
Please use the alphabetical index
below
to locate DEUCE PEOPLE on this and other pages of the website.
A - B - C - D
- E - F - G - H
- I - J - K - L
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[WWW] - Link to personal or reference website. - Email Address may be
available here.
[EA] - Email address on file. I will forward email but will not provide
address.
[PA] - Postal address on file. I will forward mail but will not provide
address.
ENGLISH ELECTRIC -
Nelson Research Laboratory - Blackheath Lane
Visit "The Staffordshire University Computing Futures Museum" "
Here
Many of the staff listed
here later transferred to Kidsgove "In the 1950's there was no DEUCE at
Whetstone and we were allowed to use the one in The 11th March 1955 edition of
"Engineering" states that there were three DEUCE shown at the demonstration
at English Electric on 17th February 1955. One was due to go to NPL, another
was due to go to RAE Farnborough and the third was to be retained at NRL. A
fourth (possibly under construction) was due to go to the company's "A name to conjure with, and strike
terror into the hearts of all and sundry. I have similar recollections (to Rod
Whitworth), but I was in the middle of a particularly trying test run, with
post-mortems and and whatever-it-was-called
-when-you-punched-the-instructions-out-as-they-were-being-obeyed. (Program
display? Key somewhere in the middle of the board in a down position, use
purple striped cards?) He snuck up behind me, made me jump a mile, and looked a
bit taken aback when I wasn't at my most friendly and forthcoming! [In fact, away from NRL, he was a very nice
chap, but I think he left that persona with Ray at Security!] "(David
Leigh) "On the day that the Princess was
present, JK Brown himself came down (to RAE Farnborough) and, after seeing the
Princess, JB remembers that JK Brown was all puffed up and reported back to the
workshop in a loud voice - " Isn't she tiny! " (John Boothroyd - Deuce
Reflections ) Cliff Robinson reported to Wilf Scott, who
protected us from the fearsome J.K.Brown." (Mike Wetherfield) I think it must be 50 years since I last
demonstrated the Easter Sunday program, and you may be interested in its
background. We were due to formally demonstrate Deuce to the first batch of
experts, (mainly from NPL) who were due to come to Kidsgrove, and about 3 days
before they came, J K Brown insisted that we invent and make about 5
demonstration programs to show it off. One of these was the Easter Sunday
program, which, if I remember rightly, was written on time by John Denison.
Another was the program to factorise any number up to a million. The task was
duly completed and they remained the backbone of demonstrations to curious
laymen for years to come. JK also wanted a portable stand to be built
so that 12 or more visitors could see demonstrations at the same time. The
front of this "bandstand", as it was called, can be seen on the photo
of A C D Haley doing a demonstration, and it was brought out regularly for
visitors who came in batches. "bandstand"
photo I was very impressed to see how much of the
early days you have managed to record for posterity, with so few of the
original documents available. "Cliff Robinson ran the show - one
couldn't have asked for a better manager. Others, like myself, would have followed
him anywhere." (Mike Wetherfield) The Computer Journal , Volume 1, Issue 4,
1958 My connection with Deuce is that my father
is Cliff Robinson, who worked at NRL until 1961, and then at Kidsgrove. My earliest memory (of anything) is sitting
down on the living room floor with Allan Gilmour and my father, helping them
with an upgrade. In my early teens I used to go in to
Kidsgrove at weekends to use Deuce, where Alphacode was my first programming
language. My father had originally come in to
computing from the world of calculator arithmetic. (He had compiled tables of
logarithms, sines, cosines etc.) My father moved on to ICL, where he ran
their computer bureaux and supplies subsidiaries and was responsible for the
introduction of the electronic calculator to the He is extremely numerate to this day! As far as Deuce is concerned, I joined
English Electric at Nelson Research Labs, I learnt Deuce programming from the
excellent Vic Price / George Davis manual. I took to Deuce programming like a
duck to water - the first program I wrote, to teach myself, calculated PI to
150 decimal places, punching the result onto 5 cards. Later I helped to introduce, and was heavily
involved with, the various nefarious programming practices known as
"frigging the Multiplier" and I devised the first "Read eight
8-digit integers" subroutine, R24T - and later, after John O'Brien
(Marconi) produced an improved version (R24T/1), I inevitably had to go one
better and produced R24T/2, which used even fewer instructions. Competitive days, them was! I also wrote a "Scheme B" Brick
which read eight 8-digit numbers. "Scheme B" was a matrix-handling
system, the successor to "Scheme A". About the last serious Deuce program I wrote
was the Mark 2 Alphacode Compiler (which was really an Assembler) - thanks to
"Mult-frigging" this version kept the card reader going continuously
instead of stopping after each card. Read Mike's recollections of programming
DEUCE in the late 1950's here See also Allan Gilmour's entry
Brian had left before I joined NRL but was
always spoken of as a real expert. I believe he developed both "Scheme
A" and "Scheme B", and also wrote "Willie the Worm"
which danced around in one of the circular CRT displays on the Deuce console!
(Mike Wetherfield) Deuce programmer, already at NRL when I
joined. Extrovert and a keen hockey player. (Mike Wetherfield) Deuce programmer, the next to join after Jim
Lucking. (Mike Wetherfield) Deuce programmer. At Kidsgrove, when
software development for KDF9 became a properly organised department, he took
over the running of it. (Mike Wetherfield) Neville Hawkins wrote both the Interpreters
(Mark 1 and Mark 2) which executed the code produced by the corresponding
Alphacode Compilers. (Mike Wetherfield) Bernard was left in charge of the
programmers who remained at NPL, who included Neville Hawkins (and Mike
Kingsbury?), after the rest of us decamped for Kidsgrove. (Mike Wetherfield) I have always understood that he personally
wrote the DEUCE program which worked so brilliantly when ITV did their live
broadcast from Nelson Research Labs on the night of the 1959 General Election.
DEUCE correctly predicted the final outcome after comparatively few results had
been announced, and in this respect did much better than the competition - I
forget whose computer the BBC were using. ( It was as an RAE Deuce - JB ) Many of the NRL staff took part on that
evening, some of us just carrying bits of paper from one place to another (I
was apparently "seen on television"), though there must have been
people punching the results onto cards and feeding them into the DEUCEs. I
forget who the ITV "front man" was, but there on-the-spot
"psephologist" was the celebrated statistician Maurice Kendall - I
remember him sitting next to Cliff Robinson as they were being interviewed in
the early hours of the morning at the end of the show. (Mike Wetherfield) The solution of railway problems on a
digital computer: "The brightest engineer and programmer
in the team." "(known as "Speedy"), was
responsible for the music programme, we used to gather round the DEUCE at
Christmas time to listen to it playing carols." (David Leigh) John Denison wrote the Mark 1 Alphacode
Compiler. (Mike Wetherfield) Author of Programmes to Aid
Programmers - DEUCE Programme News - No. 16. November, 1957. Roger was responsible for Deuce News,
distribution of subroutines, etc. (Mike Wetherfield) John BOOTHROYD - Mathematics Dept - NRL John program testing at the Deuce control desk. "JB was expert
in setting up the Multiplier/ Divider function on the DEUCE. In earlier
computers multiplication and division had been undertaken through software /
programming. Then the NPL designed the first hardware divider and, while JB was
not involved in this design process, JB was the first to set it up fully. JB
then became expert at fixing problems that went wrong with the Multiplier/
Dividers in DEUCE machines." Extract form [ "A few
reflections from John Boothroyd about working with DEUCE at Kidsgrove"
] "I gather that he was a mature man back
in the late 1950s, based on his brilliant monograph on the multiplier and
divider in 1959. Arthur Bailey told us about that achievement
in 1962, though the name J. Boothroyd was already familiar to me from the DEUCE
program write-ups. ( Robin Vowels) JB left Kidsgrove in 1964 to take up a
position as Officer-In-Charge of the Hydro-University Computing Centre, I noticed that he contributed a few
algorithms to the ACM, one of which I've put on my web site last month." "At just about the time I left Boots
for NRL, John Boothroyd made the reverse trip - Boots recruited him to be their
chief computer engineer, but of course the machine wasn't forthcoming. I only
met him when he rejoined NRL about a year (I think) later, when he became more
a programmer than an engineer - he became head of training; he and David Ozanne
wrote the "new" Deuce training manual." (Mike Wetherfield) "Colin describes the ACE pilot as a
"dog's breakfast" and from 1949 through to 1951/1952 they set about
engineering what was very much a 'laboratory model' into a more robust entity,
to be known as DEUCE" - (Jeremy Walker) "Colin always looked ahead and never
stopped thinking about wider issues - such as what problems would lie ahead
after this one was tackled, or what other way to consider the current
problem." "During the time I was at NRL, Colin
Haley and Ray Ellison sat in the machine room with, and maintained, the two
Deuces; one took one's hardware problems to them." (Mike Wetherfield) "A natural electronics engineer -
absolutely brilliant - no one better in the team." (John Boothroyd - Deuce
Reflections ) Engineer who (I think) was responsible for
attaching Magnetic Tape units to Deuce. He worked in a little round glass lab.
of his own, perched on top of the NRL building. (Mike Wetherfield) "I also remember David Ozanne who was a
wizard with the DEUCE control panel and could almost program the computer using
the panel alone. He came somewhere between Cliff R and Co. and we neophytes in
seniority and was regarded with awe for his skills." (Charles Broyden) "Wrote the Mult/Div test programme
which ALWAYS failed if you single-shotted through it." (Jeremy Walker) "I was in at the beginning of the
computer revolution. As an undergraduate reading Electronics I spent a long
vacation working in the English Electric Research Laboratories at "I left school in 1961 and went to work
at Nelson Research Labs (NRL), which was just down the road for me, where they
used to build DEUCE. (You can still see the marks on the floor - I checked last
week.) I was a kind of second-string engineer, and helped bring the machine up
to speed in the mornings (among other things) - 8.40 - 10.40 each day.
Trouble-shooting during thunder storms has vivid memories for me. And testing -
and retesting - diodes, valves, and the like. I went to college later that
year, but kept vac jobs going at English Elastic (!), which also brought me
into contact with KDF9, KDP10 and all that." Jim Lucking was so enamoured with Deuce that
later on, when he was running a programming section (which I think wrote test
programs for System 4) he made all his programmers learn Deuce machine code -
he thought there was no better training. (Mike Wetherfield) At NRL and Kidsgrove, he was the tabulator
expert, and knew how to plug-up the necessary "boards" to produce the
best printed output from punched cards. (Mike Wetherfield) David ran an Operational Research department
(which I presume developed software) at NRL and subsequently in Kidsgrove -
basically for Bureau customers, possibly including English Electric itself, who
needed this expertise. (Mike Wetherfield) "The only other person that I remember
from Blackheath Lane was Janet, who was only a bit senior to us and was a
wizard with Scheme B. Scheme B was a matrix manipulation program which required
the correct shuffling of vast stacks of the Hollerith cards on which the
matrices were stored, and I think even Cliff was outshone by Janet in this
area." (Charles Broyden) My younger brother - Joseph Galvin - was
photographer at English Electric in the 1950's (Bill Galvin) My own qualifications for having anything to
say about it (Deuce) are much more tenuous, since my only contact with the
machine was from late 1962 onwards. By that time, it had become so "old
hat" that the Nelson Research Laboratories would agree to leave their
machine switched on after normal working hours so that we mere apprentices and
junior engineers could arrive on our bicycles, carrying haversacks full of
punched cards, to run our own programmes in the evening. I was at NRL from 1964 to 67. Mike St.Oakes
was a friend of David Leigh who I remember was always inventing some electronic
gadget or other. I was a Mathematician - well that was my title - I used to run
routine ray tracing applications on the Deuce machine. I worked in the Operations Research
department at the NRL in I remember the laboratory in which the DEUCE
was housed as being stifling hot in the summer and beautifully warm in the
winter. On a number of occasions I watched Pete , the support engineer,
do the start up tests. It took a number of attempts to turn on the power as it
was not uncommon for a few valves to fail on power up. Once passed that hurdle
Pete then played the DEUCE keyboard by toggling the keys to count upwards in
binary amongst other things. Pete breathed a sigh of relief when the magic
words "THANK GOD FOR THAT" appeared on one of the cathode ray tubes
indicating that all start up tests had been successfully completed. He then
handed the DEUCE over for production use. I wrote a program to simulate random air
bubbles in a metal casting. A support group was next door to my office led by Frank
? and having Fay Colclough and Jenny Cole as punch card
operatives. At least the chore of punching cards was removed from my duties! Thanks for a good website and keep up the
good work of maintaining a historical survey of those pioneering computer days.
Roger Bishop JONES - [ WWW ] - [EA] From September 1967 to April 1968 I worked
at Nelson Research Laboratories. I was a member of a small group at the
laboratory undertaking research into programming languages, compilers and
compiler-compilers. Eric JACOBS - David JENKINS - Tony LLEWELLYN - Neil
DONOHOE - Don MONTAGUE ENGLISH ELECTRIC - KIDSGROVE - STAFFORDSHIRE Check out Mark Woods excellent "
History
of Kidsgrove Works - Nelson Industrial Estate ". See
also " The
Model Deuce " from an article in the local Sentinel newspaper. "Chief Engineer when the prototype
Deuce was to be 'commercialised, further-developed and put into quantity
production' by a new team at Kidsgrove under Derek Royle, in 1955." (Cliff
Robinson) "Replaced J. K. Todd as Chief Engineer.
Certainly by 1958, Asbury was in charge of the whole Development Establishment
at Kidsgrove - of which Computers was only part." (Cliff Robinson) HARDWARE DEVELOPMENT "After 4 months I went to help Frank
Thompson install the BP machine in the City of The installation was in a small existing
room of a Victorian building. The layout was dreadfully cramped, the Delay Line
mushroom having to be placed on a ledge 3-feet high, making adjustment
awkward." (Steve Allcock) Fortunato MARCIANO aka "Rocky"
"When I was first let out of the
classroom by "Arfur" as fit to be let loose, under guidance, on an
unsuspecting computer, I was put under the care of Fortunato MARCIANO, also
known as "Luigi" who explained to me that the "Luigi" was a
nickname awarded by Arthur Bailey, when he first started training, who
obviously decided that "Fortunato" was too much of a mouthful."
(John Ryan) John RYAN - [EA] -
Special Trainee - March to September 1959 As the result of a suggestion made by my
school that I should get some industrial experience before going up to
Cambridge that Autumn, I went to Kidsgrove one Friday in March 1959 where I was
interviewed by Derek ROYLE, who told me that I had the right kind of mind for
computers and asked me if I could start work there the following Monday! I said
"Yes!" - so began my involvement with interesting computers. I was employed as a "Special
Trainee" ( which I suspected was a useful personnel label for otherwise
unclassifiable employees who would not be paid very much ) and was put through
a slightly abbreviated form of the Maintenence Engineers Training course. So I
remember Arthur BAILEY and his perpetual roll-up. My lab time was spent, mainly, working on a
Mk IIA machine ( which may have been the first to be built) and which
subsequent casual enquiries led me to believe ended up as the Kidsgrove Bureau
Machine. I suspect it was the first, as, during the build-up and test work we
did in those days, we had trouble in using the AIM unit, which also housed the
logic needed to access the extension memory. This was traced to an E90CC valve, which did
not seem to want to switch over - that, when tested on the lab's valve test box
proved itself to be"dead" on one side, very low emission
"dead". A replacement was plugged in and we tried
again - no joy! Valve tested - same as before - one, same, side
"dead". A further, pre-tested, replacement was
plugged in - same outcome! A further replacement was plugged in, but
this time, we stood inside the machine and watched what happened when the power
came on - and one anode began to glow red hot! At this point , power off, and look at
circuit diagram, where it was revealed that the circuit in question was wired
between something like the +300 and -300 HT lines, where something like +100
and -100 would have been much kinder. At this point, the test engineers did
something sneaky, but I would suggest, sensible. We altered the HT connections
to be more civilised, powered up and checked that we could now access the extra
delay lines, then powered down, put things back the way they were - and went
humbly in search of a design engineer to help us solve our problem - who was
then encouraged to tell us to try that which we had already established would
work. That DEUCE test frame was also the only
machine I have literally worked ON, is in ON TOP OF , as I had to climb
on top one day to repair a failed address tree. Tom ELLIOT - John NEWMAN - Derek SAVORY
- Vic MATTHEWS - Eric THOMAS - Jim
MORWOOD - Roy HARDING Derek ROYLE - Group Engineer Computer Engineering D.P. & C.S.D.
"He was a brilliant engineer, highly
regarded by everyone. His favourite trick--when a resistor or other soldered in
component was needing (to be) changed - no need to switch off the cabinet
power, just touch the earthed soldering iron tip on the + or - power rail, the
over- current circuit would kick in, and drop the cabinet power automatically.
Needless to say, nobody else was inclined to switch off this way!" -
(Eddie Poole - BAC Warton) "I remember going on site with Derek
Royle to attend to problems with a rolling mill at Ebbw Vale, in Susan ELLIOTT - [EA] - Derek Royle's secretary - Married Jeremy
Walker http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/deucepix/pjw15.jpg Jeremy WALKER - [EA] Digital Computer Jeremy checking the contents of a short tank in the CRT
monitor " I joined the
Industrial Electronics Department (IED) at Kidsgrove, from English Electric at Jeremy presented this talk, DEUCE - I'ts
Life and Times , to the North West Group of the Computer Conservation
Society in 1995 . Brian BISPHAM - DEUCE Maintenance Engineer "Brian visited MAFF Guildford in the
summer of 1961. Alex Robinson, my girlfriend Jackie Rawkins from the machine
room and I, were in the engineers room when this enormous blow fly buzzed
around. Brian grabbed the can of fly spray and chased the insect around the
room. A while latter we all had a cup of tea and Jackie choked on her first sip
of tea and went a very strange colour. "Should have told you" says
Brian "That's where I killed the pest, in amongst the teacups." (John
Barrett) Neil CHARLESWORTH - DEUCE Maintenance Engineer I worked on DEUCE as a young support
engineer, employed by Derek Royle, many many moons ago.... with Bill Beckett,
Keith Powell etc. I was interviewed by Derek Royle at The DEUCE support team had two jobs, to do
annual overhauls on each machine - the A.O.T. 'ing (adjust on test) of the
arith unit was one job we sometimes made a right cock-up of - generally
speaking the on-site engineers knew far more about their machines than we did -
but I suppose it was in the maintenance contract that we visited. The other job
was to whizz off and fix the particularly difficult faults, I can't actually
remember fixing one...I must have done ...I hope. I do particularly remember one overhaul week
at the National Engineering Lab's machine at My best memories of those days, on DEUCE ,
KDF6, and KDF9, was the lunchtime boozing in the Lawton Arms .... and the
Corner Pin.It was hard in those days, hard, but somebody had to do it.... After a few years in this support job, ICL
was formed and I was promoted to a 'Supervisor' at Kidsgrove, mostly checking
the expense sheets of the site engineers - not very interesting to a free
thinking support engineer, so I got poached off to another company, and
eventually started my own business in the computer field which is still going. But DEUCE, Copthall House , and Kidsgrove
were the happy days ! Eric DOBSON Noel WESSON - [EA] Eventually I was offered the job of looking
after the Deuce Bureau at Kidsgrove and became a permanent member of Lyncroft
instead of a part time one. We had a brand new 80 column Deuce, and a very old
one from NRL. Mike Gaherty and Derek Ranyell were my first engineers. (Extract from "My
Deuce Time" , discover how Noel was lured from LEO by a bevy of 545's
!) Mike GAHERTY - Deuce Bureau Engineer "Mike Gaherty, it is alleged, has a
drum - maybe the only horizontal one which was made." (Jeremy Walker) "Mike Gaherty who worked with me in the
Kidsgrove Deuce Bureau, looked after later EE computers and then moved to Kode,
he is now retired to the south coast." (Noel Wesson) Derek RANYELL - DEUCE Bureau Maintenance Engineer Derek Ranyell (was one of) my first
engineers, although (he) went back to Brian COLLING - DEUCE Bureau Maintenance Engineer "Whilst I only spent six months working
at Kidsgrove, I still have happy memories of the people, although I cannot
recall all of the names of those I worked with; but I am sure that anyone ever
involved there would remember fondly Mrs POLIKOFF who acted more like a mother
than a clerk to the engineers and was very well liked. " ( John
Ryan ) PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT &
TRAINING David GREEN - [WWW]
Deuce
Documentation - [EA] I was with EE from January 1962 to May 1963.
I spent all my time at Kidsgrove programming DEUCE. As it was just a short walk round the
corridor to the DEUCE I never got to see much else of what was happening in the
other huts. David remembers his first few months with
English Electric. " Up to English Electric - 9.50
Euston to Crewe" I shared an office with Mike Wetherfield and
Trevor ?.(David Green) "12 April 'Conference with Roger and
Richard.' I think this refers to Roger Allwood, my direct boss, and Richard
Burrows, another programmer reporting to Roger. The conference was about our
work loads. Richard was directed to start work on Partial Differential
Equations, I assume for the KDF9. I was to finish Chop Sticks III (which I did
- I still have the code!). Roger would have reported to Cliff Robinson."
Extract from David Green's 1962 Diary. Richard BURROWS "In the early 1970's while I was
studying at The Computer Journal , Volume 3, Issue 2.
1960 I joined EE at Kidgsrove in 1962 as a
Student Apprentice (or its equivalent) for one year between sixth form and
university. This opportunity arose from a Short Works Course which I was
enabled to experience from school (Alleyns) - a scheme used by a number of
larger employers to recruit future staff from public schools. I worked for Roger Allwood who was
responsible for the section dealing with stress calculations. I went on the
last DEUCE programming course which lasted 4 weeks, at the end of which one
could barely add to numbers together and print the result on a punch card! My first task related to a matrix tehnique
which Roger wanted to experiment with, called Transfer Matrix (that's about all
I can recall) but this was the time when KDF9 was emerging from its prototype
stage. Soon I was given a role in a small group of 2 or 3 preparing to develop
the Matrix Scheme for KDF9, based on ideas already implemented for DEUCE. I
succeed in getting a number of routines to work, testing them on a simulator
running on DEUCE. In the process I wrote a DEUCE program to convert data to
'bastardised octal' the code unique to KDF9. DEUCE was unreliable and a check sum
technique was incorporated to provide additional verification. The maths behind
this depended on the fact that the calculations were fixed point (essentially
integer). We attempted to do the same on KDF9 but this worked in floating point
and we soon discovered that A+B+C is not necessarily the same as A+C+B. After
some tortuous efforts to devise the maths we realsied that KDF9 either worked
or it did not, so the check sum was redundant and we scrapped the idea. Robin In April 1964 I joined English Electric Leo
in the Management Science Department at Kidsgrove. Time spent on Deuce was
limited but I used to run a Network Analysis program and sort and tabulate the
results with the ICT card sorter. I was lucky enough to find a job with
English Electric after graduation, working for John Boothroyd. 1962 was of
course near the end of the DEUCE era, but my boss thought it would be good for
me to experience the rigours of computing with the DEUCE. After two years at English Electric in
Kidsgrove, programming the DEUCE computer and giving KDF9 training courses, he
joined Control Data Corporation and was immediately sent to CERN to support the
CDC 6600 Serial No 3, the first such machine in Europe. - ( Graham JULLIEN - [EA] - [WWW]
I worked at English Electric Kidsgrove,
first as a student apprentice and then as an engineer in the Data Processing
Division from 1961 until 1966. I was instructed in writing computer programs
for the Deuce using Alphacode during my first year and I found that
fascinating. For my later years as an apprentice, I
worked mainly on the LACE analogue machine in the Kidsgrove laboratory. I think I learned as much at Kidsgrove as I
did at College. Certainly when transistors were taking over the valve circuits
that were taught at college, the Kidsgrove training was indispensable to me. I do recall being told a story about a
supervisor and secretary in the Deuce computer room, being caught in compromising
circumstances inside the computer cabinet - I remember being shown inside the
main cabinet one time and it did look very cosy with the two rows of rack
mounted valve modules. Not sure if there was any truth in the story, probably
not, but it would be interesting to have it confirmed. I would just like to say how nice it was to
see all the old names I either knew, was friends with or worked with at
Kidsgrove in the early 1960's. Jim EDWARDS - Arthur
TOMLINSON - Tony HANCOCK - R. ASHBROOK PRODUCTION "Our head of product development was
Bill Nash. I am standing next to him in the photo" "I immediately recognised one man in
the photograph because it was my father, Bill Nash with his pipe. "I was part of the English Electric
team at Kidsgrove who made the model of the first computer, and from memory I
think its scale was one-fifth." See also The Model
Deuce Letters to the Editor "I took a look at the link to the news
item on the model, & recognised the seven faces on the right of the
picture, but apart from two of them I have forgotten the names. "It was taller than a doorway and large
enough to fill an average sized kitchen, according to retired engineer Len
Calvert, who was then employed at the factory opened by English Electric in
1952 specifically to build the first breed of computers for use by industry,
the big banks and other major concerns." "Although Len wasn't involved in the
project to make North Staffordshire's historic first computer; he was a member
of the team of engineers who made a scale model one eighth of the actual size,
to show off the machine at an international exhibition in ( From an article in the local Sentinel
newspaper - 10/3/2007) See also The Model
Deuce My wife, Eileen, spent quite a few years
wiring the chassis for this machine (from about 1954 to 1960) at English
Electric. (Roy Rushton) Eileen Rushton worked on Deuce and had a
bench job building the plug-in chassis. (Jack Merrit) I started work at English Electric,
Kidsgrove, in August 1956, as a technician apprentice. Geoff Mould was a young Engineer at the time
and worked for Ray Binnion, consequently he was given jobs handed down by Ray,
which required liaison with the shopfloor. In my job, I came into contact with
Geoff quite a lot. (Jack Merrit) Pauline worked in Goods Inward Inspection,
where, amongst many other things, she used to run the burn-in rig for the
high-reliability valves used in Deuce. If provoked, she could still tell you
most of the valve types used and the relative failure rates. Another job was calibrating the numerous
Delay Networks for Deuce on a Marconi Q-Meter. (Geoff Mould) Geoff's wife Pauline worked on the shopfloor
& worked alongside Eileen. (Jack Merrit) I started work at Kidsgrove in early 1958.
The Deuce machines that I worked on were huge and one could walk through it to
either plug-in or remove the chassis, some of which I built. I worked on the
shopfloor section that built the units, plus in the Lab where they were being
tested, doing jobs for the Engineers. It always amused me to see that some wag
Engineer had cut the caption from a packet of cigarettes of the day and stuck
it above the entrance to the machine. It read 'It's the tobacco that counts'.
Which I thought was very funny. I was on the shopfloor myself for 6 years
& then moved to a position in Manufacturing Engineering. I took a look at
the list of people that you have as having worked on Deuce, & recognise
quite a few. Geoff Mould & Pauline his wife, used to live by me. I remember going on site with Derek Royle to
attend to problems with a rolling mill at Ebbw Vale, in ENGINEER TRAINING Arthur Bailey made pointed comments a number
of times during the course, "Don't change an AOT*" he said.
"They are factory set to 1%. Changing an AOT is putting on a fault to
clear a fault, and then there are two faults to fix." Arthur also told us that if a program fails,
and no test programs fail, then use that program as the test program. So when
we had some problems with a certain GIP program that used matrix
multiplication, I took Arthur's advice one step further. I made that program a
permanent test program, to be run on high and low every day just before handing
over for normal use. While there were test programs for
individual sections of the machine, there was none that tested everything
altogether - that is, to test the machine as a whole. That GIP program seemed
to fit the bill admirably. (Robin Vowels) This Deuce Training Course Photo shows Arthur Bailey, at
right, lecturing to a class of attentive students at Kidsgrove in August
1958. (Noel Wesson) I don't recall how long the Deuce Course was
- a month? Arthur Bailey used to teach it and afterwards, Jim Richards. (Jeremy
Walker) Gordon, second from left, came from
Purchasing and went back there after his course. (Noel Wesson) The following people did the DEUCE training course
with me at Kidsgrove in 1962. (Robin Vowels) Kåre Steira , ( Norway ) Phillip PARKER - [EA] - Data Controller I was fortunate - if only for a few short
months - (to) be involved with the DEUCE II computer that was at English
Electric works at Kidsgrove. One of my jobs - as a Data Controller - from
July 1965 up to about early December 1965 - was to assemble and take trays of
the 64 col cards from the punch girls at EE computer services (under Mrs Gater)
for what, if I recall correctly, was the payroll and for the local rates for
the local urban district council of Kidsgrove . The cards were transported across the road
from EE computer services to EE factory in battleship grey card trays and, on a
very bitter winter morning in November and December, they could almost freeze
to your fingers! We later had a small trolley to take the cards across with. When DEUCE II was 'terminated' EE had an
'open day' and the public could attend and view the whole factory. DIGITAL COMPUTER MOBILE SERVICE UNIT - I'd forgotten all about Noel WESSON - [EA] When I returned to Noel then moved to Kidsgrove to look after
the Deuce Bureau Machines. Bob COLLINS - Ron BRIGGS - John
BISHOP - Arthur SAVILLE - ENGLISH ELECTRIC - MARCONI HOUSE - THE STRAND - George program testing George Davis started
working on computers in September 1950, following GD helped with software & hardware
development, and then got permission to set up and lead a dedicated maintenance
team with systematic procedures, which eventually showed that Pilot ACE could
work very reliably if treated kindly. Previously, the machine had lurched
spasmodically between the Mathematicians who flogged it to death and the Engineers
who redesigned it after every breakdown. During this time, GD also got
permission from CH to go home for six weeks and write Pilot ACE Logic Design
& Programming manuals, previously lacking; these, by their highly
characteristic approach and style, are the very recognisable ancestors of the
corresponding manuals for successive models of DEUCE, for years a mainstay of
users & engineers, and now flaunted on various websites. A little later, GD discovered that NPL had
refused a request from Inland Revenue Department to calculate the PAYE Income
Tax Tables on Budget night, visited the IR top brass and undertook to do the
work himself. This caused ructions within NPL Admin, but ultimately proved
spectacularly successful and NPL has been boasting about it ever since; in fact
it is the only computer job given three mentions in the NPL official history
(without mentioning that NPL had initially refused it!). As the design of DEUCE accelerated, GD
appointed himself a sort of Chief Technical Clerk, contributing a simple but
significant invention, issuing successive drafts of the instruction code aimed
at keeping the structure coherent, contributing various snippets of logic
design, and embodying 25% of the multiplier-divider design team. In due course,
the proposals & arguments died down, GD gave a lecture on the present
position, nobody commented and DEUCE had been designed (logically, at least). Eventually, GD was summoned to see the
dreaded JK Brown at Stafford and told to set up and run a DEUCE Computing Service
at English Electric HQ, Marconi House in the Later, GD became involved in KDF9
specification & marketing, and left EE in 1963, but it was great while it
lasted! Vic is second from the left in discussion with John
Woolger. PREAMBLE I joined English Electric in 1952, from TEDDINGTON The Pilot Ace had been built at NPL and a
group of EE staff under George Davis was based there. MARCONI HOUSE A Deuce was installed in Marconi House and
the London Computing Service (LCS) established under George Davis. The base of the LCS was moved to Queens
House in Kingsway. CONCLUSION I left English Electric in 1962 and joined
the staff of the Mathematics Dept of the Northampton CAT later to become the
City University London. John is on the extreme right in discussion with Vic Price I came into Deuce
Operating in 1956 at Marconi House working under George Davis. Chris Woodall
interviewed me subsequently having to go to NRL Blackheath to be further
interviewed by Wilf Scott. He told me as I was coming from working At the
London School of Economics I should not expect to be coming into the same
academic atmosphere but into a commercial world. I did however find that life
on Deuce and all who surrounded me to be as academic as the university, much to
my delight. My task was to supervise the Computer
installation which consisted of a Hollerith Tabulator, sorter, reproducer and
Deuce, along with its peripherals of Input, a modified Hollerith reproducer and
a Gang Punch for output, as my experience was 8 years of Punch card operations
I found little trouble in adapting to the set up. The Computer room was a large showroom with
marble flooring and wooden lined walls just on the left of the entrance to
Marconi House, huge heavy curtains over the glass panelling at the entrance
shielded our goings on when pulled across from casual viewing. Marconi House was situated next to the shell
of the Gaiety Theatre, burned out during the war. The programmers were housed
in the stage door room, on the next floor up, accessed through a door which
adjoined the buildings. George Davis's office was on the ground floor in this
area. At a later date EE Co. decided to construct
the future English Electric House on this site. In preparing the site for the
new building they had a huge crane with a giant concrete ball hanging from the
arm and swung it around letting it crash to the ground to bring the remains of
the old theatre to complete its destruction. I remember particularly that it
drove Peter Docherty (who was our Deuce engineer at this time) to destruction, for
when they crashed this ball down it shook the building and put the drum backing
store on Deuce out of sync and so our operations came to halt for the time
being until we put a stop to this operation while we were switched on. When this building was finally completed
they had two classical naked male statues over the front entrance, the buses
which had a stop just across the road was called "cobblers corner" by
conductors advising passengers of their destination. Deuce in 1956 was a 32 word length binary
programmed machine and used but 32 Columns on each row of an 80 columns of the
Hollerith punched card but was later extended to 64 columns when its
peripherals became along with rest of the installation to IBM equipment. The high speed memories of the machine were
ultra sonic mercury delay lines the higher capacity memory was held in the
mushroom and were very long lines in the temperature controlled enclosure which
gave it its name as it looked like a large field mushroom, there were single 32
digit and double word lines which you could see where the arithmetic was
carried out. The Drum which was a slower magnetic storage
device manufactured by Napier, a company being a part of the EE group. It was a
cylindrical device 11" high and about 6" in diameter with movable
heads giving access to considerably more computing space than the delay line
stores. It was the only part of the machine you could see something going on.
It was the pride of the engineers and myself as it really showed off the
considerable engineering which went into the Deuce although most of it was
electronic. The computer had 1700 valves which were held
in numerous chassis along with resistances and condensers etc, these were held
in racks in the machine which must have been 30 feet long x 12 feet wide and 9
feet high, you could walk inside with comfort and engineers had access to the
valves. So much heat was dissipated we did not need to heat the room even in
winter. We were not a free gift to the companies of
the EE group who used our facilities and all usage was charged out at £1 per
minute, I believe that was correct, each user used to book their requirements
and had a company number and a job number for the particular tasks which they
then recorded in a log book showing starting time and finishing time. It was a little while before I managed to
set up a punched card processing system for analysing the usage and all the
users thought that they were getting complimentary usage. So after about 3
months I produced a charging method which I sent to Wilf Scott for approval NRL
stared sending out the bills. It came quite a shock to the user companies to
see how much they used and Marconi at The users were, prior to getting their own
Deuce, Marconi, Whetstone, Napiers, TSR 2 project at Luton, RAE Farnborough,
MAFF at Ron Eitel was the engineer when I first
arrived who trained Peter Docherty who took over from him when he went to
Kidsgrove. Tom was our Lab Steward who helped Peter and gave me a hand with
some of the heavy jobs around, like storing the boxes of cards we ordered from
Hollerith. We did program writing for customers and Vic
Price wrote a program for calculating Slip circle analysis and Slip slope
analysis for a company called Binney and Partners who were engaged in designing
very large Dam projects in The Chairman Lord Nelson also brought in
some of his learned friends to see the wonders of computing, his son Lord
Caldecote, the managing Director of EE whom they nicknamed half Nelson also
looked us up occasionally. For convenience to save ducking down to get in his car
he bought a London Taxi but he got annoyed when people kept hailing him so he
had it repainted in army camouflage which made the hailers realise it was not a
normal Taxi. At the top of the building was stored a lot
of Marconi's original radio equipment gigantic Transmitting valves plus other
large radio pieces. The other side of the entrance hall, although only
accessable from the street, was Short's bar, the owners decided to move across
the Strand in which EE House was sited which left the place available to us to
accomodate our offices in order to vacate the Gaiety stage door we used behind
the Computer room. All the programmers moved into the relative
luxury of this new accomodation which allowed the builders to begin clearing
the site next door for English Electric House. I always believed our Deuce was the second
produced and the fact that it had "English Electric" on the front
must have been put on after the Jack Richardson photograph. It's only move
after that was to Queens House in the Kingsway in 1961 or so and then finally
decommissioned in 1964. Later - Digital Computer He impressed me as very knowledgeable about
DEUCE and was ever ready to assist with technical support from the One day on the DEUCE engineer's course, Jack
was passing by, and Arthur Bailey invited him to tell us about sneak CMI. Jack
told us about a magnetics instruction sometimes sliping through Control without
being excecuted, and how he had discovered that a particular bias point was
very close to letting this condition happen, which they observed with the CRO.
They issued a circuit change that altered the bias point to give a higher
safety margin. - (Robin Vowels) I was at EE London, Marconi House in the I joined English Electric London Computing
Service in 1957, and left in 1963 to start a family. Originally I was based in
Marconi House, but then moved with the office to Queen's House, Kingsway. In
Queen's House we had separate rooms, and I shared a room with Dr. Tony
Goodbody. We remain good friends, as he married one of my school friends, Ann
Mountford. I introduced them to each other in 1961, and they got married in
1962! They now have three sons and are still happily married. Tony left English
Electric to take up a lectureship at My time at English Electric was very happy,
and I am still in touch with some of my ex- colleagues. I was mainly working on
Slip Circle Stability analyses with Dr Vic Price, but did other bits of work as
well in the Engineering/Scientific Section. It was while Vic and I were
working on a Berthing Beam analysis that I met my husband, Angus. ( We will
be celebrating our Golden Wedding Anniversary in the summer how time flies!) The only "bad day" I had (while
working in Marconi House) was when I tried to retrieve a Hollerith card, which
was stuck in the Hollerith Card Reader, without turning off the power. I got
quite a large electric shock! It was very stupid and completely against the
rules! I was lucky that I suffered no permanent damage, and only got an awful
fright! I was well and truly told off by my husband, Angus! Janet also helped in cooperation with
Imperial College London. This became a bread and butter job for us as further
dam construction projects were taken on. - (John Woolger) Janet was working on a Deuce GIP version of
the program. In 1959 we both met Angus Skinner of Sir William Halcrow &
Partners. Jean previously worked for English Electric
in Marconi House in Pete Docherty looked after the Deuce at English
Electric House in the (Comment on Ed Thelen's Website
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/english-electric-deuce.html#Photo Author of :- Principles of
Programming Standard
Operating Instructions for Deuce Deuce Control Panel
Manual My name is Richard Forrester and I started
work for English Electric in 1963 at the age of 16, at Kingsway in Queens House
which housed the DEUCE computer. I started as a junior working for John
Woolger, progressed and started operating, under supervision, the computer. I
remember taking lunch at the canteen in the EE building in the "Mum was working at English Electric,
presumably either Whetstone or Marconi house as she lived in I've just been watching the film 'Enigma'
again on BBC this evening and it has prompted me to come and browse the Web for
EE's DEUCE computer. I am astonished to find so much information. I joined EE in 1957 aged 17 to work as one
of the 'Mathematical Assistants'. I only stayed for two years, deciding that
the work was not for me. I remember myself being used as a model to
sit at the computer for an advert that was used in the national press! David Ford & I were married in 1960 and
had four daughters. They are now all married with children of their own. Sadly
David died suddenly eleven years ago. Reading all the old names like George Davis,
Vic Price, Peter Landin, Chris Woodall, Doug Flower etc. brings lots of
memories back. Daily confirmation of margins on thermionics. During 1954 I joined
English Electric Nelson Research. Initially seconded to NPL at Teddington
working on Pilot ACE (Automatic Computing Engine). The attached pictures were taken at English
Electric House at Aldwich in The Strand, This DEUCE was the first production
universal computer made available to the public for general applications. In 1958 I transferred from Nelson Research
to Computer Engineering at Kidsgrove. My late husband David Ford was recruited by
Ron Eitel to backup Peter Docherty as a maintenance engineer in 1958 when he
left the RAF after 5 year's as a radar technician. He went to Kidsgrove for
three months to train up on servicing the machine and was then based at Marconi
House. David worked on the computer for about two
years himself and I well remember the trials and tribulations the maintenance
team had every morning to make sure DEUCE worked properly for the day. When
VIP's came, I remember they impressed them by getting the machine to play a
tune with the Hollerith punched cards. David eventually became a successful
salesman of electronic components and later on computers, spending some years
at Texas Instruments, Elliott Automation, Hewlett Packard and Data General -
(Jennifer Ford nee Lees) "In Queen's House we had separate
rooms, and I shared a room with Dr. Tony Goodbody. We remain good friends, as
he married one of my school friends, Ann Mountford. I introduced them to each
other in 1961, and they got married in 1962! They now have three sons and are
still happily married. Tony left English Electric to take up a lectureship at Peter LANDIN ENGLISH ELECTRIC - WHETSTONE - LEICESTERSHIRE Peter WAKELY - Mathematician/Programmer - Director English
Electric Mechanical Engineering Laboratory. Charles BROYDEN - [EA] - Mathematician/Programmer (APD) I was employed in the APD at Whetstone from
October 1955 to 1965 but with a two-year break in the middle when I worked in Fred FORD - Mathematician/Programmer [APD] "I also acknowledged the help of Fred
Ford, who arrived in APD at the same time as Charles Sheffield and was in our
group." Charles Scientist and prolific science fiction
writer. "This is for Garry Tee Click here to read
the opening chapter. "Dear Mr. Barrett, Sarah I never met him, however he deserves mention
as the originator of the most brilliant piece of Deuce programming I ever saw.
This used the multiplier purely as an autonomous shift register. Holman
realised that if one placed a 32-bit value 'X' in the lower half of DL 21,
cleared DL 13 and the upper half of DL 21, started the multiplier, and then
executed 21-26 (l) followed by 22-26 (l) (each for 32 m.c., one of them
possibly 33 m.c.) the sum of the non-zero bits of 'X' would be left in DL 13. How it works: in the course of a 32-bit
shift of DL 21, every non-zero bit in 'X' appears in every bit position from 1
to 32, and in that position is subtracted from DL 13. The result is to subtract
"all 1s" from DL 13, i.e. to add 1, for every non-zero bit. The
effect of the inevitable 2 m.c. hiatus between the two long instructions is
cancelled by using source 22 in the second instruction. Marvellous! Summing the '1' bits in a word is genuinely
useful - I believe Turing himself felt the need for such an instruction, and we
certainly included one in KDF 9. - (Mike Wetherfield) The description of D Holman's method of
summing the bits in a word needs modification. The result in TS 13 has a missing P32,
corresponding to the gap between the two long transfers to D26. Thus a test is
required to eliminate this bit when TS13 is negative. I used this sequence in STAC III in the
storage allocation phase. In STAC it was necessary to keep track of the number
of remaining available minor cycles in Delay Lines; also the number of available
minor cycles modulo 0, 1, 2, and 3, and the number of minor cycles modulo 0 and
1. Thus, this instruction sequence had to be executed before each instruction
or data was allocated a location. - [Robin Vowels] Garry TEE - (EA) - Mathematician/Programmer MEL I began programming in Deuce binary machine
code, but by 1964 I was using ALGOL and GIP as my principal languages. J.
H. Wilkinson and his colleagues wrote the GIP subroutines, which formed the
basis of the superb NAG Library of mathematical software. And GIP remains yet
one of the most useful computer languages which I have used. ( Sample GIP coding in PDF
format ) " In 1958 he went to Garry proposed an interesting modification
to Deuce, the addition of a knitting machine as an output device. ! Mike KELLY- (EA) - Mathematician/Programmer APD I am the Mike Kelly who was an APD
mathematician/programmer on the Whetstone DEUCE from Aug 1957 to May 1960. I would like to add an anecdote about our
(Brian Randell and me) mistreatment of a female fellow programmer named Well, our mistreatment consisted of
modifying the synchronising cards that started every program so that her
program sychronised half the time randomly. After a day or so we corrected the
cards and the program ran properly again. I also remember an MEL programmer - I think
it was Eric Richards - who could whistle two notes at the same time in harmony.
Always useful to have a back-up skill. There was an MEL programmer named Barry Clark.
He moved to IBM, Hursley about the time I did and he wrote diagnostic microcode
for the S360/40. Several years later we both transferred to IBM in Anybody who knew me and would like to touch
base is welcomed. I am now retired from IBM and, together with my wife of
nearly 53 years, am a part-time antiques dealer in With colleague Brian RANDELL developed
EASICODE at Whetstone. And here's a story about Mike Kelly, who was
I understand one of a small number of people who essentially simultaneously
found out ways of exploiting the fact that one could "frig the mult"
as we called it, i.e. interfere with the multiplication operation, e.g. by
changing operands. Preliminary Report on EASICODE , Kelly, M.J.
and Randell, B. W/AT 216 Atomic Power Division, English Electric, Whetstone,
Leics., September 1958 - Complete document in PDF format here Brian RANDELL - [WWW] - [EA] -
Programmer I was employed there (E E Whetstone) as an
applications programmer (but was actually devoting all my time to compilers -
or "automatic programming" as we then called it). The Whetstone site housed the Mechanical
Engineering Laboratories (MEL) and the Atomic Power Division (APD), and where
there were two DEUCEs. I was in APD (1957-64), initially working on nuclear
reactor calculations, but then with a colleague, Mike Kelly, developed
Easicode. Mike left to join IBM, and I became head of a new Automatic
Programming Section, working first on DEUCE and then on KDF9. Thanks to Turing's design, DEUCE was
typically much faster in operation than its rivals, albeit almost entirely at
the expense of its programmers. Such was the innocence of youth that I and my
colleagues actually enjoyed its intricacies, and the problem of finding ways of
automating, at least partially, the programming task. Indeed, we felt that
contemporary American computer developments, by IBM and others, such as the
provision of what seemed to us to be huge memories, and of floating point
arithmetic hardware, were in effect cheating. Certainly they were depriving
compiler writers such as ourselves of interesting and (we thought) worthwhile
challenges. In my time at English Electric I and my
colleagues learned the hard way the importance of writing robust programs,
though I cannot recall whether the actual term 'robust' was used. However,
whatever term we used, we meant programs that could cope well with whatever
strange data they were given, whatever mistakes were made by the operators,
etc. We took an active interest in robust programming out of self-defence
because we worked in close proximity to the people who were mistreating the
compilers that we were developing. In fact we had a very effective, albeit ad
hominem, 'formal' definition of compiler robustness - the ability to cope with
programs written by William White, and key-punched by Barbara Black, running on
a computer being operated by Gerald Green - except that in what Ive just said
the names have been changed to protect the guilty. This was, one might say, my
first exposure to the need to 'face up to faults', albeit at this stage just
those of other people. Also check the drains here
!! Mike JEAYS - [WWW] - [EA] "I worked on the DEUCE at Whetstone for
about two years, having started my programming life on the analogue
"SATURN" machine, and then discovering digital computers with the
DEUCE, and later with the KDF9. Most of my work was in the Safety Section,
studying the transient behaviour of the Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor in fault
conditions. Even then, we talked about the risk of an aircraft crashing on a
reactor site, but we never thought about anyone doing it deliberately." "Back in those days, when I studied
mathematics at university, computers were thought undignified by
mathematicians, and were the responsibility of the "dirty paws" in
the engineering department. Rob THIRLBY - [EA] - Programmer - [APD] I would like to offer my memories of the
Deuce systems at EE Whetstone where I worked in the APD from Autumn 1963 to
April 1967 as a reactor safety analyst, my first job after reading maths at Towards the end of my period with APD (and
its successor company NDC?) I started to use the KDF9 initially by sending work
on paper tape to Kidsgrove and latterly by train on a nightly basis to Programmers I also remember an MEL programmer - I think
it was Eric Richards - who could whistle two notes at the same time in harmony.
"I was an early user of the Walgol
Algol 60 interpreter being developed in the next office by Lawford
Russell" ( Rob THIRLBY ) Mick WILLIAMSON --- Kurt METZER --- P RULE Roger HOCKNEY - Mathematician/Programmer [APD] "After graduating in the Natural
Science Tripos (Part II in Physics) from Cambridge University (UK) Roger spent
three years as a Teaching Fellow at the Maurice BATEY - [WWW]
http://www.maurice.icuknet.co.uk - [EA] - Operator/Programmer I worked at the EE MEL at Whetstone (Leic.)
from 1959 until 1964, latterly in the Atomic Power Division (Mk.2 DEUCE). At Xmas it was the custom for the staff to
gather round DEUCE to sing carols, for which we had a pack of cards which
played tunes on the punch relays. One Xmas someone dropped the box of cards,
and as there was no time to get them sorted out the engineers slipped home to
fetch their penny whistles and flutes, which they took with them inside DEUCE,
where they crouched behind the console, whose lights were flickering away,
thanks to a small program I had cobbled together. Very few there were aware of
this first hardware emulation! Another memory: One of Peter Wakely's
programmers (who shall be nameless) was notorious for making fundamental
programming errors, and resisted our attempts to enlighten him. Later on at Whetsone I joined Brian Randell
(later Prof. of Computing at Newcastle Uni) and Lawford Russell in writing the
first ALGOL compiler on DEUCE, in conjunction with the Oceanographic Dept. at Liverpool
University, who wrote the runtime package. Copies were requested from all over
the world, e.g. Sydney Uni. Our chief there was Dr. David Parkyn. Randell &
Russell wrote a book on 'ALGOL 60 Implementation', which I helped to
proof-read." One incident I remember vividly is the
episode of the " drains
", which Brian Randell's article mentions. On that day, when we realised
that the sewer had interfaced with DEUCE, one of us (one of the engineers, I
think) hung a toilet roll on a piece of string on the rear door handle. Seemed
appropriate! Deuce Operators "In reading through your website I came
across "I hope to keep you informed of
anything interesting. It seems you are heavily involved with Deuce and I am
very glad that you are continuing to keep it up. I enjoyed my time there and
only left because I could not get into the engineering. I eventually went back to
EE in Kidsgrove (as an engineer) and I have remained in that area, now
retired." "There were eight operators working a
3-shift system and we had about twelve or so programmers. If any more memories
come to the surface I will relay them to you." Pete Berridge was a constant problem for
Bill Worth. One day he brought his Vespa scooter into the computer room to
clean it. This was on a late shift so not many people saw it. Somebody snitched
however and Bill went a little wild. It was not a clean room of course because
we had no mag tape at that time. Pete stayed but didn't repeat that trick. He
eventually went to Alan JONES --- Ron GENT --- Cyril ATKINSON --- Rob
Bill WORTH - Chief DEUCE Maintenance Engineer EE Whetstone All I remember of Whetstone was Bill Worth,
who was in charge and very hands on. He made some gold tipped wiper arms for
the drum that lasted much longer than usual. (Noel Wesson) Noel Wesson mentioned Bill's drum wiper
arms. He did not mention Bill's clock. The potentiometer on the drum wore down
with use, so Bill designed and, I think, fitted a slow motion clock which
turned once every 24 hours or so. This spread the wear out around the pot
wiring. I don't know what happened to this modification but it sounded
interesting. Bill also was designing what I thought was another output for
Deuce. This was an ICT 030 punch I think. (Seth Holt) With referenc to the chief engineer, Bill
Worth, another memory is of him bustling in when called out on a problem,
bringing with him a rubber hammer, with which he would bang on the mercury
memory 'mushroom' to check for an intermittent connection problem. (Maurice
Batey) I can add to the story of Bill Worth's slow
motion clock. Though this spread the wear on the potentiometer, after a while
it was recognised as the culprit behind a mysterious transient drum fault which
occurred for a brief period at the same time each day, when a worn area of the
potentiometer came under the wiper arms. The clock's use was then abandoned.
(Brian Randell ) Another Bill Worth story - he used to rail
against programmers who repaired cards by sticking chads back into holes. (You
were supposed to do this just in order to immediately produce a new card using
the reproducing punch - and to mark any reinserted chad with a pencilled cross,
so that you could see if the chad had dropped out.) He objected violently when
he found chads in the bottom of the card reader - and always pointed out that
he could tell that they were the result of programmers fitting them back into
cards, and ignoring the rule about using such cards only on the reproducing
punch, since the chads had crosses on them. I challenged him to prove that any
were mine, because my practice was to draw a circle around any reinserted
chads! (Brian Randell ) Alf HORSLEY --- Tony RILEY - [EA] ---
Ernie STURGESS --- Maurice DENDLE Bob HAGERTY - Punch Room Manager I was just talking to a friend about the
early days of computing and thought I would see if I could find an image of the
DEUCE computer. That is how I found your excellent website - and have been
enjoying a trip down memeory lane. In September 1956, having completed my
National Service as a Radar Fitter, I went to English Electric, Whetsone to see
if they had a job available to suit my experience (I also had A level in
Mathematics and Physics). I was offered a job as a 'Mathematical Assistant' in
the Mechanical Engineering Laboratories. MEL, along with the Atomic Power
Division, was awaiting the delivery of a Deuce Computer; when it arrived I was
supposed to be part of the maintenance team (working under Bill Worth - who was
still at Kidsgrove at the time, where he was learning about the Deuce computer
and gaining hands-on experience; I believe his background was in TV repair). I recall the decision to purchase a Deuce
computer was based on a survey of staff in the several laboratories within MEL,
combined with the expected needs of the Atomic Power Division. The conclusion
was that perhaps the computer would be used from 9 to 5, 5 days a week! Of
course, hardly anyone had any idea just what you could do with such a machine;
this was uncharted territory. The reality was, of course, that shortly after it
did eventually arrive it was in use all day, every day. I say 'eventually arrive', because by the
time it did, I had got fed up waiting for it. I had been hired with an
arrangement of working part time in the Control and Servomechanism Laboratory
of MEL, alongside the DEUCE work; this part-time arrangement became a full-time
one in CSL. Before DEUCE arrived, Bill Worth came back from Kidsgrove to get
things set up; I can identify with the things said about Bill elsewhere on your
site. During that time I learned some machine code programming. I was sent on a
programming course at Because of the delay mentioned above
therefore, I never actually worked on DEUCE - but I knew several people
mentioned on your website. I was particularly interested in the piece on David
Holman, who died a few years ago. David joined about the same time as I did and
we became friends. I am not sure it is fair to all mathematicians to call David
a 'typical' mathematician, but alongside his undoubted brilliance, he was a man
of very few words. ENGLISH ELECTRIC - LUTON - BEDFORDSHIRE Winifred HACKETT - Head of GW Division John O'BRIEN - Senior Programmer "I devised the first "Read eight
8-digit integers" subroutine, R24T - and later, after John O'Brien
(Marconi) produced an improved version (R24T/1), I inevitably had to go one
better and produced R24T/2, which used even fewer instructions." (Mike
Wetherfield) My name is Harold Fineberg and I worked at
English Electric, Luton, from September 1956 (immediately after graduating from
Read on to find out how Harold became known
as "The Music Man" Programmers Dick BOND --- Arthur MUSGROVE --- Vivian KELLY --- Michael
le'GOODE --- David GIBBONS --- Ian ??? Jim FISHER - [WWW] - [EA] The manual itself didn't bring back memories
(except by reminding of the syntax!), because I never saw one when I was
programming DEUCE. The department at what was then EE (GW Division), Luton,
which later moved to Stevenage, (or, rather, its head Dr. Winifred Hackett)
considered that to be a programmer it was essential to have a maths honours
degree, while I was a mere physicist turned system engineer and user. In
consequence, I never had any formal training nor ever saw a manual. I made use
of a set of lecture notes given to me by someone who had been on the proper
training course, and taught myself from that. It came as quite a shock to the
chief programmer when he discovered (several years later!) that I had written
quite a few programs, including some quite large, complex ones. It was much
faster than waiting for the official programming team to produce what I needed
for my engineering calculations. I was at English Electric Luton from 1956
until I moved to I was an Electronics Engineer, then Systems
Engineer. I did not work directly on DEUCE, but did some programming. As I
recall we had some evening courses in Digital Computing, which at the time
seemed total mumbo jumbo to me. So I did nothing with it, I think initially the
coding was in binary, then in a pseudo code (the name escapes me [Alphacode
JB]). At that stage I got involved and wrote a few programs or maybe adapted
some. I recall the card punching was done by some girls on keyboards, to coding
sheets, but I do recall the almost impossible task of hand punching cards - I
found it almost impossible to punch a whole card without making a mistake. One thing I do recall about those early days
was the preoccupation with with computing precision - reversion to double
length arithmetic, manipulating equations to ensure that there was no embedded
precision errors - all a thing of the past, no one gives it a thought now. Operators Ron STOKES Peter STANLEY - [EA] Came across your web page by accident. Very
interesting! Certainly stirred some memories. The Luton DEUCE was delivered in 1958 and
commissioned by Frank Thompson. I looked after the machine from 1958 until I remember Jeremy well. He was the man who
started the build of the Luton DEUCE on 1 April 1958. His first comment in the
log was "What a stupid day to start building this machine!" He was
also the man who entered the complete "buzz and go" maintenance
program by hand through the front panel keys! At Regarding the More memories of EE Luton from Peter &
Joan Stanley here Married Peter Stanley Deuce Maintenance Engineers I was an Engineer at both Luton and "The DEUCE did actually go to NATIONAL PHYSICAL LABORATORY - TEDDINGTON - MIDDLESEX
The first computer I "used" at the
National Physical Laboratory was Deuce, a later re-engineering of the 'Pilot
model' of the first machine, the Automatic Computing Engine, ACE (essentially
Alan Turing's design): Deuce was simpler and entered service before the
full-size ACE. "Used" is in quotes because Deuce
was protected from its customers by a young lady who would punch the cards from
handwritten input (experimental results in our case, recorded by writing meter
readings on a clipboard). At one point we were Fourier-transforming some
correlation data for turbulent flow (SLOW Fourier transforms in those days, the
early 1960s). One set of results, instead of looking somewhat like a 'bell
curve' (Gaussian) was dominated by a single cosine wave. It was obvious that a
card had been mispunched with a large error, amounting to a spike in the input
(FT of spike is cosine wave). We worked out from the wavelength that it was the
41st card, so we trudged over to Deuce, which was of course on the other side
of the laboratory grounds, and accused the lady operator of a misplaced digit.
However the 41st card was OK, so we trudged back to the office and found a
slight error in our arithmetic - the sine wave corresponded to a mispunch in
the 82nd card, not the 41st. So we trudged, etc..... The operator was a
cheerful and personable young woman: I had no social (or physical) contact with
her whatsoever, but she was the heroine of by far the most detailed erotic
dream I have ever had. Perhaps I was really lusting after the computer. Towards the end of my time at NPL we got
dial-up Teletype terminals linked to a commercial 'time-sharing' service (no
screen, just paper or paper tape output) and we did an successive-approximation
calculation of the turbulent flow over a swept-wing leading edge. This involved
using the "shooting" method on two coupled nonlinear ordinary differential
equations (one for spanwise motion, one for streamwise). The hunt for converged
solutions for both equations was the nearest thing to a blood sport that I have
ever experienced! John ROLLETT - [WWW] I did some programming for the DEUCE
computer at NPL in 1959. Does anyone remember the DEUCE Maintenance Engineers
name? ian@huth [WWW]
"I played my first computer game some
45 years ago when I worked for the DSIR. When they had open days at the
National Physical Laboratory they used to run a driving game on the ACE
computer (fastest in the world at the time with its 1 MHz processor). You
should have seen the size of it with not a transistor in sight but thousands of
valves. The software for it was all on punched cards with a couple of switches
rigged up to move the car (a single lit lightbulb). The idea was to keep the
car on the road (between two parallel lines of lit lightbulbs in a giant grid).
We also had DEUCE which was a production version of ACE with a lot of the
components in cabinets rather than the open frames of ACE." RAE members are listed on
the Royal Aircraft Establishment page DEUCE USERS Dennis Pat ELLIS Brian MILLER - [EA] "I started out with BS in 1960 in the
Maths Services department. The term 'Computer Department' was reserved for
those lesser mortals who did uninteresting things like payroll on uninteresting
machines by IBM." "TIP (Tabular Interpretive Program) was
the brainchild of our little cell and used extensively in scientific
calculations. " "One of the most interesting projects I
worked on was to support a paper written by Dennis Boston on artificial
intelligence. We applied an iterative adaptive process to the design of turbine
discs where human judgement was input after each design iteration. And all this
using TIP on DEUCE! " "And one of the least successful, a
program to calculate stress and creep in turbine discs using a very complex set
of equations that had just been published. I remember writing and debugging for
a long long time until it appeared we'd got it right. Alas, the whole theory
was debunked and the program turned out to be little more than a complicated
random number generator!" "Looking through your site certainly
indeuces (sic) a deep sense of nostalgia and I can once again imagine myself
punching out binary cards and single shotting my way through programs where the
displays of binary patterns were instantly translated into something meaningful.
God knows how we did it." "When I've tried to explain to latter
day programmers the notion of "Thank you for a fascinating
website." "I programmed the DEUCE at Bristol
Siddeley Engines in Patchway in the period 1962 to 1963. I was a recently
graduated engineer working to create "Scheme T", the first Bristol
Siddeley true specific heat part load engine performance program." "As I recall, there was doubt about
whether the DEUCE was large enough. However, I was young and fearless and
somehow I managed to cram everything into a program that would handle all the
engine types that Bristol Siddeley then had or planned to have (days of the
Olympus, and the BS 100)." As an engineer, I was not supposed to
program or gain access to the machine and initially needed to be escorted by
Dickie Burden (a wonderful man). Eventually, Maths Services figured out that it
was easier to adopt me than to keep me out, so I moved into the Maths Services
area with folk like Brian Miller. They were a lively bunch and I had a lot of
fun with them." "I left in 1963 for graduate school in
the Dickie Burden was a DEUCE programmer who
worked in Maths Services (I think) but was closely linked with folk like Prem
Gupta, Brokie Brokenshaw, and John Uden in engineering analysis. Dickie was a
paraplegic from polio contracted in Gosh, surprised to be sent a link to your
site. Having joined Maths Services at Bristol
Siddeley Engines in 1964 I spent a good deal of time, initially punching cards
and I do remember running the 'man-hours' programme. Administration was looked after by Steve Mieville ,
who also did some operating and then there were Other staff I remember at the time were Diana Sprague - Punch Room Mike Warke, Bob Griffin and Liz were a bit
of a whizz with the printing side as well. Jim FLETCHER - [EA] "I have just read your description of
the DUECE computer, I operated one of those in1958 when I was employed by what
was then called Bristol Siddeley Engines which then became Rolls Royce. There
were two of us on a night shift, four 12 hour shifts a week. The biggest chore
was the feeding in of all the cards to start the thing off. Also a very long
restore control routine should the m/c go into a loop, doing the same thing
over and over again. One benefit of the m/c was that if you felt like a nap
during the night you could open the door at the back and you could hear the
sensors moving up and down, if they stopped you woke up and sorted it out.
Should it break down it was a trip round the m/c tapping all the pull-out trays
and hopfully getting the valves to come to life again." A friend of mine who worked as an operator
at Bristol Siddeley on Deuce and then went on through Kidsgrove to higher
things. (Seth Holt) I was Mike Warkes Best Man! (Paul Hemming) BRITISH AIRCRAFT CORPORATION - WARTON - "When I joined the company in 1953 it
was known as The English Electric Company (Aircraft Division) but by the time
DEUCE came along it was English Electric Aviation Ltd. At the time of the TSR 2
contract we merged with Vickers and others to become British Aircraft
Corporation. I think that was before the DEUCEs were phased out." (John
Halliday) "Although it was before my time (I
joined in Jan 67, from GEC in Cliff has a website for Warton
Windtunnelonians here Bill COULSHED Tom DUERDEN John McDONNELL - Head of Maths Services Peter DUKES - [EA] Read Peter's fascinating memories of
mathematical manipulations and midnight mercury hunts to keep the Deuce running
to complete Concorde's fin stress analysis. Sydney KELSEY Ian TAIG John HALLIDAY " We used to travel down to "John H had been involved in matrix
analysis work for a long time and wanted to explore the usefulness of
approximate methods for the solution of large numbers (e.g. about 100!) of
simultaneous equations." [ See Peter Dukes - DEUCE
Recollections ] Richard YOUNG Peter LANCASTER - [EA] - WWW Extracts from an interview by Prof. Nicholas
J. Higham at the NJH: And I know that after your
undergraduate degree in mathematics at the PL: I was in the aero-structures group at
what was then called Warton Aerodrome and was the research arm of the English
Electric Company, which later became British Aerospace. NJH: What computing facilities were
available? PL: Desk-top calculators ( "I joined Ian Kerr's Stress Team which
was located in the so-called Fish Tank in the Stress Office in September 1965.
After being taught programming methodologies at Maurice MARVIN Philip ROBERTS Bill MOXHAM - [EA] View of the DEUCE room with me at the console My Name is Michael
Caine and I worked for English Electric Aviation at Wharton from 1960 to 1968. I started as a Deuce computer operator,
graduated to programming the KDF6 when it arrived around 1965, based at Strand
Road Preston, ending up as the KDF6 Operations Manager. We operators were not mathematicians, but we
did learn how to apply logic to problems, work to strict standards, simple
programming, be self reliant and at the same time have a lot of fun. The operators at Wharton worked 24/7
alternating day shift and night shift and there was always plenty of weekend
work. Some of the names were Ron Broxham, Brian Petrie, Michael Mallinder, Pete
Riley, Bas Drummond, Mike Flemming and others I cannot now remember. I do
remember we had a great time, with real gentlemen as bosses such as Gordon
Pitt, John McDonald and Tom Duerdon, who gave me my first management job. I remember playing cricket at 3.00 am just
outside the computer room and someone putting the ball through the MD's (Freddy
Paige) window. The following morning he came down to ask who did it. The
culprit, I forget who, took one pace forward and owned up, expecting the sack.
Mr Paige said "If you cannot bat straighter than that you shouldn't be
playing cricket" threw the ball to him and walked out. Just been looking at the photograph of part
of the DEUCE console you attached. It reminded me of the first time I ever read
the DEUCE user guide. At Wharton if there were any jobs which needed little
attention from operators, these were always left for the nightshift, to make
their task easier. If fact there were some jobs which only required a few
punched cards as input, but the resultant processing could take hours,
sometimes all night. This meant that we had nothing to do so we slept.(Or
played cricket! JB) However, what I learned at Wharton working
on the Deuce was a boon for the rest of my career. We operators had to learn to
program in machine code, logical flowcharting, GIP and correct any programs
that went wrong on the night shift as there was no one to turn to for help. Operators at Wharton had to be able to do
some limited programming, nothing special. At the time, I was after a
Programming Team Leaders job at Elliott Automation Ltd. My CV at that time
showed that I had been successful in programming the KDF6 and had done some
programming of the DEUCE. One of the three people interviewing me said to his
colleagues "If this guy's programmed a DEUCE, he can programme
anything", and I was offered the job there and then. I had a great time at Wharton and will
always remember it. As I came across your site I thought I would
add myself to you "people" index. John MacFARLANE John Halliday remembers many of staff at BAC
Warton: Ron GREEN --- Roy SMITH --- Ron BRADLEY --- Philip
TATTERSALL --- Alan PEACOCK I was the DEUCE Maintenance Engineer at
English Electric Aviation (name subsequently changed to British Aircraft
Corporation, British Aerospace, etc.) at Warton Aerodrome, near I was alerted by John Halliday to the
existence of your website, I knew a remarkable number of the people you list. It was evocative to see the pictures of the
twin machines at Farnborough, and to read again what was called a programming
manual. Read Steve's extensive Memoirs
of Maintenance Modifications and Marriage at Warton. Terry HUGHES - DEUCE Maintenance Engineer BAC Warton Fred DAVIES - DEUCE Maintenance Engineer BAC Warton Al BEEDON - DEUCE Maintenance Engineer BAC Warton "Steven Allcock also had a Canadian
assistant whose first name was Alan but I cannot recall his surname" (John
Halliday) Eddie As Robin's machine in "The engineers had installed a facility
so that words in the monitor(s) could be conveniently viewed with a space after
every fifth bit, and with spaces after each field of the DEUCE instruction. I
forget whether this was achieved with an additional switch, or whether it was
an additional position of an existing switch.' "The site engineers wanted ICT to make
a modification to the card reader (October 1962). For this purpose, I had put
DEUCE on Request Stop (9-24, clear read) and DEUCE was stopped on that instruction.
The cover of the card reader had been removed. An ICT engineer was inspecting
the reader, and had his hand clasping the drive belt from the 1/8th HP
motor." "One of the site engineers noticed that
DEUCE was on Request Stop. For some unaccountable reason, and despite at least
three people standing behind the reader, he decided to release Request Stop.
The card reader started immediately (the belt moves virtually to full speed
instantaneously). " "I never saw anyone move as quickly as
did that ICT engineer. He was just so lucky !" The DEUCE a user's view Josephine MARVIN nee LLOYD Barbara Salisbury operating the 32 Column Deuce at BAC
Warton in 1958 "Barbara was
Jo's No. 2. having transferred in from Flight Test where she had been a
Mathematical Assistant -i.e- a computer, doing much calculation by turning the
handle of a Brunsviga machine. These two girls led the half dozen who operated
the DEUCE for much of its production work." (Steve Allcock) Margot
CAREY - nee CLAPHAM - [EA] "Margot Carey provided many of the names of the
people who worked in the off line activities associated with the Deuce."
(John Barrett) Akim ADIWALI --- Marie BAMBER --- Hilda
BERRY --- Sheila BREWSTER nee BRADLEY--- Muriel DENN BRITISH AIRCRAFT CORPORATION - FILTON - John HAHN - Head of Maths Services Peter FRANKS - Head of the DEUCE programming group Peter GROVES - [EA] Tony COOKES - [EA] Barry SWAINSTON - [EA] I joined the BAC, Filton, in 1960 as a DEUCE
programmer, having learned a smidgeon of Alphacode and machine code from the
late Jack Cole, then of Queen's College, Dundee, in what must have been one of
the earliest undergraduate computing courses in the In 1968 I moved to DEUCE was a vehicle for great ingenuity in
programming. I recollect having fun at the expense of John Kelleher, our
resident engineer. We devised a loop consisting of a sequence of instructions
designed to illuminate for the minimum time the minimum number of the console
lights. This was planted into a genuine program and, when entered, the apparent
total visual absence of activity gave the impression of a drop-out which left
the engineers scratching their heads until the host program unexpectedly sprang
into life again. In the 1980s, there was an essay about
quiche eaters using Pascal while real programmers worked in FORTRAN. In the
1960s, quiche eaters would have used (slow) floating point subroutines while
real programmers performed (fast) calculations using intricate scaling to
preserve precision. One of the pleasures was to watch the convergence of
iterative routines in the binary displays of the CRT. In 1972, I joined David WICKS Programmers Mike FASEY --- Tony RHODES --- Roger COLLIER --- Lyn
EDWARDS --- Eileen ELLIS --- David ROBINSON Punch card girls Mary John KELLEHER - [EA] I joined E.E. in 1958, and went to Kidsgrove
to do my course under Arthur Bailey. Finishing the course I was moved to the
commissioning lab where there was a row of machines waiting to be commissioned.
Behind us, at ceiling height, was a long rectangular trunking with vents at
intervals and a fan at one end to blow cooling air on us. A favourite trick at
the time was filling a bag with chads from the punch, switching off the fan,
tipping the chads into the top end of the trunk and restarting the fan!
Whereupon all the engineers would get showered with chads! My first real assignment was the single
DEUCE at Bristol Siddeley Engines at Filton. Soon after arriving I was left on
my own. The machine was in a single storey room with a window in the roof.
Summoning up courage I decided to stay late one night and do some work. Having
switched off the machine I boldly approached the chassis with a hot soldering
iron. Suddenly there was a flash and bang which made me soil my pants. Then I
realised this was caused by a thunderstorm outside! The BAC machines were working on airframe
design leading up to Incidentally we also had responsibility for
four EE LACE analogue machines used for There was another machine at BAC up the road
and later both were doubled up and all began working full shifts 7 days a week.
I became site supervisor and had a staff of 17 engineers. They were all EE
engineers shared between BAC and Bristol Siddely Engines. Alan GRAY - [EA] Bob Mc Call at the Console with me (Alan Gray) standing by
the m/c intelligently inspecting a waveform on the typical oscilloscope
provided for maintenance purposes. The photographer thought it would help the
composition so Bob is wearing my sports jacket whilst I am shirt-sleeved by
the 'scope. I have just
discovered your DEUCE site. You have put in a lot of work and produced a
valuable resource. From there to Bristol Siddely Engines but
you do not seem to have listed the EE engineers for that site except for David
BACK. Dave was there for six weeks, I believe, before leaving for a KDP10
course prior to For a number or reasons I am very grateful
to my DEUCE years; one reason being that it got me and my family a three year
tour of John
ELLISON - [EA] - EE DEUCE
Maintenance Engineer David BACK - EE DEUCE Maintenance Engineer CENTRAL ELECTRICITY GENERATING BOARD
Peter BENSTEAD MARCONI LTD - GREAT BADDOW - Nr Eric EASTWOOD Peter BRANDON Norman HUTLEY Josef SKWIRZYNSKI Doug SHINN Bernard de NEUMANN - (EA) Marjorie SADLER Ed PACELLO Denis BROCKINGTON Neville VINCENT Mike ADLER Ted COCKLE Elizabeth SEABROOK Julia DAIN - [EA] Programmers Daphne GALPIN --- Dudley & Mrs HULL --- Drayton PALMER --- Don GILL--- Rosalind FARTHING --- Ed
DUNLOP I have enjoyed reading your Deuce page, it
brings back old memories. I worked from 1962 until 1964 as a Computer
Operator on the Deuce Mark II installation at Marconi's, Great Baddow, Once, the engineers smelt burning inside the
main unit, and it was several days before they found that the chimney of a
recently installed sanitary incinerator was rather close to the air intake for
the cooling fan - hence the smell of smoke! The programmers got a bit lazy at times, and
would jam the punched pieces of card (chads) back into the holes to try
variations of data, the pieces would fall out and the results could be useless!
Computers have come a long way since then! Doug FAWCETT - (EA) - Operator My name is Doug Fawcett and as someone who
was an operator on the the Deuce I was very interested to see my name mentioned
on the site. Richard POWELL - (EA) - Operator I used to be an operator on the Duece at the
Marconi Co, Ltd., Great Baddow in 1963 at the age of 16 years and worked with
many of the names listed on your site.(Peter Brandon, Mike Adler, Doug Fawcett,
Geoff Wardell, Linda Balls etc.) Operating this machine was a great
experience at the age of 16 years. I also went on to be an Operator / Shift
Leader on their English Electric KDF9 and to his day still have my Operating
Manual. One incident I recall is when the Deuce room
over heated during winter one day, the room reached a temperature in excess of
100 degrees farenheit, whilst the snow was coming in through the open windows.
It took Geoff Wardell some three days to get the system back up and running. I was pleased to see your site, what a great
job keeping the history going. Geoff WARDELL David LEE - (EA) "In early 1959 a DEUCE Mk II computer
was installed in the Mathematics Department of the Marconi Company at their
research facility at Great Baddow, near The computer was managed by Geoff Wardell,
who was assisted by myself as maintenance engineer. During the initial
commissioning period both Geoff and I separately went to the Kidsgrove factory
for training. After commissioning, the first two hours of each day were spent
conducting preventative maintenance before handing over to the mathematicians
and programmers. Reliability was such that some programmers would immediately
blame the hardware for program execution problems that they encountered. In
order to "defend" the hardware, I learnt how to program the computer,
which enabled me to also improve the coding of some of the provided library
subroutines, making them faster and/or smaller, thus saving precious memory. I
also modified the hardware to assist program testing: The Marconi DEUCE was still operating in
early 1964 when I left to migrate to Yvonne SOLLY - (EA) "John Cooper (almost) remembers some names of
the people who worked in the off line activities associated with the
Deuce." (JB) Linda BALLS -- Jenny ??? --- Carol ???
--- Barbara ??? MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE FISHERIES AND FOOD -
GUILDFORD - Alex ROBINSON "Alex Robinson looked after the Min of
Ag & Fish Deuce at John WRIGHT John BARRETT In 1958 I left RAE to join the Government
Section of ICT based in In 1961 I married Jackie Rawkins ,
who was a machine operator in the room adjacent to the Deuce computer room at
MAFF and we moved to Kidsgrove straight from our honeymoon in Torquay. From
November 1961 I was working on the development and production of the KDF9
computer and at the end of 1963 we left Kidsgrove to install a KDF9 at Wyn THOMAS NORTH STAFFS POLYTECHNIC - STAFFORD -
Visit "The Staffordshire University Computing Futures Museum" "
Here
"The "Came in via crane and a second floor
window space, the window had to be removed, frame and all. Stayed with us 'til
1969 (or was it '70, or '71, or ...?)" "In the late 1960's the college had
outgrown its original building and was using quite a lot of prefabricated huts
as extra classrooms. These huts had three series of numbers to identify them,
namely n1, n2, n3 ..., x1, x2, x3 ... and t1, t2, t3 ... This naming scheme was
in imitation of the storage locations as used in Alphacode on the DEUCE." "I was poached (from
NRL) in 1966 to lecture at the college where I stayed until I retired. I
also helped as deputy engineer while I was there. Melvyn CHAPMAN - [EA] - Lecturer "I cut my teeth on a Ferranti Pegasus
in 1961. The obvious difference between the two machines was that you couldn't
walk inside a Pegasus. My association with DEUCE was more pedestrian but it
kept me out of mischief until its replacement - when some small insignificant
parts found their way into the control circuitry of my domestic central heating
system." Sam VALENTINE - [EA] - Lecturer "At the beginning of 1968 I went to
work as a lecturer at the Staffordshire College of Technology, which later
became part of the North Staffordshire Polytechnic, and is now the George WILLIAMSON - Maintenance Engineer George Williamson is probably the 'key'
person. He was the engineer as well as being a full-time (mature) Computing
Student. He was regularly called out of class to fix the Deuce. (Rod Grealish) David BROWN - [WWW] -
[EA] - Student " The first computer I did serious work
on was an English Electric Deuce computer -- a commercial version of the famous
(?) Ace computer that Turing helped to design. It had vacuum tubes, a drum
(retrofitted), and mercury delay lines. User input to give signals to the
program was via a rotary telephone dial." "I was in the second year of the
Computer Science B.Sc. degree when it was still North Staffs Poly, in Rod GREALISH - [EA] - Student, Graduated 1970 and joined the
college staff. "My memory of the Deuce was that it
occupied (but did not fill ) a room. It was the size of a Horse-box. The
Internal circuits could be accessed by a 'corridor' running inside the box. The
'corridor' was about 2 feet wide. I remember it had a parquet-style floor.
There was a control desk attached to the horse-box. Programs were entered using
papertape prepared in another room using teletypes." I stumbled across your web page by (sort of)
accident. I was a (Liverpool Based) English Electric
Student Apprentice from 1962 to 1967. As such I went to North Staffs Poly
(Semister B) starting February 1963; to study Electrical Engineering. I remember the Deuce - and the Alpha Code
and the 2000 or so cards of the Algol compiler. Two things come to mind. 1. I wrote a machine code program to generate
random numbers for the college newspaper - the "Picture House" cinama
(as I recall) gave us two complementary tickets each issue, and we needed an
unbiased way of finding the winner. It was done by looping around with the
arithmetic unit, then selecting the random number via a 'key' on the console,
with all attempts before a certain time being dismissed (so that early
selection was not possible) and then the number was truncated to the range of
the 'sales'. All very fair (I think !). 2) The operator (can't remember her name)
asked me one day if I could get the Algol Compiler copied - No Problem! I wrote
a machine code program to do, in a loop, start the Card Reader, Read a card
into a delay line, stop the card reader, start the card punch, write the card
from the delay line, stop the card punch, repeat until no more cards. Simple!.
Test it, copies a few cards perfectly. Next I get a message to go and see Head of
Department urgently. "Are you responsible for copying cards on the
computer?". "Well probably - I gave (forgotten) my card copy
program!". "Don't ever do such a stupid thing again - You don't read
just one card, you fill up the delay lines, then stop the card reader - you
have just burned out the clutch on the card reader - you *** *** etc. etc.".
So if anyone remembers the card reader in
bits - I have to admit, it was my fault. As it turned out I did very little
Electrical Engineering (I left English Electric Liverpool in 1970) - I have
spent most of my working life since then designing and/or writing computer
software - all because I caught the bug from a Deuce!. One little aside - When I first went to 'Ah, Deuce!' Now your talking. When I went
to college in Read Richard's more detailed memories of
those early days The first
meeting with DEUCE "I sometimes helped George Williamson
repair Deuce when it was sick and on one occasion he was on a half day's leave
and the machine went down in the middle of the afternoon. When I went to use
the computer everybody was standing round looking lost. I said I would try and
fix it if I could run my programs before the rest of the queue. About 10
minutes later the machine was working and I had my results - it was just a
valve in one of the delay line refresh circuits that had gone down. Considering
its age, the diagnostics on the system were excellent." Just come across your web site on Deuce
computer. I actually programmed the last working version of this computer at
Stafford Polytech in 1971. We used Alphacode and sent and received the programs
via teletype paper tape. I remember the heat from the computer very
well, as well as its rest period when the sun shone !. I later went on to
become a computer operator on IBM 360/30, 370Žs and later in to telecoms at
TSB. I have spent 35 odd years in IT and its nice to see that somebody
remembers these first generation computers. People find it hard to believe that I
actually worked these beasties. Such fond memories, thanks.
Like others, I stumbled upon your DEUCE pages by accident, when my eldest
son pointed me at some information about the LEO.
Great work, thanks for all that you and others have done!
I studied at Staffordshire College of Technology in 1962, as part of a
"thick sandwich" apprenticeship with English Electric in Stafford.
Programming the DEUCE was part of the course. The most exciting part, I
recall!
We programmed "Pythagoras' equation" using about 22 punched cards,
and I clearly remember the delay line memory but not the drum - perhaps that
came later?
I first met DEUCE in 1955, worked with many
of the people on your list, and switched off the DEUCE at SCOT in 1968 possibly
1969. "I was told about your web site by
Clinton Bourne (he worked on DEUCE at Kidsgrove from 1962 until 1965 or
thereabouts)." THE
NEW SOUTH WALES renamed The UNIVERSITY OF NEW on 7th October 1958. U niversity of T echnology E lectronic COM
puter UTECOM "The third academic computer was
commissioned at the then recently established New South Wales University of
Technology by the Premier of New South Wales, the Hon. J. J. Cahill, while
opening a Symposium on 'Automation and Australia' on 11 September 1956. At this
laboratory the main installation was one of the early vacuum tube machines
produced commercially by the British-based English Electric Company, DEUCE,
called UTECOM for The DEUCE was a manufactured version of the
first realisation of the system originally conceived by Alan Turing in 1946
(1945 - ed) at the British National Physical Laboratory, The UTECOM m/c was the first one I worked on
- during it's commissioning at Kidsgrove. Tom Elliott and Eric Thomas took the
drum by air - in it's own seat - to Thanks to Robin Vowels for following
extracts from Utecom's first annual report and most of the information about
Utecom staff. "Ron Smart and Keith Ford assisted
installing UTECOM, with T Elliott and E Thomas from EE." "The initial staff consisted of: R. G. SMART - "After being awarded the University
Medal, Ron Smart was snapped up to become the inaugural director of the UTECOM
Laboratory, and sent to Ron would have given programming courses
etc, drummed up business from the outside world, etc. The laboratory did
outside work (both programming and selling computer time)." George KAROLY "George Karoly did some programming
work too, including for the Soda project." (Robin Vowels) Miss M. OATES - Technical Officer (Programing and Secretarial
duties) Miss G. GASKIN - Technical Assistant (Card Preparation) Keith FORD - Laboratory Assistant (Machine Maintenance) W. SCROGGIE - Laboratory Assistant (Machine Maintenance) L PARKES - Technical Officer - replaced Miss M Oates Margaret FOSTER - Technical Assistant - replaced Miss G Gaskin" -
(UTECOM 1st Annual Report) Barry THORNTON "Barry Thornton was a mathematician at
the university at the time. He was not involved with the computer, but he was
very much involved with making sure Gordon and I had a wonderful stay in Larry PARK Gordon "Bob Brigham, my roommate, and I went
to "In 1958, when I met Wilkinson at NPL
(that Deuce came from) to give a talk, he said ' who needs a symbolic, optimum
assembly program ' -- (in essence) real men program in binary. " "I wrote a program that proposed to my
wife, Gwen, using the Deuce switches and the displayed delay lines where you
scrolled messages on the 32 x 32 dot grid." "I remember going to work each day
wondering whether we'd get much time on the computer. It seemed to go down all
the time. Ron Smart was a miracle worker who always could get it running. He
was a workaholic, a tremendously nice guy, and a real joy to be around. So was
Gordon fun to be with. As he mentioned, we had known each other several years
at MIT and roomed together during our graduate year there." "I remember the punched card input
where we punched in the instructions in binary. If we made a mistake and we
wanted a 1 where we originally had a 0, it was no problem- we simply punched
another hole. However, if we had a 1 and it should have been a 0, we went to
the trash can, picked out a punched out piece of card, inserted it in the hole,
rubbed it with our finger to make it smooth, and reproduced the card. Needless
to say, the entire process was somewhat time consuming." "We went to the The Computer Journal , Volume 2, Issue 2,
1959 - A translation routine for the DEUCE computer David ELLIOTT Charles L. HAMBLIN - [ WWW
] "Charles Hamblin conceived the
addressless language based on reverse polish notation and implemented a
compiler for it called GEORGE Geoff Roper of the Chemistry Department used
it extensively, running it all weekend." GEORGE included subroutines, something that
FORTRAN did not have until June 1958. Charles wrote a program requiring 160-bit
integer arithmetic to produce Babylonian tables. On DEUCE, five words were
required. This would have been straightforward on account of the 32-bit and
32/64-bit adders, which gave convenient access to the carry bit. Dick JENSSEN John WEBSTER - [EA] John wrote several useful programs. One was
NSW 71, a GIP brick that read six 9-digit numbers or eight 8-digit numbers,
automatically choosing one or the other format depending on the first
decimally-punched card. This was intended to replace an EE GIP brick -- namely
LR21BT that read six 9-digit numbers -- that was described by DEUCE Librarian
R. A. Smith as "ham fisted" because it randomly stopped the card
reader while reading the data. The author of that program had thought that
magnetic interlocks did not exist, for he used waste instructions to delay up
to 15ms following a track write. The other problem with it was that there
were two blank card columns between the third and fourth numbers -- a gap that
was incompatible with general decimal output routines. John's brick did not
stop the reader between cards. After the cards had been read, track reading and
writing were overlapped during the scaling process so as to eliminate delays
owing to magnetics operations. John's brick occupied 15 tracks. LR21BT occupied
22 tracks. It seems impossible that John's brick could combine the tasks of two
bricks, and for the result to smaller than one of them! In short, a very
professionally-written brick. However, John's major achievement was his
brick-changing program, WIP. This was intended to replace DEUCE program
ZC14T/1. The latter required detailed knowledge of DEUCE to set up the
parameters to use it. John's WIP did not. It used a subset of GIP codewords. So
anyone who knew GIP could use WIP. Where WIP excelled were in its speed (faster
than ZC14T/1 and GIP) and its small size. WIP occupied 5 tracks, whereas GIP
occupied 23 tracks. John writes: "[WIP] seemed to satisfy quite a few
people's needs. Don Craig was one guy who was happy to have the freed-up tracks
for his work - he heard from someone about WIP's smaller drum occupancy and
came to "beg" to be able to use it (to my surprise, and great
self-esteem!) because he needed that extra space." Both of John's programs (NSW 71 and WIP)
were submitted to English Electric for publication, but they suffered the same
fate as Hamblin's GEORGE, which also was never published. (We don't know
whether SODA was ever submitted.) John also wrote a double-precision version
of Hamblin's GEORGE, plus an enhancement to print on the teleprinter (in
algebraic source form) the user's complete GEORGE program, along with a message
at the very place where the program had halted. John's other contributions included a test
program, TNSW02, to rigorously test early and late sources. We included it in
the general engineer's Robin VOWELS - [WWW ] - [EA]
See also The
DEUCE -- a user's view Robin A. Vowels I was initially employed as programmer from
about March 1961, and was responsible for the maintenance from December 1962.
My main task was to rehabilitate UTECOM and to bring its reliability up to that
of DEUCE machines overseas. The DEUCE engineers' course was 6 months,
and in 1962, Arthur Bailey was the instructor. The course included logic and circuits
for all of DEUCE, not just the basic machine. Peripherals covered were
64-column I/O, paper tape I/O, 80-column I/O, and magnetic tape. As our site did not have magnetic tape,
English Electric decided that some on-site experience would be more appropriate
than sitting though the magnetic tape component. They therefore sent me to
Warton where two Mark I DEUCE were operating side-by-side. In the 3 weeks that I was there, not a
single breakdown occurred while I was present; there was, however, one overnight.
EE also gave me hands-on experience on the magnetic drum, among other things,
setting the head gap with the aid of a hi-tech device, to wit, a cigarette
paper. Being the last 64-column DEUCE to get it, I
installed Rationalized Magnetics on UTECOM, by building the unit from scratch,
after stripping down the old unit. This was done in July 1963, and took about
three days' wiring work. I also installed ME/M modifications for the
pseudo parity check on the drum. This came as a piggy-back unit from English
Electric, and it was shipped out to us with a refurbished magnetic drum unit,
received in about March 1963. In about August 1963 I installed a Siemens
M100 teleprinter to take some load off the ailing card punch. Initially this
was a primitive affair requiring programmed I/O, as the simple interface
(reading or writing a single bit at a time) was non-standard. The first
teleprinter unit at 50 Baud was on loan from the PMG until we received the 75
Baud machine (10 cps) that was on order from Siemens in Melbourne (at that
time, they were assembled in Australia). I had hoped to add cams to the unit, so as
to duplicate the requirements of the standard DEUCE paper tape punch, but this
proved impossible owing to lack of space. I therefore designed an electronic
parallel-to-serial interface, and built it up on a spare blank DEUCE chassis.
This permitted standard programming, as it generated the TIL signal when ready
to punch; a Destination 29 instruction caused the output of one character, also
standard. As the interface required no modifications to the teleprinter, it
looked like it might have applications beyond our site, so I sent a copy of the
circuit to Jack Richardson, who replied that "It looks delightfully
simple. I'll see if there is any use for it here." One day I noticed an external user open a
cabinet door of the machine and fiddle with a unit. Curious, I asked her what
she was doing. She said that she was turning A.I.M. off. And sure enough, there
it was: a two-pin jumper plug, on Unit AIM, and the spot was engraved AIM OFF.
This was in 1963, some 4 years after A.I.M. was installed. It was a
non-standard modification, and did not appear on the circuit diagram. Read Robin's memories of bringing UTECOM
reliability up from 60% to around 95%. UTECOM - Major Machine
Malaise I also completed STAC (a symbolic assembler)
in my spare time. We didn't have to resort to Royle's reported
method of "switching off" UTECOM. It switched itself off periodically
when one of the many feed-through capacitors short-circuited. The lads found
that it was quicker to locate the offender by removing the covers in the
internal walkway, switching off all the lights, and "powering up".
The culprit revealed itself with a brilliant flash. The power stayed on only
momentarily, and it was usually necessary to power up more than once before the
source of the flash could be identified. Needless to say that the internal
covers were permanently removed, as this event occurred relatively often. By
1963, I ordered a few hundred of the different brand of capacitors (other
DEUCEs in the When we were having problems with the multiplier,
we ran the DEUCE test program that uses the hardware multiplier and which
compared it with the product obtained with software. When a fault was detected,, the content of
the multiplier were punched out during each of the 64 minor cycles of the multiplication,
followed by a copy of the correct version as simulated by software. Unfortunately, all the output was punched in
32 column, which wasn't convenient as all the values were 64 bits. So I modified the progam to punch the
results in 64 columns. Then it was easy to see the results as the bits were
shifted up one-shift-at-a-time (recall how easy it was to compare results? hold
pairs of cards up to the light to see which bits were different). I sent this to EE, expecting that it would
be a welcome addition to the library, but like many other programs from this
part of the world, it was ignored. NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome. Keith TITMUSS Rodney BELL Bob Reid and Rodney Bell installed the
64-column modifications for the card reader and card punch in 1959. This
involved extensive cabling in the main frame (cables with 64 multi-colored
wires for each device), and the flexible cables connecting the machine to the
card reader and punch. Modifications were also required to Units C, D, and E
for the reader. These modifications were probably done in
the days leading up to the re-wiring, as the alterations would not have
affected input. A new roller had to be fitted to the card reader. This was a
"split roller", with an insulating spacer between card columns 48 and
49, as the two parts of the roller had to be kept at different voltages. Standard units MV/1 and MV/2 were probably
supplied for the conversion of the output. The conversion was carried out over
8 consecutive days in August-September 1959 with the machine switched off, and
required 89 hours' labor. Bob related an incident during the cabling.
At one end of the cable in one part of the machine, Bob would call out the
color of the wire that he was connecting, and Rod at the other end of the cable
would connect the corresponding wire at his end. Nearing the end of the job,
Bob called out a color, but Rod did not have a matching one. It turned out that
one of them was color blind ! Bob and Rod would also have installed the
Automatic Instruction Modification unit (A.I.M.) at around the same time. This
was a standard unit supplied by English Electric. (Robin Vowels) Tom KALDOR - Technical Officer UTECOM Machine Maintenance Alan NELSON - Technical Officer UTECOM Machine Maintenance Armand GOLDEN - Technical Officer UTECOM Machine Maintenance John MENTJOX - Technical Officer UTECOM Machine Maintenance Les HILL Brian McHUGH Brian amended the Crystallographic programs
originally written by J. S. Rollett for DEUCE. These programs gave wrong results
whenever fixed-point arithmetic overflowed, as Rollett did not include checks
for overflow. He considered them unnecessary. Users could not tell whether results were
correct or not when this happened, and if not correct, they could not tell
whether or not there was something wrong with their experiment. Brian also
incorporated additional checks on arithmetic, for until that time, UTECOM was
not reliable. One PhD student wrote in his thesis that he
had to run the crystallographic programs up to five times before getting two
sets of results that agreed. Rollet's original programs punched out results one
card at a time -- this was the principal cause of repeated mechanical failure
of the card punch. Brian amended the output section to punch batches of 16 cards.
Regarding his Crystallography programs,
Rollet wrote that he was able to keep the multiplier running three-quarters of
the time (about 14 Mcs in 17œ Mcs) with concurrent programming, as the
multiplier was asynchronous.[1] [1] J. S. Rollett, "General Programs
for Crystal Structure Analysis on the English Electric DEUCE Computer",
pp. 87-101. John ROBERTS Jean ROBB Gay ELLIS Raj REDDY - ( WWW ) -
(EA) "When the "Only seven years before, Professor
Douglas R Hartree of DEUCE: Dennis GILLES Ann WESSON
nee THOMSON "Ann was there when we delivered a
machine to Noel WESSON - [EA] - DEUCE Maintenance Engineer After the middle month of the Deuce course
Derek Royle sent me to Noel then joined the Deuce
Mobile Service Unit - South at Doug worked under Dennis Gilles at "At John PATTERSON - (EA) - ( WWW) When John Patterson came to "I never programmed the " Tony WHITE "The University's site engineer was
Tony White, a Brummie who lived for the mountains and had taken the job so he
could spend every weekend in the mountains. Tony is now retired to the Isle of
Arran, off Ian DICK CENTRAL BUREAU OF STATISTICS - Thin NENSETH - (EA) I owe many happy days and memories to DEUCE
and the fact that The Central Bureau of Statistics in Find out how Thin aquired the nicknames
"The Whaler" and "The Cradle Snatcher" when he came to
Kidsgrove to learn all about DEUCE. This Deuce Training Course photo shows Thin ,
forth from left. "The name Thin Nenseth rings bells. I'm
fairly sure I met him in "Thin Nenseth, a Norwegian, was
learning English as well as Deuce and looked after the Oslo DEUCE." in
1958. (Noel Wesson) Gerry
SMITH / FRASER - [EA] I just came across your DEUCE web site and
was very happy to see that information about 'my first computer' still exists! Must say, looking back on life, I'm very
happy Derek Royle offered me the job at Kidsgrove.. I understand he was in two
minds, because I turned up for the interview, recently returned from the
Persian Gulf, deeply tanned, in what must, for the Midlands, have been a
'flashy' tropical suit. "I remember Gerry Smith with whom I
used to ski when I visited Regnecentralen in Bob Mc Call at the Console with me (Alan Gray) standing by
the m/c intelligently inspecting a waveform on the typical oscilloscope
provided for maintenance purposes. The photographer thought it would help the
composition so Bob is wearing my sports jacket whilst I am shirt-sleeved by
the 'scope. Odd KNUTSEN - DEUCE Maintenance Engineer Ola GRINDAL - DEUCE Maintenance Engineer Kåre STEIRA ATOMIC WEAPONS RESEARCH ESTABLISHMENT - ALDERMASTON -
Demand for computer time grew and so in
preparation for further machines a new computer building was completed in 1956.
The ground floor was occupied with punched card accounting machines that were
used for An English Electric Deuce was installed in a
separate room adjacent to the Ferranti Mark 1*. Deuce was also a valve machine,
its fast access store consisting of mercury delay lines (12 stores of 32 32-bit
words) and drum (8K words) as backing store but with punched card as the medium
for input/output. Both Deuce and the Mark 1* were run for 24
hours a day, 7 days a week by scientific staff: there were no operators!
Programming was still carried out in machine code. (Jim Taylor - History
of Scientific Computing at AWE - Part 1 ) Noel WESSON - [EA] Dave ROSCOE - [EA] Alan KIRK
"Another
machine being assembled and tested whilst I was there (at Kidsgrove), was the "I was interviewed by Derek Royle at "Later on at Whetsone I joined Brian
Randell (later Prof. of Computing at Newcastle Uni) and Lawford Russell in
writing the first ALGOL compiler on DEUCE, in conjunction with the
Oceanographic Dept. at John CAMPBELL - [EA] Alistair TILBURY Dennis BLOOR "The English Electric DEUCE was
programmed in binary (one 32-bit word to each row of a punched card). Each
instruction had to specify the location of the next instruction to be obeyed,
and the way to get a fast program was to place instructions in the mercury
delay lines such that there was no unnecessary waiting between instructions. An
interesting technical challenge was to write a bootstrap program of twelve
instructions on a single punched card. During my time as a pre-university
student at the English Electric Company, a staff member was in the process of
writing an assembler which would, inter alia, look after instruction
placement." "My first programming language was
DEUCE Alphacode. The language provided a set of floating point variables (X1,
X2, ..., X2200) and a smaller number of counting (integer) variables (N1, N2,
..., N63). One line of code could perform a single operation, for example
"X1 = X2 + X3" or "X4 = ROOT X5". The statements of
Alphacode were usually interpreted, not compiled. Writing and using an
Alphacode program was an improvement on performing pre-specified calculations
on an electro-mechanical calculating machine, my previous activity at English
Electric." ( Programming
Languages over the Years - Julian Blake) Any additions or information about those listed above
would be appreciated. DEUCE
PEOPLE INDEX A - B - C - D
- E - F - G - H
- I - J - K - L
- M - N - O - P
- R - S - T - V
- W - Y - SITE INDEX [ EA]
Indicates I have an email address on file. I will happily forward any email
but can not provide the address. ADIWALI - Akim - BAC
Warton - BACK -
David - BAC Filton - CAINE -
Michael - BAC Warton - [EA] DACE - Jean
- EE Marconi House London - EASTWOOD -
Eric - Marconi Ltd - FAIRTHORNE
- Robert A - RAE Farnborough - GAHERTY -
Mike - EE Kidsgrove - HACKETT -
Winifred - EE Luton / Stevenage - Ian - ??? -
EE Luton - JACKSON -
Stella - BAC Warton - KALDOR - Tom
- UTECOM - Sydney - LANCASTER -
Peter - BAC Warton - [EA] MacFARLANE
- John - BAC Warton - NASH - Bill
- EE Kidsgrove - OAKES -
Mike - Bristol Siddeley Engines - PACELLO -
Ed - Marconi Ltd - RANDELL -
Brian - EE Whetstone - [EA] SADLER -
Marjorie - Marconi Ltd - TAIG - Ian
- BAC Warton - VALENTINE -
Sam - North Staffs Poly - [EA] WAKEFIELD -
Mary - BAC Filton - YORK
- Ted - RAE Farnborough - DEUCE SITE INDEX AWRE - Aldermaston Any additions or information about those listed above
would be appreciated. To
return to the DEUCE homepage click the image below.
Which has photos of Nelson Research Labs where the early DEUCE were built and tested.
DEUCE interpretive programs
C Robinson
The English Electric Company Ltd., Stafford, UK
This paper describes the principal features of (i) The General Interpretive
Program, (ii) The Tabular Interpretive Program, and (iii) Alphacode, which are
the interpretive programs which have been most extensively used in solving
problems on DEUCE. The characteristics of these three schemes are compared and
contrasted. - Full text in TIFF form available here .
(I have always thought it was ACE to Deuce but reading your documents it seems
more likely to have been Deuce Mk I to Mk II.)
The task involved punching one new hole in the same place on each card (my
task) and putting the chad into an adjacent hole (their task).
When a Deuce was decommissioned, my brother and I acquired a lot of the
switches, lamps and relays, and used them to make our own simple binary logic
circuits.
I was introduced to the Brunsviga calculator as soon as I could count, and I
was then taught all the tricks and shortcuts.
I see one of them is published on David Green's web site: here .
This paper gives an account of railway problems solved on the English Electric
DEUCE The
Computer Journal, Volume 1, Issue 1
(John Boothroyd - Deuce
Reflections )
Recorded by his daughter, Alison Hutchison - January 2007
It was he who discovered that you could use the divider to convert binary to
BCD by changing the content of the divisor and dividend during division. He
noticed that the result was always wrong by a constant amount, and was able to
correct that.
http://members.dodo.com.au/~robin51/acm-290.inc
( Robin Vowels)
(John Boothroyd - Deuce
Reflections )
[ Extract from "Weaving the Web" - Bishop of Southwark's address to
the Weavers Company 22 February 1999 ]
"I returned to NRL on graduation, but used to pop across the road to the
college to use the DEUCE with paper tape. I was poached in 1966 to lecture at
the" college -
(Extract from a photo copied document dated 13-1-91 held by David Leigh. The
full text will be added when the photos have been processed)
My main work was converting math models to Algol to run on a KDF9. My clearest
memory of the Deuce was when the NRL Director was showing the Deuce to some
visitors and I was asleep at the console having succumbed to the warm
atmosphere within the Deuce room.
I didn't have any material involvement with the Deuce during my 18 months at
NRL. There was still one there at the time and I had the guided tour, but never
had occasion to use the machine. I had a look at your website which was very
interesting. Only a very few of the people involved with the Deuce were known
to me, I guess I arrived on the scene in the twilight years, probably not long
before they became museum pieces.
Ray MORRIS - John HERBERT - Norman
DOWELL - Peter WRIGHT
DEUCE Maintenance Engineer
Bill BECKETT
DEUCE Maintenance Engineer
Doug WALTERS
Deuce Spares Manager
Ed PEDERSON - DEUCE Bureau Maintenance Engineer
Keith POWELL - DEUCE Maintenance Engineer
John MACFARLANE - DEUCE Maintenance Engineer
I shared an office with Mike Wetherfield and Trevor ?. Trevor was developing
something called "Trevor Code".
I never did find out what Mike was working on, something quite exotic I would
guess. He seemed to be the resident guru.
(In 1962 what I was working on was no doubt the Director and other software for
KDF9 - Mike Wetherfield)
I think of myself as fortunate to have worked on two first generation
computers, each having a different architecture - DEUCE and then the SILLIAC at Sydney
Uni. And then, surprise, in 1998 I came across a third first-generation
machine, a surviving Bendix G15 here in
(The "Trevor" mentioned was, I think, Trevor NEAL - Mike Wetherfield)
Another programmer reporting to Roger
(David Green)
The DEUCE Alphacode translator
FG Duncan and DHR Huxtable
The English Electric Company Ltd., Kidsgrove, UK
A description is given of a recently completed program for translating from a
single-level pseudo-code (Alphacode) to a multi-level machine code (orthodox
DEUCE code). The chief point of interest is the allocation of the single-level
addresses among the three levels of the real computer to obtain an efficient
final program. Full text in TIFF form here
I still have my old 'DEUCE Lecture Notes' on how to program, and some old code.
I initially worked on KDP10 in the old beureau, then RCA Spectrum developing
the System 4 executive software as the site supervisor of PTD.
I remember Lawrence Blanch giving me a crash course on
Deuce. Stunning to remember somewhat primitive mercury rectifiers, delay line
memory and being able to display every bit in memory on two circular crt's. Oh
for a return to thermionic valves, life was so much more enjoyable then.
S. BIGGINS - K. BLOOR - Alex
BRUNT - Vic COLDHAM - G. GLASS - Reg
GRAY
M. J. HAWKE - P. B. HOLLAND - C.
HUDSON - D. PEDDER - M. SHELMERDINE
H. STOKES - John WALKER
(Dennis Hollins - See The Model
Deuce Letters to the Editor )
He ran the main workshop where the model of the Deuce computer was made, along
with the metalwork for the production machine"
(Peter Nash - See The Model
Deuce Letters to the Editor )
Those two being Len Calvert & Stan Elkin, who is standing 7th from the
right & is wearing spectacles. See The Model
Deuce
I worked with Stan in later years." (Jack Merritt)
My own direct involvement on Deuce consisted of fitting and assembly operations
associated with the Deuce units and the Mercury Delay Lines.
The years at English Electric were by far the happiest of my life, and in
common with many other people about that time, that's where I met my wife
Pauline.
Chris Laverty , Belfast (probably Queens Uni)
U. J. Amera - Singhe , Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries & Food,
Guildford, Surrey
R. McFarlane , St Helens, Lancs
John Horton , Blythe-Bridge, Staffs
Elizabeth Christopher , Staffs
Starcross Street
I had started computing on EDSAC1 as a research student.
I applied to English Electric and was interviewed at
I was appointed to the Nelson Research Laboratories, which were based at
Blackheath near
I met many interesting people, including George Davis and Colin Haley who was
designing and building Deuce but I do not think I ever met J. K. Brown the
Director of Research.
I also met there (possibly on subsequent visits) Cliff Robinson (manager of the
Stafford Computing Service) and Alan Gilmour (concerned with programming train
timetables)
I remember meeting another mathematician, John Dennison and was fortunate to
meet Jim Wilkinson (not EE staff) a noted numerical analyst and from him I
learned how to compute the eigenvalues of matrices.
The first problem I was given was concerned with flutter on aircraft. Having
the maths from RAE Farnborough, I wrote a progam for the Deuce, which was later
used for the design of the Lightning fighter under development at Warton.
I can remember Peter Landin (linear Programming), Chris Woodall (commercial
applications) and Doug Flower (operational research).
Later, I net Audrey Birchmore and Janet Porteous in Marconi House. There were 4
of us cramped into a dressing room of the Gaiety Theatre which was being
demolished to be replaced later by English Electric House.
I started work on solving numerically the integro-differential equations
modelling the control of a nuclear reactor.
I met Tony Hitchcock a mathematician on the staff of UKAEA a nuclear energy
group based at Risley near
I paid many visits to Kidsrove and ultimately the Deuce program was working to
the satisfaction of Tony.
There was Janet Porteous, Audrey BIrchmore and various other staff whose names
I can't remember.
The main problem I worked on was slip surface stability of slopes. This was in
collaboration with the consulting engineers BInnie Deacon & Gourlay ( later
renamed Binnie & Partners)
I was working with some staff of the Civil Engineering Dept of Imperial
College, primarily Nordie Morgenstern.
(We were jointly awarded a prize by the
The Deuce programs which I had written for slip circle analysis and later for
more general slip surfaces, were used on the Daer slope, which caused a tragedy
in
At this time, the program incorporated earthquake analysis, as specified by Dr.
Ambraseys of
I am pleased to be able to report that the dam is still standing in 2009
despite earthquakes in the region.
Janet was working on a Deuce GIP version of the program. In 1959 we both met
Angus Skinner of Sir William Halcrow & Partners.
They got married in August 1960 and are still very good friends of mine. In
1961 Angus joined the staff of the Civil Engineering Department of Imperial
College. Janet has helped me to produce this document by correcting some of my
memories of the days in Marconi House and English Electric House.
I acknowledge assistance in preparing this document from Janet and Angus
Skinner and from my son Colin.
I have been very lucky in this life. God has certainly blessed me with a good
wife, 3 sons , 5 grandchildren and 4 great grandsons.
Writing this potted history has given me great pleasure as I think back to all
the people I met at English Electric.
My prayer is that it will trigger happy memories for you.
They got married in August 1960 and are still very good friends of mine. In
1961 Angus joined the staff of the Civil Engineering Department of Imperial
College. - (Vic Price)
Ed, I noted that you had no price for the Deuce. In 1956/57 the price was
£50,000.
I worked on the DEUCE as an engineer in Marconi House, The Strand, London WC2
from November 1956 until the end of 1961.
The DEUCE it was by then in Queen's House, Kingsway. I left there to go on a
KDP10 course at Kidsgrove and helped to commission the machine which went to
BOLSA (Bank of London and
I have one or two circuit diagrams of the DEUCE machine.
Peter Docherty
Briefly describes an approach to the job of writing a computer program which
might lead to more efficient working both on and off the computer.
Operating a computer on a production run requires attention to a number of
details to ensure successful operation.
Gives a description of the DEUCE Console, Reader and Punch and describes the function
of all switches and lights.
To prepare for the introduction of the English Electric Deuce (Digital
Electronic Universal Computing Engine).
Chris WOODALL
Anne STOWER (Married Chris WOODALL)
Mechanical Engineering Laboratory [MEL]
Atomic Power Division [APD]
(Charles Broyden)
His SF short story, "Georgia On My Mind" which was first published in
Analog Science Fiction in January 1993, opens with a reference to Deuce in 1958
and is dedicated:
- who is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Auckland:
- who is a mathematician, computer specialist and historian of science:
- who discovered parts of Babbage's Difference Engine in Dunedin, New Zealand:
- who programmed the DEUCE computer in the late 1950s, and has been a colleague
and friend since that time:
- who is no more Bill Rigley than I am the narrator of the story".
You have my permission to reprint that material from "
Charles would have liked that.
Best, Nancy Kress" (WWW
)
DEUCE
Bulletin No. 10, 13 June 1960, pp8-12
She was noted for conversing with the machine when doing hands-on debugging.
Sometimes her tones were soothing (things were going well) and sometimes not! I
think I remember her slapping the console at times.
Of course
To this day I think this 'bug' would be very hard to find, especially since
computer time was so precious.
He spent much of his last few weeks at Whetstone before he left to join IBM
Hursley (where he was involved in developing the microcode for one of the first
S360s) developing what he called the "ultimate DEUCE program". This
was a single 64-column card which when read in, using "Initial input"
(!), punched out an *exact* copy of itself - a mind-boggling feat of DEUCE
coding, that I doubt anyone else could have achieved.
(Mike also made the crucial discovery that enabled EASICODE to be an amazingly
fast interpreter. Typical interpreters on DEUCE had an interpretation cycle
that took 50-100 instructions. EASICODE took only about 5, largely because Mike
found a way of exploiting instruction execution and modification straight out
of the quad stores, using the "17 - 0" instruction.) (Brian Randell )
[ Facing
Up to Faults - 2nd Turing Lecture ]
As a programmer I mainly wrote in the interpreters STEVE (with built in steam
tables) and BEVERLEY (with Bessel functions) as well as the vanilla Alphacode.
I learned DEUCE machine code and wrote a few oddments in this, testing the
routines myself using the single shot keys and the binary displays.
There was also a telephone dial which could be used to execute a small number
of cycles if you were feeling brave.
I remember particularly spending hours trying to programme the paper tape
punch.
At the time we had three machines, one being a Mark IIA with extra delay lines.
I was an early user of the Walgol Algol 60 interpreter being developed in the
next office by Lawford Russell and the Kalgol Algol 60 compiler written at
Kidsgrove.
We maintained our own operations staff in
This was a hazardous procedure as the overnight turnover depended on our van
meeting a train at
After leaving Whetstone I moved to Newcastle University Maths Dept and ended up
operating the same KDF9.
Always useful to have a back-up skill. (Mike KELLY)
My first job was as DEUCE Mk 1 operator, with fellow operator Alan Jones.
Dr. Peter Wakely was head of DEUCE programming; one of his guys was Mick
Williamson (whom I bumped into last Sept. on a walking holiday in
One day he asked us what the telephone dial was on the control panel (the one
used to signal 'n' Single Shots to a program under test that had 'stoppers' on
strategic instructions).
We kidded him that it was for calling out the engineer, so he dialled in Bill
Worth's number, and we were astonished to see Bill Worth appear shortly afterwards!
I don't know if he ever discovered the truth...
DEUCE Maintenance Engineers
Guided Weapons Division (GW) - later moved to
I was engaged initially as a Graduate Apprentice, which meant that I spent
about 3 months at a time in different departments to enable me (and management,
I suppose) to determine where I might fit best.
One of those periods was in the computing department of which Winifred Hackett
was the head.
I learned how to use the mechanical calculators (Friden and Marchant come to
mind) and it was while there that I heard about DEUCE.
They even had a manual that described how to programme it and I knew that I had
found my place. This would be sometime about 1957.
I decided that was where I wanted to be and so officially joined the
department, working under John O'Brien.
"My immediate boss then was Ron Stokes who had some DEUCE experience but I
don't remember where." (Peter Stanley)
Deuce Maintenace Engineer
"My wife also worked at
"After a preliminary venture on the prototype Ferranti Pegasus computer,
he turned his attention in January 1956 to the English Electric DEUCE computer
which had been installed at the National Physical Laboratory. Very quickly he
produced a string of programmes for complex crystallographic
calculations." ( Durward Cruickshank)
I still remember the operators phone number, it was (obviously?) 248.
Head of Maths Services Department
Chief Programmer
Primarily responsible for the development of TIP
Programmer
He was one of the most amusing and positive people I have ever met and a great
inspiration and help to me. (Brian HUNT)
Mike Oakes , Wendy Breward (Higby) and me as trainee operators.
Heather Francombe - Punch Room Supervisor
Jenny Wilson (Reason) - Punch Room
Bob Sinclair - Programmer and later to be our very popular boss as
operations manager.
Eric Griffiths - Ex Ansty (Near Coventry) - Operations Manager
Joyce Fey - Some programming and operating as I remember
Liz Hand (Ball) - Operator
Jeanette Grant (Forgotten her married name) - Programmer and Operator
Mike Warke - Operator - who you already have listed.
Bob Griffin - Operator
Those plug boards were a nightmare as I remember. I was only young then however
and easily impressed.
Deuce Operator
I never saw DEUCE or knew where the DEUCE room was!" (Cliff Elliott)
"Though he was Head of Electronics, he was never personally involved with
DEUCE, other than giving us his blessing, approving expenditure, and conducting
VIPs into the room to gawp on their tour of the site facilities." (Steve
Allcock)
"Tom was recruited by Bill Coulshed and had as his mission, bringing the
benefits of automation to English Electric. Tom later introduced numerically
controlled machine tools to the factory at
"John was one of life's great gentlemen, as well as being a first class
mathematician." (Peter Dukes)
I was at Warton in the period 1957-1963. English Electric had three principal
technical groups using the DEUCE, -- Mathematical Services, Aerodynamics and
Stress Analysis. I was in the first and David (Booker) was in the second.
However, I think we would both agree that when it came to pushing out the
envelope, the Stress Office were at the forefront of the application of matrix
methods and the early finite element developments.
DEUCE Recollections - BAC Warton - 1962-63
"Was doing good work at Warton before he joined Argyris at
Probably did some of the first structural optimisation FE analysis (Lightning
Fin) by computer in the world, and that was on the DEUCE. (Peter Dukes)
John recalls his early days of programming, before BAC Warton had their own
Deuce, when a few minutes "hands on" use of the computer at NRL was
very precious.
Read John's memoirs "DEUCE to KDF9 at BAC
Warton"
"One of the team, Dick Young, was a keen musician and talked of entering
an international competition for computer music to be run in
We still used the Deuce for some problems. I remember in particular running the
Resisting Moment program on Deuce to calculate the failure bending moments for
the Concorde fuselage. This must have been one on the last uses made of the
Deuce.
I greatly enjoyed working for Ian Taig, who was so encouraging to his stress
team. I left in 1967, following in the path of Sydney Kelsey, to work at
Imperial under Argyris."
Programmer in Aerodynamics department who married Josephine LLOYD
"Phil Roberts was a very important person at Warton, being the expert on
Scheme B. He was located in Stress Office, not directly with John McDonnell."
(Steve Allcock)
I started in Maths Services in July 1961, was a programmer initially on the
Deuces for 4 years then became a programmer for the IBM 7090 in
Will be in touch further when I've reloaded my memory file!!
Our DEUCE had a small toggle switch. When you looked this up in the users guide
it said "Switch for alarm bell" For use by dormant Operators at
Wharton. If this bell was set, a very loud alarm would ring if the computer
stopped for any reason, waking us from our slumbers. As far as we know, it was
only available on the DEUCE at Wharton.
My maiden name was Mary Jones and I joined Maths Services at Warton straight
from
Just after I joined there were seven people in the group. I was there for seven
years.
It was headed by John McDonnell. I joined Dick Keyser, Roy Smith, Jim
Cruickshank , Bob Galloway and I think the final person was
Joyce ?
I regret to say that at the moment I cannot recall her last name. I have
enjoyed reading the articles on the site. It has taken me back down memory
lane. When I have time I may be able to put a few notes together myself and
send them to you. [Mary Morris nee Jones]
"Handled the output." (Steve Allcock)
Gordon PITT --- Alan JENNINGS --- Eddie GREEN --- Colin BARKER --- Barry (Bas)
DRUMMOND
Ronald GRAHAM --- David BECK --- Peter LEAKEY --- Oliver WHITAKER --- Barry
O'NEILL
Brian WARDMAN --- Philip BRIGHTLING --- David COPSON --- Bill COLES --- Philip
COATES --- Ron THOMAS --- Gordon SUMNER Richard KEYSER --- James MALLOCH
DEUCE Maintenance Engineer BAC Warton 1961-1964.
"I was recommended to check with the maintenance engineer, each time I
wanted to do a three hour matrix manipulation job, whether he thought the
machine would run for that length of time! " (Peter Dukes)
"Jo was a
" Strayed on the site whilst reminiscing about the 50's Deuce room which I
worked on from time to time and was amazed to recall names I had forgotten. I
was there from leaving school in 1957 till around 1965."
Pauline DENNETT --- Mike FLEMING --- Sylvia HALSALL --- Margaret HARDMAN ---
Una McLAUGHLIN nee HORAN
Sylvia MILLER nee HOTHERSALL--- Shirley JACKSON --- Mike MALLINDER ---
Margaret SMITH nee MATTHEWS--- Margaret DOWNER nee MIDGLEY--- Nancy MARSHALL
nee BOULTON
Brian PETRIE --- Barbara PILKINGTON --- Valerie ROOCROFT --- Leslie HOLDEN nee
WITTAKER --- Dorothy BLACKWELL
June CHAMBERS --- Sheila BRADLEY
I worked as a programmer on DEUCE at British Aircraft (or whatever it's called
now) at Filton,
From 1958 to 1965 I worked as a programmer in Mathematical Services Dept of BAC
Filton,
I worked on DEUCE between 1960 and 1966 although most of my time at Filton was
taken up as Head of the Analogue Computing Group. I have fond memories of my
time wrestling with DEUCE machine code. It was like being paid to do difficult
crosswords. After leaving BAC I worked for computer companies before finishing
up in the flight simulation industry.
My knowledge of ALGOL 60, gained at the BAC, was a solid foundation for my work
on SIMULA which is generally credited with being the first of the breed of object-oriented
programming languages.
His claim to fame was his initials, DCW, which are, of course, the three
central fields of the instruction word.
His wife also worked there, but I can't recall her first name. [Peter Groves]
John HAINES --- John BELL --- Mike DAVIS
EE DEUCE Maintenance Engineer BAC Filton
EE DEUCE Maintenance Engineer
There is one omission that I spot and that is ME: Alan Gray [not to be confused
with Reg Gray whom I knew].
You have a photo of the August 1958 Deuce course. I attended mine in September
1958 and in due course ended up with John K at BAE Filton.
DEUCE Maintenance Engineer
He worked at CEGB Deuce and was on my Deuce course (Noel Wesson)
"Director of Research at Great
Baddow - later Sir Eric Eastwood and President of the IEE." (Bernard de
Neumann)
"Led the Mathematics Group,
went on to become Prof of Electrical Engineering at
"Led the Programming Section
under Peter Brandon." (Bernard de Neumann)
"Led the the Mathematical
Physics and Circuitry Section under Peter Brandon." (Bernard de Neumann)
"Dr Doug Shinn was a Radio Astronomer from
(Bernard de Neumann)
When I joined Marconi in 1961 there was a Mathematics Group led by Peter
Brandon.
I was in Josef Skwirzynski's section as a mathematician. I used to design and
program algorithms for evaluating special mathematical functions, and also
wrote programs to evaluate multichannel telephone systems, antennas, and
electrical filters.
"Marjorie worked on the DEUCE at English Electric House on the
" Ed worked on antenna and circuitry software and developed general
tools." (Bernard de Neumann)
"Denis wrote musical and games software for the DEUCE that was brought out
at Xmas time. Usually involved in 3D analysis software." (Bernard de
Neumann)
After graduating in general science, he began his working life programming the
English Electric DEUCE computer for Marconi Ltd. There he researched in radar
propagation and various defence systems as well as computing.
From http://www.health-informatics.org/ but since removed.
Worked under NH on finite element techniques (Bernard de Neumann)
Ted did a lot of work on inventory control and auto-stock ordering. His first
program, which had been 'thoroughly' tested and was in live service, ordered
100 times as many transistors as were necessary. At the time a very expensive
mistake. (Bernard de Neumann)
I have been looking at your Deuce People page. I have very fond memories of the
Deuce. I worked at Marconi at Great Baddow,
It was my first experience of programming (and operating) a real computer. It
was great to go into the machine room to watch your program running, or step it
through to debug it.
I worked in a room with three women graduates. I've forgotten their names,
except one of them was called Judy. We had to clock in and out using a machine
that punched your card. Our section was headed up by a man called Neville, I
think.
During my time at Baddow, a KDF9 was installed there, running something new
called an Operating System. This was POST. I remember attending a talk
introducing us to the concept of an Operating System. I got to write programs
in Algol 60 for the KDF9.
Thank you for the website. It brought back happy memories.
Roger OBRAY --- Ken BROWN --- David
WARDEN --- Alan BOYCE --- Mabel CLARKE --- John THACKERAY
Digby WORTHY --- Fred McKEE --- Brian
WESTCOTT --- Judy ???
I worked on the Deuce first as a part time operator and then became full time,
the names mentioned brought back a lot of memories and jogged it a little.
I started about 1962 and was there until it was replaced by the KDF 9, when I
then became an engineer and worked on the tape stations.
I got to know most of the people associated with the department very well, I
considered many of them as good friends and it was good to see that my fellow
operator John Cooper has added a piece to the site.
I enjoyed my time on the Deuce very much and it set me on the way to a long
career in computing, for on leaving Marconi I joined Kode Ltd, the Company that
supplied the card machines and paper tape punches for the research computers.
I also ended up marrying the Yvonne Solly, also mentioned in the article, she
was the punch room supervisor.
When I think of the size of the Deuce with all the valves and mercury delay
lines for memory, you come to realise how far we have come, the mind boggles
but I was very proud to have worked on Deuce and to have met the people
mentioned associated with it.
I have since been long retired and now live in West Wales with Yvonne but on my
regular returns to
Chief DEUCE Maintenance Engineer 
On
right
DEUCE Maintenance Engineer On
left
(1) An option to store the penultimate instruction in the output staticisor.
(visible on the control panel)
(2) An option to split the cathode ray screen display into instruction oriented
groups.
I ended up marrying Yvonne Solly, she was the Punch Room Supervisor. (Doug
Fawcett)
Head Punch Girl and IC Tabulator Room (Bernard de Neumann)
Chief English Electric DEUCE Maintenance Engineer
English Electric DEUCE Maintenance Engineer
English Electric DEUCE Maintenance Engineer - [ WWW ]
Operator MAFF
Which has photos of Nelson Research Labs where the early DEUCE were built and tested.
(Robin Vowels)
"The only room in the place with aircon! Warm in winter - so very popular
for winter practicals. Long DLs ran at 44.7C; if the power went off, the first
job was to wrap them in blankets, no matter what the season."
(David Leigh)
(Sam Valentine)
(The Deuce) came from
The only room in the place with aircon! Warm in winter - so very popular for
winter practicals. Long DLs ran at 44.7C; if the power went off, the first job
was to wrap them in blankets, no matter what the season.
As I look to my left, I can see two trays of DEUCE cards, and over two dozen
manuals (DEUCE News, programme documents, subroutine documents, and "How
to build a DEUCE" documents), among others. [I kept hold of quite a few
items when we "retired" the machine.] behind me I have a (short)
delay line, with some associated electronics. Others got the front panel, the
drum, and so on. Damn it."
They had just taken delivery of an English Electric System 4, which was an IBM
360 lookalike. The DEUCE was still in use, however, and I did use it for the
teaching of Alphacode programming to first-year students.
It was a bit odd for me to be using a first-generation machine after four
years' experience of more modern machines, ( ICT 1301, ICT 1500, FP6000 and IBM
360) but Alphacode was easy enough to use."
(Extract from a letter to Jeremy Walker in the mid-80s )
Will put together a more detailed chat at some point
(Peter Johnson)
KENSINGTON - NEW SOUTH WALES -
Lecturer in Electrical Engineering (Machine operation and supervision) 
(Robin Vowels)
Lecturer in Electrical Engineering (Programming)
Team Leader - ( Trevor
Pearcey )
Senior Programmer - ( Trevor
Pearcey )
Extract from 'An Oral History Interview with Gordon Bell - April 1995' - Full
text available here .
RC Brigham and CG Bell
New South Wales University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Most computer in operation today have supplementary programs which do automatic
coding or program assembling. These programs either translate, automatically
code, or interpret pseudo instructions which in themselves may cause the
enaction of hundreds of actual machine instructions. The outstanding feature of
such routines is that programming time and effort is cut to a minimum. This
paper deals generally with translation and interpretive schemes, and
specifically with a suitable translation routing for use with the DEUCE
computer. The translation program is called SODA, or Symbolic Optimum Deuce
Assembly Program. - Full text available here
"After graduating from
Extract from 'Leading Edge' A.C.S. SA Branch News Nov/Dec 2000
Lecturer and Professor in the
( GE neral OR der GE nerator) by May 1957. This compiler
became important in the teaching of programing to students and staff, and was
used in preference to the English Electric Alphacode scheme."
(Robin Vowels)
"from
John Webster was employed initially as trainee programmer from about the
beginning of 1961. However, he also became interested in and was involved in
the maintanance (mainly logic) of UTECOM. As a programmer, he was par
excellence, and his command of DEUCE logic and circuit diagrams was
outstanding.
(Robin Vowels)
Technical Officer UTECOM Machine Maintenance
Technical Officer UTECOM Machine Maintenance 
Technical Officers UTECOM Machine Maintenance
"After Ron Smart left at the beginning of 1961, the late Les Hill was
(acting?) director until 1966." (Robin Vowels)
Brian was UTECOM's scientific programmer, wrote any programs for (paying)
outside users requiring mathematical expertise.
(Robin Vowels)
John worked for a short time as programmer in about 1964. He picked up machine
code with ease.
In one program where time was not critical, he dispensed with optimum coding,
and coded instructions sequentially in consecutive minor cycles in delay
lines.(Robin Vowels)
Jean wrote programs occasionally, and did card punching for programmers.(Robin
Vowels)
Gay ran the Anderson Analysis, a long-running machine-language program for
analysis of TV viewing habits.
This program was run after hours one night each week. At other times, she was
secretary.(Robin Vowels)
"While I did not know Alan Turing, I may be one of the select few here who
used a computer designed by him. In the late 50's, I had the pleasure of using
a mercury delay-line computer (English Electric Deuce Mark II) based on
Turing's original design of ACE."
( To Dream The Possible Dream
)
"The Computing Laboratory set up in the University by Dr, later Professor,
Dennis Gilles was home to the first university computer in
Maths Post-graduate Student
DEUCE Maintenance Engineer
DEUCE Maintenance Engineer
DEUCE Maintenance Engineer
Deuce - Happy Days - Happy Memories
DEUCE Maintenance Engineer - (While I was at Kidsgrove my surname was Smith. I
changed it to Fraser - Old Scottish roots - in 64/65
I joined English Electric back in the early 60's, and after a year or so in
Kidsgrove, was posted to
However, I did know my flip-flops, and Arthur was pretty happy with my
results..
"Bob McCall installed that machine and spent a
year or two there." (Jeremy Walker)
Kåre Steira did the DEUCE training course with me at Kidsgrove in 1962. (Robin
Vowels)
I knew Kåre well. He was the only engineer on site when I shipped in to
"I commissioned the Capenhurst Atomic Energy one with Frank Thompson and
the acceptance tests were dragging on and on because one hole in one card in a
huge pack was sometimes missing, always the same hole in same card.
Jeremy breezes in one day in his "Northern Service Manager" capacity
and having listened to our tale of woe asked "Is the Hollerith earth
seperated from the main earth". "Of course it is" snarls Frank,
where upon Jeremy stands on a box and snips a wire in the roof, whereupon all
tests ran OK and Frank went home, leaving me to look after it until their
engineer finished his course."
"I worked on a Deuce in the summer of 1966 as a student: the site was the
UKAEA uranium hexafluoride processing plant at Capenhurst, near
"Developed the paper tape version of STAC and rewrote the analysis phase
of STAC. Their DEUCE Mark I had paper tape input and output peripherals, and
also ran time-sharing programs" - ( Robin Vowels )
Worked on the DEUCE in the early sixties, before he emigrated to
He worked on the National Engineering Laboratory DEUCE in
DEUCE Maintenance Engineer
One name I remember on my course was Dennis Bloor. (John Kelleher)
To email me click the image below.
ADLER - Mike - Marconi Ltd -
ALBOROUGH - Rosemary - RAE Farnborough -
ALLCOCK - Barbara - BAC Warton -
ALLCOCK - Steve - BAC Warton - [EA]
ALLMARK - Reg - EE NRL Stafford -
ALLWOOD - Roger - EE Kidsgrove -
AMERA - SINGHE - U J - EE Kidsgrove -
ASBURY - Alan - EE Kidsgrove -
ASHBROOK - R - EE Kidsgrove -
ATKINSON - Cyril - EE Whetstone -
BAILEY - Arthur - EE Kidsgrove -
BAKER - Joan - RAE Farnborough -
BAKER - Richard - RAE Farnborough -
BALLS - Linda - Marconi Ltd -
BAMBER - Marie - BAC Warton -
Barbara - ??? - Marconi Ltd -
BARKER - Colin - BAC Warton -
BARRETT - John - About the Author - [EA]
BARRETT - John - MAFF Guildford - [EA]
BARRETT - John - RAE Farnborough - [EA]
BARRITT - Marjorie M - RAE Farnborough -
BATEY - Maurice - EE Whetstone - [EA]
BECK - David - BAC Warton -
BECKETT - Bill - EE Kidsgrove -
BEEDON - Al - BAC Warton -
BELL - Gordon - UTECOM - Sydney - [EA]
BELL - John - BAC Filton -
BELL - Rodney - UTECOM - Sydney -
BENSTEAD - Peter - Central Electricity Generating Board -
BENTALL - Sid - Marconi Ltd -
BERRIDGE - Pete - EE Whetstone -
BERRY - Hilda - BAC Warton -
BETTS - Arthur - RAE Farnborough -
BIGGINS - S - EE Kidsgrove -
BIRCHALL - Paul - RAE Farnborough -
BIRCHMORE - Audrey - EE Marconi House London -
BIRD - Roger - EE Stevenage -
BISHOP - John - Mobile Unit South -
BISPHAM - Brian - EE Kidsgrove -
BLACKWELL - Dennis - EE NRL Stafford -
BLACKWELL - Dorothy - BAC Warton -
BLAKE - Julian - - [EA]
BLANCH - Lawrence - -
BLOOR - Dennis - EE Kidsgrove -
BLOOR - K - EE Kidsgrove -
BOND - Diana "Dinks" - BAC Filton -
BOND - Dick - EE Luton -
BOOKER - David - BAC Warton - [EA]
BOOTHROYD - John - EE NRL Stafford -
BOSTON - Dennis - Bristol Siddeley Engines -
BOULTON - Nancy - BAC Warton -
BOURNE - Clinton - North Staffs Poly -
BOXALL - Di - RAE Farnborough -
BOYCE - Alan - Marconi Ltd -
BRADLEY - Ron - BAC Warton -
BRADLEY - Sheila - BAC Warton -
BRADLEY - Sheila - BAC Warton -
BRADSHAW - Peter - NPL - [EA]
BRANDON - Peter - Marconi Ltd -
BRAY - Lilian - EE Marconi House London -
BREWARD - Wendy - Bristol Siddeley Engines -
BRIGGS - Ron - Mobile Unit South -
BRIGHAM - Bob - UTECOM - Sydney - [EA]
BRIGHTLING - Philip - BAC Warton -
BROCKINGTON - Denis - Marconi Ltd -
BROWN - David - North Staffs Poly - [EA]
BROWN - J. K. - EE NRL Stafford -
BROWN - Ken - Marconi Ltd -
BROYDEN - Charles - EE Whetstone - [EA]
BRUFFELL - Peter - MAFF Guildford - [EA]
BRUNT - Alex - EE Kidsgrove -
BUNNEY - Peter - RAE Farnborough -
BURDEN - Dickie - Bristol Siddeley Engines -
BURNETT-HALL - David - RAE Farnborough -
BURROWS - Richard - EE Kidsgrove -
BUTLER - Tom - EE NRL Stafford - [EA]
BYTHEWAY - Andy - North Staffs Poly - [EA]
CALVERT - Len - EE Kidsgrove -
CAMPBELL - John - - [EA]
CAREY - Margot - BAC Warton - [EA]
Carol - ??? - Marconi Ltd -
CARRE - Bernard - EE NRL Stafford -
CHAMBERS - June - BAC Warton -
CHAPMAN - Melvyn - North Staffs Poly - [EA]
CHAPMAN - Rosemarie - RAE Farnborough -
CHARLESWORTH - Neil - EE Kidsgrove - [EA]
CHRISTOPHER - Elizabeth - EE Kidsgrove -
CLAPHAM - Margot - BAC Warton - [EA]
CLARKE - Mabel - Marconi Ltd -
COATES - Philip - BAC Warton -
COCKLE - Ted - Marconi Ltd -
CODY - Paul - RAE Farnborough -
COLCLOUGH - Fay - EE NRL Stafford -
COLDHAM - Vic - EE Kidsgrove -
COLE - Jenny - EE NRL Stafford -
COLES - Bill - BAC Warton -
COLLIER - Roger - BAC Filton - [EA]
COLLING - Brian - EE Kidsgrove -
COLLINS - Bob - Mobile Unit South -
COOKES - Tony - BAC Filton - [EA]
COOPER - John - Marconi Ltd - [EA]
COPSON - David - BAC Warton -
CORK - George - RAE Farnborough -
COULSHED - Bill - BAC Warton -
CRUICKSHANK - Jim - BAC Warton -
DAIN - Julia - Marconi Ltd - [EA]
DAVIES - Fred - BAC Warton -
DAVIS - George - EE NRL Stafford - [EA]
DAVIS - Mike - BAC Filton -
DAY - Ken - EE Kidsgrove -
de BOURCIER - Enid - RAE Farnborough - [EA]
de NEUMANN - Bernard - Marconi Ltd - [EA]
DENDLE - Maurice - EE Whetstone - [EA]
DENISON - John - EE NRL Stafford -
DENN - Muriel - BAC Warton -
DENNETT - Pauline - BAC Warton -
DICK - Ian - University of Glasgow -
DIPROSE - Kenneth - RAE Farnborough -
DOBSON - Eric - EE Kidsgrove -
DOCHERTY - Peter - EE Marconi House London -
DODD - Ken - RAE Farnborough -
DONOHOE - Neil - EE NRL Stafford -
DOWELL - Norman - EE Kidsgrove -
DREW - Mike - EE NRL Stafford - [EA]
DRUMMOND - Barry - BAC Warton -
DUDLEY - Rob - EE Whetstone -
DUERDEN - Tom - BAC Warton -
DUKES - Peter - BAC Warton - [EA]
DUNCAN - Fraser - EE Kidsgrove -
DUNLOP - Ed - Marconi Ltd -
EDWARDS - Jim - EE Kidsgrove -
EDWARDS - Lyn - BAC Filton / OSLO -
EITEL - Ron - EE Marconi House London -
ELKIN - Stan - EE Kidsgrove -
ELLIOT - Tom - EE Kidsgrove -
ELLIOTT - David - UTECOM - Sydney -
ELLIOTT - Susan - EE Kidsgrove - [EA]
ELLIS - Eileen - BAC Filton -
ELLIS - Gay - UTECOM - Sydney -
ELLIS - Pat - Bristol Siddeley Engines -
ELLISON - John - BAC Filton -
ELLISON - Ray - EE NRL Stafford -
EVANS - Phyllis - EE Luton -
FARMAN - Joan - EE Luton / Stevenage -
FARTHING - Rosalind - Marconi Ltd -
FASEY - Mike - BAC Filton -
FAWCETT - Doug - Marconi Ltd - [EA]
FEY - Joyce - Bristol Siddeley Engines -
FISHER - Jim - EE Luton / Stevenage - [EA]
FINEBERG - Harold - EE Luton - [EA]
FLEMING - Mike - BAC Warton -
FLETCHER - Jim - Bristol Siddeley Engines - [EA]
FLOWER - Doug - EE Marconi House London - [EA]
FORD - David - EE Marconi House London -
FORD - Fred - EE Whetstone -
FORD - Jennifer - EE Marconi House London -
FORD - Keith - UTECOM - Sydney -
FORRESTER - Richard - EE Marconi House London - [EA]
FOSTER - Margaret - UTECOM - Sydney -
FOWLER - David - RAE Farnborough - [EA]
FRANCOMBE - Heather - Bristol Siddeley Engines -
Frank - ??? - EE NRL Stafford -
FRANKS - Peter - BAC Filton -
FRASER - Gerry - Central Bureau of Statistics - Oslo - [EA]
FUDGE - Jane - -
GALLOWAY - Bob - BAC Warton -
GALPIN - Daphne - Marconi Ltd -
GALVIN - Joseph - EE NRL Stafford -
GASKIN - G - UTECOM - Sydney -
GEARING - Gus - RAE Farnborough -
GENT - Ron - EE Whetstone -
GIBBONS - David - EE Luton -
GILL - Don - Marconi Ltd -
GILLES - Dennis - University of Glasgow -
GILLOTT - Bill - EE NRL Stafford -
GILMOUR - Allan - EE NRL Stafford -
GLASS - G - EE Kidsgrove -
GOLDEN - Armand - UTECOM - Sydney -
GOODBODY - Tony - EE Marconi House London -
GRAHAM - Ronald - BAC Warton -
GRANT - Jeanette - Bristol Siddeley Engines -
GRAY - Alan - BAC Filton - [EA]
GRAY - Reg - EE Kidsgrove -
GREALISH - Rod - North Staffs Poly - [EA]
GREEN - David - EE Kidsgrove - [EA]
GREEN - Eddie - BAC Warton -
GREEN - Ronald - BAC Warton -
GREENHALG - Danny - Liverpool University -
GRIFFIN - Bob - Bristol Siddeley Engines -
GRIFFITH - Joan - RAE Farnborough -
GRIFFITHS - Eric - Bristol Siddeley Engines -
GRINDAL - Ola - Central Bureau of Statistics - Oslo -
GROVES - Peter - BAC Filton - [EA]
HAGERTY - Bob - EE Whetstone -
HAHN - John - BAC Filton -
HAINES - John - BAC Filton -
HALEY - Colin - EE Kidsgrove -
HALLIDAY - John - BAC Warton - [EA]
HALSALL - Sylvia - BAC Warton -
HAMBLIN - Charles - UTECOM - Sydney -
HANCOCK - Tony - EE Kidsgrove -
HAND - Liz - Bristol Siddeley Engines -
HARDING - Roy - EE Kidsgrove -
HARDMAN - Margaret - BAC Warton -
HARVEY - Roy - RAE Farnborough -
HATLEY - Ruth - EE Marconi House London -
HAWKE - M J - EE Kidsgrove -
HAWKINS - Neville - EE NRL Stafford -
HEMMING - Paul - Bristol Siddeley Engines - [EA]
HERBERT - John - EE Kidsgrove -
HETHERINGTON - Ron - North Staffs Poly - [EA]
HIGBY - Wendy - Bristol Siddeley Engines -
HILL - Les - UTECOM - Sydney -
HOCKNEY - Roger - EE Whetstone -
HOLE - Bill - RAE Farnborough -
HOLLAND - P B - EE Kidsgrove -
HOLLINGDALE - Stuart - RAE Farnborough -
HOLLINS - Dennis - EE Kidsgrove -
HOLMAN - David - EE Whetstone -
HOLT - Seth - EE Whetstone - [EA]
HORAN - Una - BAC Warton -
HORSLEY - Alf - EE Whetstone -
HORTON - John - EE Kidsgrove -
HOTHERSALL - Sylvia - BAC Warton -
HOUSTON - Iain - -
HUDSON - C - EE Kidsgrove -
HUGHES - Stella - RAE Farnborough -
HUGHES - Terry - BAC Warton -
HULL - Dudley - Marconi Ltd -
HUNT - Brian - Bristol Siddeley Engines -[EA]
HUTLEY - Norman - Marconi Ltd -
HUXTABLE - David - EE Kidsgrove -
IDDON - Jack - EE Kidsgrove - [EA]
IRELAND - Ralph E - EE Whetstone - [EA]
IRVINE - Robin - EE Kidsgrove - [EA]
JACOBS - Eric - EE NRL Stafford -
JEAYS - Mike - EE Whetstone - [EA]
JENKINS - David - EE NRL Stafford -
JENKINS - Gwilym - RAE Farnborough -
JENNINGS - Alan - BAC Warton -
Jenny - ??? - Marconi Ltd -
JENSSEN - Dick - UTECOM - Sydney -
JOHNSON - Angus - University of Glasgow -
JOHNSON - Peter - North Staffs Poly - [EA]
JONES - Alan - EE Whetstone -
JONES - Gordon - EE Kidsgrove -
JONES - Mary - BAC Warton - [EA]
JONES - Roger - EE NRL Stafford - [EA]
Joyce - ??? - BAC Warton -
Judy - ??? - Marconi Ltd -
JULLIEN - Graham - EE Kidsgrove - [EA]
KAROLY - George - UTECOM - Sydney -
KELLEHER - John - BAC Filton - [EA]
KELLY - Mike - EE Whetstone -
KELLY - Vivian - EE Luton -
KELSEY - Sydney - BAC Warton -
KEMSHELL - Peter - RAE Farnborough -
KERR - Ron - BAC Filton / OSLO - [EA]
KEYSER - Richard - BAC Warton -
KILTY - Paul - BAC Warton - [EA]
KINGSBURY - Mike - EE NRL Stafford -
KIRK - Alan - Liverpool University -
KNUTSEN - Odd - Central Bureau of Statistics - Oslo -
LANDIN - Peter - EE Marconi House London -
LANE - Dennis - Mobile Unit South -
LAVERTY - Chris - EE Kidsgrove -
LEAKEY - Peter - BAC Warton -
LEE - David - Marconi Ltd - [EA]
LEES - Jennifer - EE Marconi House London - [EA]
LE'GOODE - Michael - EE Luton -
LEIGH - David - EE NRL Stafford -
LEIGH - David - North Staffs Poly - [EA]
Leo - ??? - EE Luton -
LINDEN - Carl - RAE Farnborough -
LLEWELLYN - Tom - EE NRL Stafford -
LLEWELLYN - Tony - EE Marconi House London -
LLOYD - Josephine - BAC Warton -
LUCKING - Jim - EE NRL Stafford -
LUNN - Fred - EE Luton -
MACFARLANE - John - EE Kidsgrove -
MALLINDER - Mike - BAC Warton -
MALLOCH - James - BAC Warton -
MANSFIELD - Mike - North Staffs Poly - [EA]
MARCIANO - Fortunato - EE Kidsgrove -
MARSH - Janet - EE NRL Stafford -
MARSHALL - Nancy - BAC Warton -
MARVIN - Maurice - BAC Warton -
MATTHEWS - Margaret - BAC Warton -
MATTHEWS - Vic - EE Kidsgrove -
McCALL - Bob - Central Bureau of Statistics - Oslo -
McDONNELL - John - BAC Warton -
McFARLANE - R - EE Kidsgrove -
McHUGH - Brian - UTECOM - Sydney -
McINTOSH - Eric - EE Kidsgrove - [EA]
McKAY - Billy - Queens University Belfast -
McKEE - Fred - Marconi Ltd -
MENTJOX - John - UTECOM - Sydney -
MERRITT - Jack - EE Kidsgrove - [EA]
METZER - Kurt - EE Whetstone -
MIDGLEY - Margaret - BAC Warton -
MIEVELLE - Steve - Bristol Siddeley Engines -
MILLER - Brian - Bristol Siddeley Engines - [EA]
MILLS - Kathleen - RAE Farnborough - [EA]
MONTAGUE - Don - EE NRL Stafford -
MOONEY - Brian - Liverpool University -
MORRIS - Ray - EE Kidsgrove -
MORWOOD - Jim - EE Kidsgrove -
MOULD - Geoff - EE Kidsgrove - [EA]
MOULD - Pauline - EE Kidsgrove -
MOXHAM - Bill - BAC Warton - [EA]
MULLER-STOY - Peter - NPL - [EA]
MUNDAY - Brian - EE NRL Stafford -
MUSGROVE - Arthur - EE Luton -
NEAL - Trevor - EE Kidsgrove -
NELSON - Alan - UTECOM - Sydney -
NENSETH - Thin - Central Bureau of Statistics - Oslo - [EA]
NEWMAN - John - EE Kidsgrove -
NICHOLSON - Albert - EE NRL Stafford -
OATES - M - UTECOM - Sydney -
OBRAY - Roger - Marconi Ltd -
O'BRIEN - John - EE Luton -
OCCARDI - Val - Mobile Unit South -
ONEILL - Barry - BAC Warton -
OZANNE - David - EE NRL Stafford -
PALMER - Chris - RAE Farnborough - [EA]
PALMER - Drayton - Marconi Ltd -
PARK - Larry - UTECOM - Sydney -
PARKER - Phillip - EE Kidsgrove - [EA]
PARKES - L - UTECOM - Sydney -
PATTERSON - John - University of Glasgow - [EA]
PEACOCK - Alan - BAC Warton -
PEARCE - Heather - RAE Farnborough -
PEARSALL - Mr - RAE Farnborough -
PEDDER - D G - EE Kidsgrove -
PEDERSON - Ed - EE Kidsgrove -
Pete - ??? - EE NRL Stafford -
PETHERICK - Edward - RAE Farnborough -
PETRIE - Brian - BAC Warton -
PIGGOT - Ian - RAE Farnborough -
PILKINGTON - Barbara - BAC Warton -
PITT - Gordon - BAC Warton -
POLIKOFF - Mrs - EE Kidsgrove -
POOLE - Eddie - BAC Warton - [EA]
PORTEOUS - Janet - EE Marconi House London - [EA]
POWELL - Keith - EE Kidsgrove -
POWELL - Richard - Marconi Ltd - [EA]
PRICE - Vic - EE Marconi House London -
PRIESTLEY - Maurice - RAE Farnborough - [EA]
PRINCESS - Margaret - RAE Farnborough -
RANYELL - Derek - EE Kidsgrove - EE Stafford -
RAWKINS - Jackie - MAFF Guildford -
REDDY - Raj - UTECOM - Sydney - [EA]
REDFERN - Philip - RAE Farnborough -
REID - Bob - UTECOM - Sydney -
RHODES - Tony - BAC Filton -
RICHARDS - Eric - EE Whetstone -
RICHARDS - Jim - EE Kidsgrove -
RICHARDSON - Jack - EE Marconi House London -
RILEY - Tony - EE Whetstone - [EA]
ROBB - Jean - UTECOM - Sydney -
ROBERTS - John - UTECOM - Sydney -
ROBERTS - Philip - BAC Warton -
ROBINSON - Alex - MAFF Guildford -
ROBINSON - Cliff - EE NRL Stafford - [EA]
ROBINSON - David - BAC Filton -
ROBINSON - David - EE NRL Stafford -
ROBINSON - Mike - EE NRL Stafford -
ROLLETT - John - NPL -
ROOCROFT - Valerie - BAC Warton -
ROSCOE - Dave - UKAEA Capenhurst - [EA]
ROUTLEDGE - Norman - RAE Farnborough -
ROWE - Brian - EE NRL Stafford -
ROWLEY - Geoff - RAE Farnborough -
ROYLE - Derek - EE Kidsgrove -
RULE - P - EE Whetstone -
RUNCIMAN - Phil - EE Whetstone - [EA]
RUSHTON - Eileen - EE Kidsgrove -
RUSSELL - Lawford - EE Whetstone -
RYAN - John - EE Kidsgrove - [EA]
SALISBURY - Barbara - BAC Warton -
SAMET - Paul - RAE Farnborough - [EA]
SAVILLE - Arthur - Mobile Unit South -
SAVORY - Derek - EE Kidsgrove -
SCOTT - Wilf - EE NRL Stafford -
SCROGGIE - W - UTECOM - Sydney -
SEABROOK - Elizabeth - Marconi Ltd -
SHEFFIELD - Charles - EE Whetstone -
SHEFFIELD - Sarah - EE Whetstone -
SHELMERDINE - Malcolm - EE Kidsgrove -
SHINN - Doug - Marconi Ltd -
SINCLAIR - Bob - Bristol Siddeley Engines -
SKINNER - Janet - EE Marconi House London - [EA]
SKWIRZYNSKI - Josef - Marconi Ltd -
SMART - Ron - UTECOM - Sydney -
SMITH - David - EE Luton / Stevenage - [EA]
SMITH - Gerry - Central Bureau of Statistics - Oslo - [EA]
SMITH - Roger - EE NRL Stafford -
SMITH - Roy - BAC Warton -
SOLLY - Yvonne - Marconi Ltd - [EA]
SPRAGUE - Diana - Bristol Siddeley Engines -
STANLEY - Peter - EE Luton - [EA]
STEIRA - Kare - EE Kidsgrove -
STEWART - Karl - -
STOKES - H - EE Kidsgrove -
STOKES - Ron - EE Luton -
STOWER - Anne - EE Marconi House London -
STURGESS - Ernie - EE Whetstone -
SUMMERFIELD - Wally - EE Kidsgrove -
SUMNER - Gordon - BAC Warton -
SWAINSTON - Barry - BAC Filton - [EA]
TATTERSALL - Philip - BAC Warton -
TAYLOR - Richard - North Staffs Poly - [EA]
TEE - Garry - EE Whetstone - [EA]
THACKERAY - John - Marconi Ltd -
THIRLBY - Rob - EE Whetstone - [EA]
THOMAS - Eric - EE Kidsgrove -
THOMAS - Jean - EE Marconi House London -
THOMAS - Ron - BAC Warton -
THOMAS - Wyn - MAFF Guildford -
THOMPSON - Frank - EE Kidsgrove -
THOMSON - Anne - University of Glasgow -
THORNTON - Barry - UTECOM - Sydney -
THORPE - John - RAE Farnborough -
TILBURY - Alastair - DSIR East Kilbride -
TITMUSS - Keith - UTECOM - Sydney -
TODD - J. K. - EE Kidsgrove -
TODD - Mike - EE Kidsgrove - [EA]
Tom - ??? - EE Marconi House London -
TOMLINSON - Arthur - EE Kidsgrove -
TOOTILL - Geoff - RAE Farnborough -
VINCENT - Neville - Marconi Ltd -
VOWELS - Robin - UTECOM - Sydney - [EA]
WAKELY - Peter - EE Whetstone -
WALKER - Jeremy - EE Kidsgrove - [EA]
WALKER - John - EE Kidsgrove -
WALTER - Pat - RAE Farnborough - [EA]
WALTERS - Doug - EE Kidsgrove -
WARDELL - Geoff - Marconi Ltd -
WARDEN - David - Marconi Ltd -
WARDMAN - Brian - BAC Warton -
WARKE - Mike - Bristol Siddeley Engines -
WATT - Jim - RAE Farnborough -
WEATHERILL - Michael - North Staffs Poly -
WEBSTER - John - UTECOM - Sydney - [EA]
WESSON - Anne - University of Glasgow -
WESSON - Noel - University of Glasgow - [EA]
WESTCOTT - Brian - Marconi Ltd -
WETHERFIELD - Mike - EE NRL Stafford - [EA]
WHITAKER - Oliver - BAC Warton -
WHITE - Tony - University of Glasgow -
WHITTAKER - Leslie - BAC Warton -
WHITWORTH - Rod - EE NRL Stafford - [EA]
WICKS - David - BAC Filton -
WICKS (Mrs) - ? - BAC Filton -
WILLIAMS - David - RAE Farnborough -
WILLIAMS - Douglas - RAE Farnborough - [EA]
WILLIAMS - Douglas - University of Glasgow - [EA]
WILLIAMSON - George - North Staffs Poly -
WILLIAMSON - Mick - EE Whetstone -
WILSON - Jenny - Bristol Siddeley Engines -
WINTER - Ruth - RAE Farnborough -
WOODALL - Chris - EE Marconi House London -
WOOLGER - John - EE Marconi House London -
WOOLLETT - Mike - RAE Farnborough -
WORTH - Bill - EE Whetstone -
WORTHY - Digby - Marconi Ltd -
WRIGHT - John - MAFF Guildford -
WRIGHT - Peter - EE Kidsgrove -
YOULE - Eric - EE Luton / Stevenage - [EA]
YOUNG - Bill - RAE Farnborough -
YOUNG - Richard - BAC Warton -
Bristol Siddeley Engines
British Aircraft Corporation - Filton
British Aircraft Corporation - Warton
Central Bureau of Statistics - Oslo
Central Electricity Generating Board
English Electric - Kidsgrove
English Electric - Luton
English Electric - Marconi House - London
English Electric - Stafford
English Electric - Whetstone
English Electric DMSU-South - London
Glasgow University
Liverpool University
Marconi Ltd
Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries & Food
National Physical Laboratory
North Staffs Poly
Queens University
Royal Aircraft Establishment
The New South Wales University of Technology
UKAEA Capenhurst
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