"Mary Pegg" wrote in message
...
bof wrote:

I have to confess that every time I've been ill in recent years I have
touched a toilet door handle in the previous 24hrs, just goes to show
eh?

OTOH I know some people who fall ill who *haven't* touched a toilet
door handle in the previous 24 hours.

How can anyone go for 24 hours without using the toilet? Oh - I suppose they
don't have to open or close a door, just walk in and out :-)

Mary

--
Something like: "ntlworld" "com" "dot" "at" "marypegg"

"Mary Fisher" typed

How can anyone go for 24 hours without using the toilet?

They have to. I know of a Local Authority that closed all its public
conveniences on Sundays...

--
Helen D. Vecht:
Edgware.

On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 22:15:56 +0100, "Mary Fisher"
wrote:


"Mary Pegg" wrote in message
...
bof wrote:

I have to confess that every time I've been ill in recent years I have
touched a toilet door handle in the previous 24hrs, just goes to show
eh?

OTOH I know some people who fall ill who *haven't* touched a toilet
door handle in the previous 24 hours.

How can anyone go for 24 hours without using the toilet? Oh - I suppose they
don't have to open or close a door, just walk in and out :-)

Exactly. If I'm at home I don't bother closing the door.
--
Hooray for the differently sane.

"Linz" wrote in message
...

I have to confess that every time I've been ill in recent years I have
touched a toilet door handle in the previous 24hrs, just goes to show
eh?

OTOH I know some people who fall ill who *haven't* touched a toilet
door handle in the previous 24 hours.

How can anyone go for 24 hours without using the toilet? Oh - I suppose
they
don't have to open or close a door, just walk in and out :-)

Exactly. If I'm at home I don't bother closing the door.

Nor do we, but I though we were a minority!

Mary
--
Hooray for the differently sane.

On Sun, 27 Aug 2006 07:24:47 +0100, Linz
wrote the following to uk.misc:

On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 22:15:56 +0100, "Mary Fisher"
wrote:


"Mary Pegg" wrote in message
...
bof wrote:

I have to confess that every time I've been ill in recent years I have
touched a toilet door handle in the previous 24hrs, just goes to show
eh?

OTOH I know some people who fall ill who *haven't* touched a toilet
door handle in the previous 24 hours.

How can anyone go for 24 hours without using the toilet? Oh - I suppose they
don't have to open or close a door, just walk in and out :-)

Exactly. If I'm at home I don't bother closing the door.

Probably best to make sure you can't see into the bathroom from the street
first though.

mh.
--
http://www.nukesoft.co.uk
http://personal.nukesoft.co.uk

From address is a blackhole. Reply-to address is valid.

"Marcus Houlden" wrote in message
...


Exactly. If I'm at home I don't bother closing the door.

Probably best to make sure you can't see into the bathroom from the street
first though.

What's the bathroom to do with it?

Mary

"Mary Fisher" wrote in message
. net...

"Marcus Houlden" wrote in message
...


Exactly. If I'm at home I don't bother closing the door.

Probably best to make sure you can't see into the bathroom from
the street
first though.

What's the bathroom to do with it?


OK, back yard gate then!...

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Helen Deborah Vecht
saying something like:

Guy King typed

Shrewsbury pool's got sensor
switches on their showers - can't get them to work either - and yet
other people around me have no trouble.

You're obviously not big enough...

Probably ugly enough, though.
--

Dave

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Richard Conway
saying something like:

I worked out that we had made quite a lot of money by not doing the lottery.

Surely you didn't *make* money?

Aberdonian Hotelier mode

"A penny saved is a penny earned, laddie."

rubs hands together
--

Dave

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "Christian McArdle"
saying something like:

This group definitely has a toilet fixation!

Talking about toilet fixation, I'm short of those bolt you connect toilets
to the floor with. Does anyone know a supplier? The alternative is to rely
solely on the silicone.

Squirty foam does it nicely.
--

Dave

"Owain" wrote in message
...
Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:
I worked out that we had made quite a lot of money by not doing the
lottery.
Surely you didn't *make* money?
Aberdonian Hotelier mode
"A penny saved is a penny earned, laddie."
rubs hands together

A penny saved is nearly twopence earned before tax.

Owain

Our income isn't enough to be taxable :-(

Not that it matters, it's still greater than our expenditure!

Mary

Costing the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars, Mary Fisher said:

How can anyone go for 24 hours without using the toilet? Oh - I suppose they
don't have to open or close a door, just walk in and out :-)

Used to play cards with a bloke who (he said) only did a **** once a
week. I assume he went for a **** a bit more often though.
--
2 pair is not the hand to die with in PLO in a multi-way pot on a
coordinated flop.

[steve1127 on rgp]

"Mary Fisher" typed


A penny saved is nearly twopence earned before tax.

Owain

Our income isn't enough to be taxable :-(

Mine is, but not at *that* rate...

Not that it matters, it's still greater than our expenditure!

As is mine. This apparently makes me 'financially naive'...

--
Helen D. Vecht:
Edgware.

"Helen Deborah Vecht" wrote in message
...
"Mary Fisher" typed


A penny saved is nearly twopence earned before tax.

Owain

Our income isn't enough to be taxable :-(

Mine is, but not at *that* rate...

Not that it matters, it's still greater than our expenditure!

As is mine. This apparently makes me 'financially naive'...

Or Micawber wise :-)

Mary

On 2006-08-25, Befunge Sudoku wrote:
In article , says...

I always thought the point of a dryer was to cut down the number of things
you have to touch.

And there are no consumables that need to be procured and fitted.

At one time, I believe, it was believed they were "green"er, but this subsequently
turned out not to be true.

That link [1] I originally posted was from an "ethical living"
column. In summary, it's hard to tell which is ecologically better
(trees vs. electricity) but it's known which is more hygienic and
which is preferred by the users.

A typical facility contains several toilets, three sinks and one
dryer. It takes much longer to dry your hands successfully using an
electric dryer than to wash them, so the people who furnish the room
know that the dryers are a joke and are basically saying "Screw you"
to the employees and customers who have to use them.


[1]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/consumer/s...730463,00.html

Brian Reay wrote:

Most went into the huge GEC / Weinstock empire, which was wrecked after he
retired. A large chunk (the defence business) was then sold to BAe, the
telecomms bit was left to almost disappear in a puff of bad management. I
think the Metro Cammell bit is still around making trains.

Yes (as Alstom), but not in the UK any more.

Chris
--
Chris J Dixon Nottingham UK


Have dancing shoes, will ceilidh.

Andy Hall wrote:

I've never seen these kinds of pressure flush anywhere else and was
intrigued, so had to look inside the cistern to see how it worked.

About 1964, on a school trip to Paris, I was fascinated to find
that the hotel toilets were flushed by pressing a button, which
seemed to release pressure from an accumulator somewhere, but
buses were stopped by pulling a chain, the reverse of my previous
experience.

Chris
--
Chris J Dixon Nottingham UK


Have dancing shoes, will ceilidh.

In article ,
"Brian Reay" writes:
Actually, Weinstock was pretty good at recognising "core business" and
turning a profit.

It was quite simple. As one of Weinstock's companies, you could
borrow money from him if you could show him you would give him
a better return on investment than he would get investing it
elsewhere. He sat on a £1B pot which he used for this purpose.
Only thing was, the return had to be within a year -- it was very
difficult to borrow money for development over a longer period.

There were some companies in GEC which enjoyed a special position
of supporting the rest of the group and didn't need to turn a
profit themselves. The two best known were GEC Hirst Research,
and Marconi Research. The one I worked for, GEC Computers, was
also in such a position as the provider of computer systems for
many other GEC companies. However, during the 1980's, all these
companies were gradually turned into profit centres too, although
I don't think any actually managed to make a return on investment.

It all fell apart when someone decided to split up the empire, flog off the
profit making defence business, and invest in and focus on telecoms. The
results of that are a matter of history.

Yep.

Weinstock was shrewd, successful, and turned a profit. Dirty words to some
people but he presided over an empire that kept many people in gainful
employ for many years.

He spent years training his son to take over from him. His son
died of cancer before he got to the point of taking over. I left
GEC at that point, but my recollection is someone from Lucus was
brough in to run the company, and the £1B cash mountain turned
into a multi-£B hole in a remarkably short period of time. As
you say, the company decided to get rid of all it's non-telecoms
businesses (i.e. the opposite of the diversification Weinstock
presided over) just in the lead up to the dot com crash. I never
really understood this move as it also coincided with GEC having
saturated the BT network (i.e. no more System X as all exchanges
were now moderised), and having substantially failed to find any
other large market for System X in the world, it seemed to me
that the telecoms bit was heading for big trouble even if the
dot com crash hadn't happened.

The bad news is, worse is to come. The UK energy policy is wrecked, in the
late 70s everyone said "no problem, we've 300 years of coal". So research
was abandoned, the coal mines closed, the gas used more quickly, and we are
on the point of being totally dependant on foreign energy. In a master
stroke, Blair does a deal with the French (long known for their generous
support of the UK) to manage an alternative.

I wrote an article on this just recently from the point of view
of future lack of security of UK energy supplies...
http://groups.google.com/group/uk.d-...f46f4fa4a9973c

--
Andrew Gabriel

On 2006-08-30 21:10:01 +0100, Chris J Dixon said:

Andy Hall wrote:

I've never seen these kinds of pressure flush anywhere else and was
intrigued, so had to look inside the cistern to see how it worked.

About 1964, on a school trip to Paris, I was fascinated to find
that the hotel toilets were flushed by pressing a button, which
seemed to release pressure from an accumulator somewhere, but
buses were stopped by pulling a chain, the reverse of my previous
experience.

Chris

yes, but it was France.....

"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Brian Reay" writes:
Actually, Weinstock was pretty good at recognising "core business" and
turning a profit.

It was quite simple. As one of Weinstock's companies, you could
borrow money from him if you could show him you would give him
a better return on investment than he would get investing it
elsewhere. He sat on a £1B pot which he used for this purpose.
Only thing was, the return had to be within a year -- it was very
difficult to borrow money for development over a longer period.

But similar arrangements are common- sometimes, for example, business units
are allowed to return less margin to the central pot, holding some back to
fund development etc.

Investment has to be funded somehow and I don't thing GEC were really any
worse than other major UK companies for this. It seems a UK trait to look
for a quick return and not look at the long, or even medium, turn.

Weinstock was shrewd, successful, and turned a profit. Dirty words to
some
people but he presided over an empire that kept many people in gainful
employ for many years.

He spent years training his son to take over from him. His son
died of cancer before he got to the point of taking over.

Yes, I wonder how different this would have been if Simon hadn't died.

I left
GEC at that point, but my recollection is someone from Lucus was
brough in to run the company, and the £1B cash mountain turned
into a multi-£B hole in a remarkably short period of time. As
you say, the company decided to get rid of all it's non-telecoms
businesses (i.e. the opposite of the diversification Weinstock
presided over) just in the lead up to the dot com crash. I never
really understood this move as it also coincided with GEC having
saturated the BT network (i.e. no more System X as all exchanges
were now moderised), and having substantially failed to find any
other large market for System X in the world, it seemed to me
that the telecoms bit was heading for big trouble even if the
dot com crash hadn't happened.

I don't recall where the replacement came from but, if it was Lucas, I also
don't think they were exactly thriving then.

The bad news is, worse is to come. The UK energy policy is wrecked, in
the
late 70s everyone said "no problem, we've 300 years of coal". So research
was abandoned, the coal mines closed, the gas used more quickly, and we
are
on the point of being totally dependant on foreign energy. In a master
stroke, Blair does a deal with the French (long known for their generous
support of the UK) to manage an alternative.

I wrote an article on this just recently from the point of view
of future lack of security of UK energy supplies...
http://groups.google.com/group/uk.d-...f46f4fa4a9973c


Bad news is, I doubt anyone with the power to change things will bother to
read it. Sadly we in the UK tolerate our standard of living been screwed up
by poor government and we are too apathetic to do anything about it.

climbing off soap box

Brian

"sm_jamieson" wrote in message
ups.com...
How odd, I've also just returned from a US trip and was pondering the
exact
some thing while I was there. I asked a friend out there (also a DIYer)
and
he said the flush worked in the same way (at least in the pan, the
cistern
part tends to use a "flap valve", which is now available in the UK). As
we
had along wait at the airport, I had some time to think on the problem.

The "throat" of the bowl seemed much smaller and there is a large "pool"
of
water in bowl. (Good idea to keep the bowl clean). I wonder if these
factors
combined give a "quick flush" that looks like a vacuum. The U seemed
quite
tight, so maybe the action is like this:

Bowl full, level will form at the U top lip. When you flush, a water is
added slowly (compared to the UK) until there is enough to start the
flush,
which progresses quickly as there is a lot of "head" in the bowl. So
fast,
the bowl empties before enough fresh water gets in to maintain syphon
level.
Syphon stops and bowl refills.

Yep, I think the crucial thing is that it is actually a syphon, so it
continues with little head of water to maintain it. With our wash-down
pans, water added just pushes out the "stuff" like a normal u-bend,
which is why the new 6 litre things are so feeble.

We had a siphon cistern and washdown pan. The yanks had the opposite.

Huge wrote:

Don't touch it. Dry your hands, take a paper towel, open the door
with it, then fold the "dirty" side inside and drop it in the next
waste paper basket you pass. Or use a piece of loo rool.

A few germs will toughen you up, no? As long as it's not actually covered in
enough **** to be visible, of course, which is not a given in every public
toilet.

Evpuneq Erivf wrote:

A few germs will toughen you up, no?

Zackly.

--
Something like: "ntlworld" "com" "dot" "at" "marypegg"

"Huge" wrote in message
...
On 2006-09-03, Mary Pegg wrote:
Evpuneq Erivf wrote:

A few germs will toughen you up, no?

Zackly.

Or in other words "Eat **** and die."



--
"Other people are not your property."
[email me at huge [at] huge [dot] org [dot] uk]

Ever followed someone out who hadn't washed their hands - then realised that
you have just touched the door handle with your washed hands. Ah well - when
did you last see a door handle being cleaned anyway.

On 2006-09-03 20:10:57 +0100, Jim Michaels said:

On 30 Aug 2006 19:47:12 GMT, Huge wrote:

On 2006-08-30, Jim Michaels wrote:
On 28 Aug 2006 11:24:56 GMT, Huge wrote:

Where are you finding these?

In the Manhattan offices of the firm I work for.

And what exactly are you describing?

Cubicles which start about 12" from the ground and finish about
shoulder height (were one standing up).
I assume you are not 8 feet tall.

No, 6'3"


This is very unusual. This is done in prisons, some schools, and other
high vandalism areas.

Then these offices are such an area. Do you think I'm lying or
something?

No, I do not doubt your experience.

I was merely commenting that it is not common.




Remove SPAMX from email address

Well....

I've been in several different office buildings and shopping centres
this past week and all had doors of this kind of height. Very
disconcerting.....

The only thing that I found more strange was the concern over the
welfare of a young Mexican boy at a football match. The whole crowd
sang about it as well:

"Jose can you see?"

The message
from "Bob Eager" contains these words:

Whatever did happen to A.E.I. G.E.C. English Electric, Metro Cammell,
Elliot Automation, Lyons Electronic Office, Marconi ?

GEC merged with Marconi...who didn't collapse until this government..

Elliott and EE merged with ICT to form ICL. Do try and keep up. LEO were
made by EE. Lyons closed under this government too.

I have only just come across this so excuse the late reply but IIRC Bob
has misremembered his history.

AEI was taken over by GEC some years before GEC took over English
Electric. The EECo takeover would have been somewhere around 1967.

Marconi was a wholly owned subsidiary (one of many) of English Electric
who also had an interest in ICL. ICL may well have been formed by a
merger with EECos computer interests but EECo per se did not merge with
the other computer firms.

Marconi was eventually selected as the name for the rump GEC which was
left after the better enterprises were all sold off. I don't know if the
name had remained in use for the whole of the intervening period but it
easily could have.

--
Roger Chapman

The message
from "Brian Reay" contains these words:

Actually, Weinstock was pretty good at recognising "core business" and
turning a profit.
It all fell apart when someone decided to split up the empire, flog off the
profit making defence business, and invest in and focus on telecoms. The
results of that are a matter of history.

Weinstock was a short termist of the worst hue. By the time he died this
had been recognised and his obituary in one of the broadshirts was as
spiteful a denounciation as I as I have ever seen in an obituary.

Weinstock was shrewd, successful, and turned a profit. Dirty words to some
people but he presided over an empire that kept many people in gainful
employ for many year

The coming of Weinstock (or Swinestock as we called him) led to a high
turnover of staff at Stafford as the able (and some of the less able,
myself among them) jumped ship. Being required to wait until the cheaper
afternoon rates to make trunk calls would have saved a bit on the phone
bill but it wasted far more on the wages bill as continuity of thought
was replaced by shuffling less important work to pad out the time until
the phone could be used.

--
Roger Chapman

Roger wrote:

I have only just come across this so excuse the late reply but IIRC Bob
has misremembered his history.

AEI was taken over by GEC some years before GEC took over English
Electric. The EECo takeover would have been somewhere around 1967.

Not quite.

In 1967, I joined AEI on a thin sandwich course. GEC took them
over later that year. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric

Chris
--
Chris J Dixon Nottingham UK


Have dancing shoes, will ceilidh.

The message
from Chris J Dixon contains these words:

AEI was taken over by GEC some years before GEC took over English
Electric. The EECo takeover would have been somewhere around 1967.

Not quite.

Memory fades and I had forgotten that the 2 takeovers were so close together.

In 1967, I joined AEI on a thin sandwich course. GEC took them
over later that year.

If AEI hadn't been so dilatory in arranging an interview I might have
been there on a thin sandwich in 1962 but as it was I was about to
accept EECos offer by the time they invited me to interview. Stafford
had been a hard enough place to get to from NE Essex in Easter 1962 and
Manchester would have been worse so I declined.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric

That history seems to have been written by someone with a rail traction
bias. Stafford was EECos headquarters but you couldn't tell that from
the write-up and you could search the production range with a magnifying
glass and not find the slightest hint of what had been manufactured
there. If nothing else a list of the power stations they made generators
for would seem to have more relevance than a list of obscure diesel
units.

--
Roger Chapman

In article ,
Derek ^ writes:
On 24 Aug 2006 15:22:53 GMT, "Bob Eager" wrote:

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 22:01:23 UTC, Derek ^
wrote:

Whatever did happen to A.E.I. G.E.C. English Electric, Metro Cammell,
Elliot Automation, Lyons Electronic Office, Marconi ?

GEC merged with Marconi...who didn't collapse until this government..

That wasn't the original "Marconi" it was a re-launching re-branding
marketing exercise involving mostly bought in aquisitions. When I
started work after Uni (1969) a great many ex Marconi engineers
started with me on the same day.

GEC owned the Marconi name since the late 1960's, and some
GEC Companies continued using it. In the late 1990's, GEC
decided that the Marconi brand was better known worldwide
than the GEC name, and so they switched the name to Marconi,
ditching the GEC and GPT names. There were many attempts by
various GEC companies over the years to get the GEC logo
updated to something modern, but Weinstock wouldn't pay the
worldwide costs of doing so.

Elliott and EE merged with ICT to form ICL. Do try and keep up. LEO were
made by EE.

ICT got only the data processing part of Elliotts, which was
mainly the rebadged NCR Elliott 4100 systems. All the rest
of Elliotts (the computer systems they designed themselves
and all the non computing parts of the business) moved into
GEC. I have the slides shown to the workforce when this
happened, and I put some online at
http://www.cucumber.demon.co.uk/geccl/19471972

Following the split into GEC and ICT, GEC were not permitted
to operate in the Data Processing business for 5 years, and
ICT were not permitted to operate in the real-time, process
control, and military market areas for 5 years.

The computing part of Elliotts was renamed GEC Computers
in 1971, and remained in the former Elliott main building
until around 2002. That's also about the time the last
Elliott commercial computer system ceased being on maintenance
(it was used for traffic light control, in Birmingham IIRC).
Some of the Elliott military systems may still be in use.

--
Andrew Gabriel

On Mon, 4 Sep 2006 19:08:11 UTC, (Andrew
Gabriel) wrote:

ICT got only the data processing part of Elliotts, which was
mainly the rebadged NCR Elliott 4100 systems.

I remember them! First machines I wrote assembler for...used two of them
until 1976.
--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
Avenue Supplies, http://avenuesupplies.co.uk

On 2006-09-04 21:08:10 +0100, "Bob Eager" said:

On Mon, 4 Sep 2006 19:08:11 UTC, (Andrew
Gabriel) wrote:

ICT got only the data processing part of Elliotts, which was
mainly the rebadged NCR Elliott 4100 systems.

I remember them! First machines I wrote assembler for...used two of them
until 1976.

Ah yes.

Then there was the 803 where you had to load the Algol compiler (4k
IIRC) using paper tape.

This machine was everything that an art deco computer should be. -
rounded corners, console with flashing lights and a speaker that would
play tunes if the right paper tape was loaded.

On Mon, 4 Sep 2006 20:42:57 UTC, Andy Hall wrote:

On 2006-09-04 21:08:10 +0100, "Bob Eager" said:

On Mon, 4 Sep 2006 19:08:11 UTC, (Andrew
Gabriel) wrote:

ICT got only the data processing part of Elliotts, which was
mainly the rebadged NCR Elliott 4100 systems.

I remember them! First machines I wrote assembler for...used two of them
until 1976.

Then there was the 803 where you had to load the Algol compiler (4k
IIRC) using paper tape.

This machine was everything that an art deco computer should be. -
rounded corners, console with flashing lights and a speaker that would
play tunes if the right paper tape was loaded.

There is (was) a working 803 at Bletchley Park, in the Computer
Conservation bit.
They replaced the 803 at work with the 4130 just before I got there.
--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
Avenue Supplies, http://avenuesupplies.co.uk

On Mon, 4 Sep 2006 21:42:57 +0100, Andy Hall
wrote:

On 2006-09-04 21:08:10 +0100, "Bob Eager" said:

On Mon, 4 Sep 2006 19:08:11 UTC, (Andrew
Gabriel) wrote:

ICT got only the data processing part of Elliotts, which was
mainly the rebadged NCR Elliott 4100 systems.

I remember them! First machines I wrote assembler for...used two of them
until 1976.

Ah yes.

Then there was the 803 where you had to load the Algol compiler (4k
IIRC) using paper tape.

This "paper tape" reminds me of American toilets...

--
Frank Erskine

Roger wrote:
The message
from Chris J Dixon contains these words:


AEI was taken over by GEC some years before GEC took over English
Electric. The EECo takeover would have been somewhere around 1967.


Not quite.


Memory fades and I had forgotten that the 2 takeovers were so close together.

AFAICS none of you have mentioned EELM for which a friend of mine
worked. Or was that just an internal name?

Douglas de Lacey

The message
from Douglas de Lacey contains these words:

AEI was taken over by GEC some years before GEC took over English
Electric. The EECo takeover would have been somewhere around 1967.


Not quite.


Memory fades and I had forgotten that the 2 takeovers were so close
together.

AFAICS none of you have mentioned EELM for which a friend of mine
worked. Or was that just an internal name?

That abreviation didn't ring any bells so I did a quick google and found
the following quote (at zdnet.co.uk) in an article headed "Alas poor
ICL, we knew it well..."

"I actually worked for ICL, once. It was before it was called ICL; I had
a job as a programmer for English Electric Leo Marconi Computers (EELM)
in 1965".

Part of a sad tale of the ruination of the British computer industry.

--
Roger Chapman

"Roger" wrote in message
k...
The message
from Douglas de Lacey contains these words:

AEI was taken over by GEC some years before GEC took over English
Electric. The EECo takeover would have been somewhere around 1967.


Not quite.


Memory fades and I had forgotten that the 2 takeovers were so close
together.

AFAICS none of you have mentioned EELM for which a friend of mine
worked. Or was that just an internal name?

That abreviation didn't ring any bells so I did a quick google and found
the following quote (at zdnet.co.uk) in an article headed "Alas poor
ICL, we knew it well..."

"I actually worked for ICL, once. It was before it was called ICL; I had
a job as a programmer for English Electric Leo Marconi Computers (EELM)
in 1965".

Part of a sad tale of the ruination of the British computer industry.

--
Roger Chapman

Once upon a time .... I worked in the nascent 'British Computer industry
.....
there was a huge ... huge... programme to update the UK's Air Traffic
Control and ancillary systems ; -
'There'll be SST (Concord(e)s; Konkordskii plus the US SST - not to mention
the hordes of Soviets Mig 25 et.all. swarming all over the airspace ...
it'll be beyond the power of unaided man to comprehend (let alone control)
.... something must be done!'

At that time nobody (aka Government) really knew who would be a winner so
the Government made 'each way' bets. Any and every man-boy-and-dog with
access to a soldering iron and the nous to connect two OC92 together and
call it a 'bit store' instead of the more formal 'Eccles-Jordan bistable'
could get a development contract for the super-project. Soon, Plessey,
Elliots, Ericsson, Marconi, AT&E, ICT et.al, had little bits of the overall
project .

Acting in the 'white heat' of the 'Technology Revolution' the (then) Post
Master general - or was he Minister for Technology by then ? (one forgets) -
sallied forth each week from the Ministry of Technology (MillBank) to a
secret location and had a meeting with HighGalumphers from at least two of
the involved companies and strove to make 'em 'team-up' (aka merge).
Different weeks, different Highgalumphers, different merging .
Out of these shenanigans, ICL was borne ... Plessey ceased to manufacture
computer-systems ... whatever happened to EELM?

Meanwhile, away from the centralised control of the Minister of Technology
....
[It's not the Viscount Stangate - it's not Anthony Wedgwood Benn - call me
Toney!]
... in Sunnyvale ... . The rest, as they say, is history.

Had to dodge any Concordes lately? Cynic! Moi?

--

Brian