A Day In The Life Of A Computer Field Engineer - 1958-62 Style!
~ I call it "a day" but actually it was a short period of time in
the beginning of my life as a Computer Field Engineer. That
period began in 1959, after a year of what might be called
"apprenticeship" at Burroughs Electrodata in Pasadena,
California.
August 1958, fresh out of the Air Force, I joined
Burroughs Corporation, Electrodata Division as a Computer Test
Technician on their new B220 computer system.
After a couple of months in Unit Test, I was promoted to Systems
Test. I will never forget the first system I was to test. The
computer console showed a failed test - and I just sat there
looking at the blinking lights, buttons, and switches on the
console (see the young lady at the console in my composite photo
below) - with no idea what to do next.
A senior test tech came over and asked what was wrong. Then seeing that I was lost, he began flipping switches, pressing buttons, and all the lights were flashing on the console for about a minute. Then he pointed to the lights and told me, "It is failing in the adder." I was amazed and in awe! How could he be so smart - and me so dumb?
But, believe it or not, in a few weeks - I, too, was flipping switches, pressing buttons, and reading the lights like a champ. About six months later I was testing a B220 system scheduled to be shipped to Norfolk Naval Supply Depot, and the lead Field Engineer for that system, Jim Mann, came to California to be part of the final testing of the system since he would be responsible for maintaining once it once it shipped.
We worked together for a month and then Jim asked me, "Bill, would you like to go into Field Engineering and come to Norfolk to work with me?" He did not have to ask twice, for I jumped at the opportunity.
Once I switched to Field Engineering, I was assigned to attend a B220 Training Class - and the only two things I remember about that two-month class was first, our distinguished fellow student, Charles Ray from CalTech University, who was the only customer in my class. In 1959 Burroughs Training had a strict rule: white shirts and ties will be worn in the training class.
Charles Ray come to class in his casual clothes. The head of the Training Department called him into his office and told Charles Ray, "It is mandatory that all in the class wear a white shirt and tie." Charles Ray just looked at him and said, "I will not - and if you insist, I can just skip your class."
Folks, remember this was a million dollar computer system - so that was the end of that discussion. Charles Ray continued in the class wearing his casuals, while we less important ones wore the uniform. In the 1970s, when I was in Computer Sales, I called on Charles Ray at CalTech and had fun reminding him of that time.
The second thing I remember about that time in the Burroughs Training Class - was Carol. Carol was a tall, beautiful, and very well built blonde, who worked in the Training Department, I guess as a secretary. And the 1950s being the time of Hollywood sweater girls, Carol could have beat them all. Everyday she wore a sweater to work - and every time she came into a classroom or walked past, all eyes went "eyes right!" Discussions stopped and hearts began to flutter.
For many years, when two ex-Burroughs Field Engineers would meet in other jobs - the first thing said was, "Do you remember Carol?" And I have to admit that I was guilty of that also. It seemed that Carol was the one thing we all could remember.
Although Burroughs was my beginning in the relatively new and exciting computer industry, those memories were only the first of many to come over the years When one spends nearly 50 years in a fast growing field like the computer industry, there will be many exciting experiences.
But this blog is to speak of my years with Burroughs. And it was inspired by photos I received in my daily Pinterest (image sharing and social media service) e-mails showing magnetic tape and disk storage systems. That rang my deja vu bell and started me walking down memory lane again. First I created the composite image below showing a day in the life of a large mainframe computer system from the bygone days. So let me continue with my memories.
During the nine months I spent at the Norfolk Naval Supply Depot, my knowledge and confidence grew by leaps and bounds. The computer personnel for the Naval Supply team consisted of programmers and computer operators. The lead computer operator was a very nice lady named Regina, and after a couple of months, even though my boss, Jim Mann, was a much more experienced Field Engineer, whenever Regina had a problem - the first person she would call was me. I suppose my confidence showed.
Nine months later I was transferred to the Burroughs Washington DC office. At first I was the lead Field Engineer on the B220 system at Atlantic Research Corporation in Virginia. That is where I was on the day, April 12, 1961, when Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut, became the first human to journey into outer space. Traveling in the Vostok 1 capsule, Gagarin completed one orbit of Earth in 1 hour and 29 minutes, landing safely in Russia. Someone at Atlantic Research brought a small television into the computer room and we all gathered around to watch.
That first jump into space by the Soviets spurred faster development of America's space program - for we had be the first nation to put a man on the moon. After all, President Kennedy, in his "We Choose To Go To The Moon" speech at Rice University on September 12, 1962, challenged all America to put a man on the moon in before 1970 - and we did it.
Later I was assigned to test and install a Burroughs B220 computer which was part of much larger Melpar Corporation system to be installed at the Air Force SAC Headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska.
When I first joined the team of Burroughs Field Engineers working at Melpar, Dave Lowther and Don (forgot his last name) - we were told that the Magnetic Tape System had a problem. When Melpar programmers were writing to a tape drive, at times the tape would just take off and run all the way to the end of the reel. So far no one had solved their problem - and it began to be a sensitive issue.
Don and I decided to tackle the problem. We worked all day and into the evening before we sensed a breakthrough. One of the items in our tool kit was a can of VisaMag, a liquid containing magnetic metal material. We would dip a section of the magnetic tape into the liquid and that allowed us to visually view the bits of information, or blocks of information, recorded on the magnetic tape.
The B220 magnetic tape subsystem used a 3/4-inch tape on 3500-foot reels. The B220 wrote on the magnetic tape in two separate tracks that could be written and read in blocks of data. Our test program would switch back and forth between the two tracks of data.
A typical customer program might write five blocks of data on one track, then switch to the other track to write additional blocks of data. Or switch to the other track and search back to find the blocks written on the other track. It could write blocks on that track and then switch again. By writing two tracks on the same physical tape - that could make the 3500-foot reel appear to be doubled.
In a perfect world, if the computer wrote five blocks of data on one track, then switch and wrote the same five blocks of data on the other track all down the physical tape - the two tracks of data blocks should always be the same exact length side by side. And that is what the computer was looking for, two tracks exactly the same length no matter how many blocks of data were written on both tracks. But we were not in a perfect world of technology.
What was happening was that as the written blocks of data on both tracks moved further down the tape - one track eventually became longer than the other track. So when the computer wrote five blocks on that track and then switched to the other track, it saw no data blocks to search, only blank tape - and the tape ran to the end of the reel searching for a data block. Problem discovered, now we need a fix.
Don and I were elated! Since it was already early morning we decided to have breakfast, then go to the Washington DC district office and place a conference call back to home office in Pasadena. When we got a programming guru on the line and explained what we had found - we were blown away by his response. He told us, "We know about the problem. But we were waiting to see if anyone in the field found it." Oh, the urge to kill! Luckily he was in Pasadena and we were in Washington DC.
The Melpar / SAC Headquarters System also had two Datafile multi-tape mass storage units. Since this was 1961 and no large disk storage unit was available, Burroughs had a unit we called the Datafile. It was a unit about the size of the old home freezers. Earlier funny incident: When one was shipped to the Norfolk Naval Supply Depot, the shipping/receiving folks thought it was a freezer and put it in the "ship overseas" area of the warehouse. Luckily we found it before they shipped it to Japan.
The URL file below is an article which appeared in ElectronicDesign magazine, June 21, 1961 issue:
The Datafile was in a cabinet of similar height as the Burroughs tape drives, but much wider. It is shown in my composite. The unit had 50 270-foot 3/4-inch tapes which fell into parallel bins on both sides of the unit instead of reels. A read/write head moved to the different free-fall tapes to search and read or write blocks of data. The carriage could position the read/write head to any one of the tape strips within 1 1/2 seconds and drive that strip forward or backward.
Except for their shorter length, the tapes, tape format and recording characteristics, and tape operations were identical to those for the free-standing units. Like the reel type drives, the DataFile magnetic tape format had two tracks for data which made it look as if it had tape storage of 100 tracks. The DataFile was the Burroughs venture into mass storage, acting like a disk drive instead of a tape unit.
When the Melpar system shipped, we knew that one of the two DataFiles had a problem, but decided to fix it at SAC Omaha so that we could stay on schedule. As the Burroughs Field Engineer at SAC Headquarters, I inherited the problem. I had to find and fix the problem of a movable read/write head which occasionally hung up and the unit just stopped. Working one evening, I found that the unit with the problem had a slightly shorter cable attached to the read/write head which would occasionally bind and was causing it to hang up and stop the head movement. I gave it more cable and Voila, the problem went away.
The next day I told the Denver District Service manager that it was fixed and what I had done. He did not believe it was fixed and I told him, "The damn thing works now and I am going home."
In late 1962 Burroughs transferred me back to Los Angeles and when driving back, I arrived at my in-laws' home in Denver, to find there was a phone call for me. Surprise, who knew I was stopping in Denver? It was the same Denver District Service Manager who in Omaha had not believed me. But when he had a problem with a Datafile storage unit at the headquarters of the Denver-Rio Grande Railroad in downtown Denver - who did he call to solve his problem? Me!
When he called the Washington DC office looking for me, he found out that I had left and was on way back to California. He had his people pull my security clearance records, found my in-laws' name and address in Denver, assumed I would be stopping there, and called me for help.
He told me he had a problem with the Datafile unit at the Denver-Rio Grande headquarters - and felt I was the one to fix it. I guess he did believe me in Omaha after all. I was able to find their problem and then we drove on to Los Angeles. But as a bonus, my wife and girls were able to spend another week with the grandparents.
I feel so blessed to have had this exciting career. In 1967 the Fall Joint Computer Convention was held in Anaheim - and someone from Electrodata organized a hospitality suite party for ex-Electrodata employees. I went to the party because my joining Burroughs Electrodata Division was in 1958 and that was pretty close to the time that it became Burroughs.
That was a fun evening as I mingled with people I had known in other companies over the years, but did not know they had also worked for Burroughs Electrodata. The most common thing I heard and said during the evening was, "I didn't know you were at Electrodata!"
At times my wife, Dory, asked jokingly (I hope), "You have worked with so many successful people in your career, why aren't you rich?"
That is when I tell her, and anyone else who asks, "Even though I have known, worked with, or rubbed shoulders with many successful and interesting people over the years - folks who have amassed great fortunes - I am richer than all of them. I have been a Christian believer for 35 years and counting - and everyone in my immediate family are also believers. That means that everyone in my family will spend eternity with me in the presence of Jesus Christ. That is true riches!"
Thank you for joining me on this excursion down memory lane. That is another great blessing from God - that I do have all those memories which He helps me bring to the surface when my deja vu bell is rung.
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill
A senior test tech came over and asked what was wrong. Then seeing that I was lost, he began flipping switches, pressing buttons, and all the lights were flashing on the console for about a minute. Then he pointed to the lights and told me, "It is failing in the adder." I was amazed and in awe! How could he be so smart - and me so dumb?
But, believe it or not, in a few weeks - I, too, was flipping switches, pressing buttons, and reading the lights like a champ. About six months later I was testing a B220 system scheduled to be shipped to Norfolk Naval Supply Depot, and the lead Field Engineer for that system, Jim Mann, came to California to be part of the final testing of the system since he would be responsible for maintaining once it once it shipped.
We worked together for a month and then Jim asked me, "Bill, would you like to go into Field Engineering and come to Norfolk to work with me?" He did not have to ask twice, for I jumped at the opportunity.
Once I switched to Field Engineering, I was assigned to attend a B220 Training Class - and the only two things I remember about that two-month class was first, our distinguished fellow student, Charles Ray from CalTech University, who was the only customer in my class. In 1959 Burroughs Training had a strict rule: white shirts and ties will be worn in the training class.
Charles Ray come to class in his casual clothes. The head of the Training Department called him into his office and told Charles Ray, "It is mandatory that all in the class wear a white shirt and tie." Charles Ray just looked at him and said, "I will not - and if you insist, I can just skip your class."
Folks, remember this was a million dollar computer system - so that was the end of that discussion. Charles Ray continued in the class wearing his casuals, while we less important ones wore the uniform. In the 1970s, when I was in Computer Sales, I called on Charles Ray at CalTech and had fun reminding him of that time.
The second thing I remember about that time in the Burroughs Training Class - was Carol. Carol was a tall, beautiful, and very well built blonde, who worked in the Training Department, I guess as a secretary. And the 1950s being the time of Hollywood sweater girls, Carol could have beat them all. Everyday she wore a sweater to work - and every time she came into a classroom or walked past, all eyes went "eyes right!" Discussions stopped and hearts began to flutter.
For many years, when two ex-Burroughs Field Engineers would meet in other jobs - the first thing said was, "Do you remember Carol?" And I have to admit that I was guilty of that also. It seemed that Carol was the one thing we all could remember.
Although Burroughs was my beginning in the relatively new and exciting computer industry, those memories were only the first of many to come over the years When one spends nearly 50 years in a fast growing field like the computer industry, there will be many exciting experiences.
But this blog is to speak of my years with Burroughs. And it was inspired by photos I received in my daily Pinterest (image sharing and social media service) e-mails showing magnetic tape and disk storage systems. That rang my deja vu bell and started me walking down memory lane again. First I created the composite image below showing a day in the life of a large mainframe computer system from the bygone days. So let me continue with my memories.
During the nine months I spent at the Norfolk Naval Supply Depot, my knowledge and confidence grew by leaps and bounds. The computer personnel for the Naval Supply team consisted of programmers and computer operators. The lead computer operator was a very nice lady named Regina, and after a couple of months, even though my boss, Jim Mann, was a much more experienced Field Engineer, whenever Regina had a problem - the first person she would call was me. I suppose my confidence showed.
Nine months later I was transferred to the Burroughs Washington DC office. At first I was the lead Field Engineer on the B220 system at Atlantic Research Corporation in Virginia. That is where I was on the day, April 12, 1961, when Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut, became the first human to journey into outer space. Traveling in the Vostok 1 capsule, Gagarin completed one orbit of Earth in 1 hour and 29 minutes, landing safely in Russia. Someone at Atlantic Research brought a small television into the computer room and we all gathered around to watch.
That first jump into space by the Soviets spurred faster development of America's space program - for we had be the first nation to put a man on the moon. After all, President Kennedy, in his "We Choose To Go To The Moon" speech at Rice University on September 12, 1962, challenged all America to put a man on the moon in before 1970 - and we did it.
Later I was assigned to test and install a Burroughs B220 computer which was part of much larger Melpar Corporation system to be installed at the Air Force SAC Headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska.
When I first joined the team of Burroughs Field Engineers working at Melpar, Dave Lowther and Don (forgot his last name) - we were told that the Magnetic Tape System had a problem. When Melpar programmers were writing to a tape drive, at times the tape would just take off and run all the way to the end of the reel. So far no one had solved their problem - and it began to be a sensitive issue.
Don and I decided to tackle the problem. We worked all day and into the evening before we sensed a breakthrough. One of the items in our tool kit was a can of VisaMag, a liquid containing magnetic metal material. We would dip a section of the magnetic tape into the liquid and that allowed us to visually view the bits of information, or blocks of information, recorded on the magnetic tape.
The B220 magnetic tape subsystem used a 3/4-inch tape on 3500-foot reels. The B220 wrote on the magnetic tape in two separate tracks that could be written and read in blocks of data. Our test program would switch back and forth between the two tracks of data.
A typical customer program might write five blocks of data on one track, then switch to the other track to write additional blocks of data. Or switch to the other track and search back to find the blocks written on the other track. It could write blocks on that track and then switch again. By writing two tracks on the same physical tape - that could make the 3500-foot reel appear to be doubled.
In a perfect world, if the computer wrote five blocks of data on one track, then switch and wrote the same five blocks of data on the other track all down the physical tape - the two tracks of data blocks should always be the same exact length side by side. And that is what the computer was looking for, two tracks exactly the same length no matter how many blocks of data were written on both tracks. But we were not in a perfect world of technology.
What was happening was that as the written blocks of data on both tracks moved further down the tape - one track eventually became longer than the other track. So when the computer wrote five blocks on that track and then switched to the other track, it saw no data blocks to search, only blank tape - and the tape ran to the end of the reel searching for a data block. Problem discovered, now we need a fix.
Don and I were elated! Since it was already early morning we decided to have breakfast, then go to the Washington DC district office and place a conference call back to home office in Pasadena. When we got a programming guru on the line and explained what we had found - we were blown away by his response. He told us, "We know about the problem. But we were waiting to see if anyone in the field found it." Oh, the urge to kill! Luckily he was in Pasadena and we were in Washington DC.
The Melpar / SAC Headquarters System also had two Datafile multi-tape mass storage units. Since this was 1961 and no large disk storage unit was available, Burroughs had a unit we called the Datafile. It was a unit about the size of the old home freezers. Earlier funny incident: When one was shipped to the Norfolk Naval Supply Depot, the shipping/receiving folks thought it was a freezer and put it in the "ship overseas" area of the warehouse. Luckily we found it before they shipped it to Japan.
The URL file below is an article which appeared in ElectronicDesign magazine, June 21, 1961 issue:
Strategic Air Command Gets $15-Million Data Processor
https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/displays/article/21772724/strategic-air-command-gets-15million-data-processor?fbclid=IwAR0g09w5iflHKvDvdD9x1wZBofBW5YtzSOeEonbHpb8dIDijOy-p-Hj-KpM
The Datafile was in a cabinet of similar height as the Burroughs tape drives, but much wider. It is shown in my composite. The unit had 50 270-foot 3/4-inch tapes which fell into parallel bins on both sides of the unit instead of reels. A read/write head moved to the different free-fall tapes to search and read or write blocks of data. The carriage could position the read/write head to any one of the tape strips within 1 1/2 seconds and drive that strip forward or backward.
Except for their shorter length, the tapes, tape format and recording characteristics, and tape operations were identical to those for the free-standing units. Like the reel type drives, the DataFile magnetic tape format had two tracks for data which made it look as if it had tape storage of 100 tracks. The DataFile was the Burroughs venture into mass storage, acting like a disk drive instead of a tape unit.
When the Melpar system shipped, we knew that one of the two DataFiles had a problem, but decided to fix it at SAC Omaha so that we could stay on schedule. As the Burroughs Field Engineer at SAC Headquarters, I inherited the problem. I had to find and fix the problem of a movable read/write head which occasionally hung up and the unit just stopped. Working one evening, I found that the unit with the problem had a slightly shorter cable attached to the read/write head which would occasionally bind and was causing it to hang up and stop the head movement. I gave it more cable and Voila, the problem went away.
The next day I told the Denver District Service manager that it was fixed and what I had done. He did not believe it was fixed and I told him, "The damn thing works now and I am going home."
In late 1962 Burroughs transferred me back to Los Angeles and when driving back, I arrived at my in-laws' home in Denver, to find there was a phone call for me. Surprise, who knew I was stopping in Denver? It was the same Denver District Service Manager who in Omaha had not believed me. But when he had a problem with a Datafile storage unit at the headquarters of the Denver-Rio Grande Railroad in downtown Denver - who did he call to solve his problem? Me!
When he called the Washington DC office looking for me, he found out that I had left and was on way back to California. He had his people pull my security clearance records, found my in-laws' name and address in Denver, assumed I would be stopping there, and called me for help.
He told me he had a problem with the Datafile unit at the Denver-Rio Grande headquarters - and felt I was the one to fix it. I guess he did believe me in Omaha after all. I was able to find their problem and then we drove on to Los Angeles. But as a bonus, my wife and girls were able to spend another week with the grandparents.
I feel so blessed to have had this exciting career. In 1967 the Fall Joint Computer Convention was held in Anaheim - and someone from Electrodata organized a hospitality suite party for ex-Electrodata employees. I went to the party because my joining Burroughs Electrodata Division was in 1958 and that was pretty close to the time that it became Burroughs.
That was a fun evening as I mingled with people I had known in other companies over the years, but did not know they had also worked for Burroughs Electrodata. The most common thing I heard and said during the evening was, "I didn't know you were at Electrodata!"
At times my wife, Dory, asked jokingly (I hope), "You have worked with so many successful people in your career, why aren't you rich?"
That is when I tell her, and anyone else who asks, "Even though I have known, worked with, or rubbed shoulders with many successful and interesting people over the years - folks who have amassed great fortunes - I am richer than all of them. I have been a Christian believer for 35 years and counting - and everyone in my immediate family are also believers. That means that everyone in my family will spend eternity with me in the presence of Jesus Christ. That is true riches!"
Thank you for joining me on this excursion down memory lane. That is another great blessing from God - that I do have all those memories which He helps me bring to the surface when my deja vu bell is rung.
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill
Right click on the image to enlarge:
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