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Chronology

1966: It all started here:

 

After GCE’s are over I leave school, England win the World Cup, and Darlington FC are promoted to the Third Division of the Football League.

 

as I start my first job Georgie Fame (Get Away) and Chris Farlow (Out of Time) are topping the UK pop charts. Nearly every factory worker – and there were still plenty around in the UK – was paid weekly in cash as Barclays launch the UK’s first credit card.

 

  

1967:

 

Early in the year I hear a morning news broadcast on the radio that predicts "by 1970 there will be 5,000 more jobs in computers than people to fill them". In the job-scarce North-East of England this gave me much food for thought and is something which would have a major impact on my life.

BBC Radio 1 is launched, Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale gets to Number 1, the Beatles release Sgt. Pepper and Sandie Shaw, with Puppet on a String, wins Eurovision.

  

The first episode of “The Prisoner” is aired, Barclays open Britain’s first cashpoint and the QE2 is launched. More importantly I find Mod, and most everyone else finds flowers in their hair, kaftans and bells, it is the summer of love.

The work related bits

 

 

I think it was July 1966 when I started my first job, it's so long ago now that all the related paperwork is long gone, although no doubt the DHSS have the exact date recorded somewhere.

I became a civil servant, a Clerical Officer (CO) to be precise, working at the "Royal Navy Spare Parts Distribution Centre" (RNSPDC) in Eaglescliffe, County Durham. I was a servant of the crown working for Her Majesty's Ministry of Defence (Navy), also known as MOD Navy at the time.

Obviously I am not allowed to say anything about the secret and not so secret work I did at SPDC but I can confirm that as a CO I was earning the princely sum of 351 UK pounds per year, about 7 pounds a week......

 

......and that I worked in a section of 10 people, 8 of whom were women, and it was the best introduction to working life, and adulthood, that I could ever have wished.

One year after starting my first job I resigned my commission in the Senior Service and move to the woollen industry. This was a shock to my parents, "Why give-up a safe job like that to go into industry?”

 

To be honest I was bored with the job, too little to do, and that had become very repetitive. I also had a friend who worked "on the computers" at Patons and mentioned that they were looking for trainees.

 

 

 

 

 

It is my first step into Information Technology (IT), still known simply as "computers" in those early days, as a Data Processing Trainee.

 

I learn about IBM 029 Punch card machines, Tabulators, Kimball Tag machines and I code data for processing by the girls in the Punch Room, another great learning experience, especially the walks through the mill to pick-up raw data and deliver reports.

 

 

 

 

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