From Punch Cards to AI

Mainframe / Dumb Terminal:

I'd never seen a computer before until that day in March 1977 when I was shown around the computer room at Evode Ltd. in Stafford as part of my interview hopefully to become a Trainee Computer Operator.

It was awe inspiring, and very loud! Tape decks whirring around, a punch card reader fighting its way through a large stack, a line printer churing out reams of listing paper and what seemed like curling stones whizzing around (they were later explained as being EDS 60 disk drives).

A bloke sitting at a teleprinter controlling it all, seemingly knowing what he was doing.

Then there was the processor. An ICL 1902A. It had 64k of memory. Yes, I said 64k!!! Not Gigabytes, Terabytes, but only 64k! Yet it provided the computing power to service a £multi-million business. This was the mainframe computer. Connected to it via a local area network of wiring were dozens of visual display units around the offices at which orders were taken, accounts processed etc. etc. etc.

I got the job and became one of the blokes sitting at the teleprinter and loading 2400" tapes, stacking punch cards, putting listing paper in the printer and loading curling stones.

My first experience of mainframe / dumb terminal computing. The mainframe did all the work, the visual display units doing nothing other than providing the means to display screens and act as an entry tool for data to be input. Hence, "dumb" terminals.

Client-Server:

After 18 months or so, I was retrained as a Cobol Programmer, exchanging the computer room and working shifts for coding sheets and flowcharts.

I spent the next 10 or so years honing my coding skills, learning the art of systems analysis and dipping my feet into the power of project management.

I got on Norman Tebbit's bike (well a clapped out Ford Capri actually) and chased my ambitions to progress in what was still the mystical world of data processing (I don't recall it being called IT as yet). I moved from The Midlands to the Thames Valley to help me climb "the ladder" via changing employers several times. The choice in those days with my new skill sets were endless.

The technology was going through a major shift. Mainframes stil held there own in large corporations, but mid-range servers were coming along to service medium sized businesses. Equally important was the emergence of the PC.

Mid-range servers and departmental servers connected to PCs, that had there own computing power, led to the emergence of Client-Server computing. No longer was the main central processor doing all the work, it could now be distributed. and business departments could have their own unique requirements serviced more efficiently and individually. This was a major paradigm shift. the inreasing availability of off-the-shelf appications further assisted this change.

The date was now circa 1990, 13 years into my career.

Cloud Computing:

"There's something happening here, What it is ain't exactly clear" - Buffalo Spingfield.

The 90s zoomed along the client-server path, but as the lyric above, something else exciting was happening.

Fast forward to the early 2000s. The internet was getting established and becoming more and more accessible. After all the frustrations of the weird sounding dial-up modems, connectivity via fast broadband was emerging.

Then, vitualisation happened. Technology that enabled a single server to be split into several "virtual" servers, making the cost of "the tin" go much further.

Couple virtuaisation with fast broadband and you get cloud-computing. Providers could now offer computing power that is accessible over the internet and make it affordable to businesses and the public alike. Hosting now became a "thing".

Fast even further forward to circa 2012 and products like Microsoft 365 emerged (originally called Office 365), making world class applications available and accesible to everyone, not only those with the deepest pockets. Websites were now affordable and the norm for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Business Information Technology was going through its third major phase. With it has come the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, here are a few examples of each, I'm sure you will be able to add more to each category:

• The Good: Co-Working, Affordability, World-Class Apps , Home Working etc. (The last one is up for grabs).
• The Bad: International call centres! (My pet hate)
• The Ugly: Cyber Attacks, Online Scams.

In 2012 I jumped off the corporate IT greasy pole (or perhaps maybe I slipped off) and set up my own IT services business to help SMEs take advantage of these cloud-computing goodies. I also became a Microsoft Partner.

AI:

So here we are in 2026. And starting to dip our toes into the fourth of the major phases, AI.

The depoyment of AI agents by businesses is well underway and smarter working is being made available via products like Copilot. These are really only being deployed by the more forward thinking businesses willing to make the investment to date, but will, by necessity become the norm in the very near future.

Let's wait and see what else AI has to offer, it's moving at such pace that anything I write now may become quickly obsolete.

It's exciting and scarey rolled into one, I guess depending on whether you are a glass half full or glass half emplty sort of person.

I think I'll stick around in the IT world a bit longer, don't want to miss this one!