I thought I would create this photo gallery to preserve the photos I took during the commissioning and trials of ICL 2900 computer systems in the mid to late 1970s. Also I have added photos of ICL 2900s from other sources where relevant to my photos, for the historical record. After a conversation in late 2011 with a younger Oracle colleague about the article in the following, I have added some photos of previous ICL systems (as he wanted to see what they looked like). ->

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICL_2900_Series

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICL_VME

 

I have also added some photos of the IBM 370, which I believe was the main competitor that also influenced (as well as MU5 -> www.computer50.org/kgill/mu5/mu5con2.gif) the ICL 2900 Series, scanned from some documents that I have kept from before I joined International Computers Limited (ICL) in 1974. There are more photos on -> www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_2...

 

I only ever took photos of the P-Series ICL 2900s and by the time I started to work on the S-Series ICL 2966, I was at ISAB Sverige working all over Sweden and Scandinavia, so the camera was extensively used for other scenes instead. I worked out of Solna from 1981 and returned to the UK for support of the Royal Navy/Defence Systems in 1983 but I took no photos of the ICL systems nor the Tandem NonStop 2s and TXPs that I worked on there (not allowed). However there is a small configuration ICL 2966 preserved at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park www.tnmoc.org/explore/mainframes.

Also The Centre for Computing History is in a building in Cambridge, situated near the Beehive Centre -> www.computinghistory.org.uk/ and there is MOSI in Manchester www.mosi.org.uk/explore-mosi/explore-mosi-themes/science-... .The reconstructed Manchester Baby at MOSI and the reconstructed Colossus at Bletchley Park are probably the most evocative of the displays in any computer museum.

 

I had moved away from hardware testing by the time the ICL Series 39 was introduced and into OLTP and Codasyl types of database to supplement my VME expertise. In the following decade (1990s) I was moved into the X/Open and Posix areas with ICL which took me into Open Systems, UNIX and relational databases and then to leave ICL and join Oracle Corporation in the mid 1990s. With the advent of the new paradigm of Engineered Systems in the second decade of the 21st century I am again being drawn into the hardware area, but now it is Sun Oracle ExaLogic/ExaData and the Sun Oracle Sparc SuperCluster is probably the modern "Mainframe" for the Web/Cloud Generation, although there is still the IBM Series z mainframe around, which is compatible with the IBM systems from the 70s featured on my photostream. I also have been involved with IBM Power 770 servers and interconnect technology with AIX over the last few years, as well as my regular Oracle software work.

 

Note that there are other computer photos that can be bought from The Science Museum website www.scienceandsociety.co.uk

You have to search around it to find them though for such as

www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?image=10303608&am... or www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?image=10303611

 

Also some ICL2900 or System4 photos are on personal websites that can be publically viewed such as ->

mjbmg.awardspace.com/computerhistory3.htm and www.whiteheadm.info/

 

For those who remember the RCA Spectra 70/45, from which the ICL System 4 was derived, see the following ->

www.gadgetspage.com/comps-peripheral/we-are-so-proud-of-o...

 

The RCA Spectra 70 was the first mainframe to use monolithic integrated circuits that defined the third generation of computers.

There was one in ICL Kidsgrove in the early 1970s, which was the oldest computer that I came across whilst working, apart from those in the museums I saw later on, since the computers we went to see at GEC Stafford in my school days.

 

Roy Pedlar, Skipton, Yorkshire, UK. January 2019. Deleted down to a 1,000 photos.

www.flickr.com/photos/65699127@N07/

Although this is not my house - HOME photo is.

Email is roy.pedlar@yahoo.com

  

I have added more general ICL and personal photos after the comment that my photostream was just boxes with lights, reels and switches on !! However I wanted to put on some caving photos from my time doing this great sport and also climbing (From 1964 when I was 15 years old in the Peak District, where I was brought up, to the superb Easegill cave systems in Yorkshire, where most of my last years of caving were done up to the late1990s, and also my caving abroad) but I never seemed to get good photos underground. Perhaps I will start to cave again when I eventually retire or dig for new ones to be discovered - plenty of scope in Yorkshire with the largely unexplored Black Keld system or the extensive system that must lie beneath the Malham High Country.

 

I recently came across a photostream with great photos of the Picos de Europa where I caved in the past ->

www.flickr.com/photos/kiriartem/

There is a film called "The Ario Dream" that came out in 2018 to document the exploration and goals over 5 decades and also information on ariocavesproject.com/home/the-ario-dream/ and

vimeo.com/ondemand/ariodream

 

Also good photos of Northern England landscapes on

www.flickr.com/photos/27538469@N06/with/24032710455/

Plus Information on the geology and underground of the Yorkshire Dales is on www.mudinmyhair.co.uk/

 

For ICL 2976 computers see the links below

 

www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/39328/ICL-2976-Mainframe-...

 

www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/39329/ICL-2976-Mainframe-...

 

www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/39330/ICL-2976-Mainframe-...