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The year was 1963. The world had held its breath a year earlier with the Cuban missile crisis and the fear of a nuclear World War breaking out that weekend. I had more important things on my mind than the sudden destruction of the planet. After the shelter of student life at Queen's University, Belfast, United Kingdom, it was time to enter the working world.

I consulted the Guidance Counselor, who suggested that with an Honours degree in Pure Mathematics I had the mind set to become a "Computer Programmer". The Counselor helpfully gave me the title of a university library book about computers.

My knowledge of computers was limited to reading predictions that by 1990 every home would have a robot computer doing the housework. There had also been magazine articles since the 1950's warning readers that in just a few years computers could take over the world and enslave human beings, and suggesting that we should not proceed along this uncertain development path.

Technology at that time was such that only very large companies could afford computers, which were monsters built with vacuum tubes, and the size of several living rooms, with nowhere near the intelligence of a digital watch today. As for watches then, all were wind up; a few wealthy individuals had self winding watches, which worked without you having to do your own winding only if you waved your wrist around enough, such as cheering your team at a soccer game.

In other 1960's technology, radio, or the wireless as we called it in the United Kingdom, was slowly changing from vacuum tubes to transistors. Televisions were black and white with screens perhaps 17 inches. Television sets were so expensive that most houses did not have a set, and those who did, rented their set. TV rental stores were common place. A friend who had visited the United States came back talking about the wonder of seeing colour television there.

While every business had a phone, most homes did not. The waiting time to have a telephone installed in a UK home was 18 months. A new business had a waiting time of only (gasp!) 3 weeks. The British Post Offi ce, which had a monopoly on telephone service and which also dispensed television and radio licenses, old age pension and family allowance payments, was not inclined to rush when serving the public. There was one striking exception, mail delivery, which was faster than today, over 40 years later, with deliveries six days a week, and a morning and afternoon delivery in larger towns. There was even delivery on Christmas Day in all areas, and the postman had Boxing Day off.

Homes with telephones avoided long distance calls, which generally required operator assistance, and were frightfully expensive. People who needed to get an urgent message to someone far away sent a telegram (inland) or cable (overseas), and this was usually to advise of a death.

It was however customary to send a congratulatory telegram to a couple just before their wedding day if you could not attend the happy occasion because of distance, and reading of telegrams was a ritual part of the wedding reception.

There were the very few individuals with an excess of money and free time, who liked to send telegrams to the Prime Minister's offi ce on topics about which they felt strongly.

Meanwhile at Queen's, armed with knowledge poorly gained from reading one book, I sallied forth to my fi rst job interview. IBM was an American computer fi rm with a reputation for employees who were sharp dressers in suits and ties, and who were required to run, rather than walk. I was soon to discover this image was probably correct.

As I entered the interview room, the IBM man bounded round his desk, grabbed my hand, and snatched my overcoat which I was carrying over my arm. He started fi ring questions on computers, while I struggled to give him answers from the library book.

Everything went black.

I awoke to find myself standing on the sidewalk with my overcoat over my arm. Feelings of complete devastation and rejection engulfed me. I located my Arts student girlfriend and poured out the whole traumatic experience. She comforted me and said: "Surely all the companies can't be like IBM?". Her encouragement and the knowledge that for me the alternative to a professional career was a lifetime doing excruciatingly boring and hard manual work on my father's tiny farm, gave me a powerful incentive to arrange interviews with other companies.

To be continued...

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Chapter Two. The Sixties
Brian Best B.Sc.
2006

My student days in the late fifties and early sixties at Queen’s University, Belfast, United Kingdom, had a background of global concern and uncertainty. Britain was still in recovery mode although the Second World War had ended 15 years earlier; war memories would not go away. Events were referred to in everyday conversation as happening before, during, or after The War. Food rationing had persisted into the early fifties, and there had also been the Korean War. The atom bomb had forced Japan to surrender in 1945, but now the Russians, with whom the United States and the British Commonwealth had had an uneasy wartime partnership, had become our enemies, and Russia possessed nuclear weapons.

In 1957 the Russians, to everyone’s surprise, had put the first satellite into orbit; this was a country of advanced technology, an enemy to be feared.

Russia, or to use the correct term, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR, by all accounts would not hesitate to use their nuclear weapons, even if it meant that most of their own population would be wiped out in such a war. The Chinese had gone communist in 1949, but while they had a vast population they did not have the bomb. Also while the Chinese disliked the West, they also disliked the Russians only a little less. The Chinese were not an immediate concern to us.

In 1956 the world had gone through the Suez Canal crisis. The temporary imposition of petrol rationing and the issue of petrol coupons by the British government revived war time memories of the years in Britain when one could not buy a banana or an orange or any other fruit which had to be imported.

One push of this button, and a nuclear arsenal would be unleashed against the western world. On our team, we had American and British men each with a similar button. We didn’t know if the French, who were supposed to be on our team, had a button as they rarely told anyone what they were up to.

We worried that if the button operators or their masters got jittery, it was goodbye Earth in a matter of minutes. It didn’t really matter which side pushed their button first, as the opposite side would respond with their push as soon as the first side’s missiles appeared over the radar horizon. To wait until missiles appeared over a physical horizon would be too late.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, the Americans were digging bomb shelters in their back yards. Their actions fitted our image of Americans; in our minds they were mostly fabulously wealthy and could afford to extend their homes this way. Our thinking was coloured by their films, in which they also portrayed themselves as having won Two World Wars single handed, which niggled us, and by American tourists to the British Isles, dressed in brightly coloured clothes with huge cameras hanging from their necks. We pictured the American button being bigger and a brighter red than the British button, in keeping with our image of Americans.

The Americans’ good neighbours to the north were too busy with endless debates over the design of a new Canadian flag to build bomb shelters. The Canadians also had ongoing problems with one of their provinces called Québec to occupy their spare time when they were not designing flags. There seemed to be what in my Mathematics courses was called a correlation, between residents of Québec and flag design, as Quebeckers had their own ideas about what should, or perhaps more importantly, what should not, go on a new Canadian flag.

I learned that a Russian had been invited to speak to students at Queens. The Hungarian Revolution had taken place just several years earlier in 1956. As students we all knew what the Russians had done to the Hungarians, and why there were Hungarian refugees in the United Kingdom, and we did not like Russians one bit. Here was an unexpected opportunity to voice our feelings directly to a Russian, who would no doubt convey the feelings of students in Queens to his masters in Moscow.

At the meeting I saw on the platform an important looking foreign gentleman, perhaps a diplomat from the Russian Embassy in London. After an introduction by the student chairman, and a short talk by the visitor, the chairman invited questions. A student asked an aggressive and hostile question related to Hungary. The Russian glared round the room at us, and declared that should there be military action by the West, Russia would not be calling a meeting of the United Nations to ask why Moscow had been bombed.

He did not say what action his government would take instead; we did not need to ask.

The room went very quiet. The chairman asked if there were more questions.There were no more questions.

That was the only time, to my knowledge, that a Russian was invited to speak to students at Queens during the time I was a student, at the height of the Cold War.

To be continued...

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