COMPUTERS AT R.L.S.
See a presentation of the RLS computer and its adherents etc. here:-https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=And1m_8PPePorW.EBBYwSU2bvZx4?p=royal+liberty+school+computer+pictures&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-251&fp=1

NOTE: SECOND EVER RLS MAIL! Did you know that the Royal Liberty School was the first school in the country to have a computer? I was 17 at the time so it would be 1964/65. It was an Elliot machine (model? 901?) - a physically huge thing, archaic even by the standards of the day, 'driven' by pink punched paper tape although I can't remember any other technical details. It was housed on the ground floor (it wouldn't have got up any stairs) of the oldest part of the school - in what had been the main entrance lobby of Hare Hall, afterwards 'the Late Room' where a pupil arriving at school 'after the bell' had his name entered in 'the Late Book' and received "100 times, the first school rule". The machine was in the care of far-sighted maths teacher Mr W. R. ('Puff') Broderick who had persuaded Elliot to donate it to the school in the interests of educating the young in the use of this emerging technology. (Mr Broderick's soubriquet arose from his habit of clearing his fringe from his brow by sharp upward exhalations from the side of his mouth - not from any more recent connotation of the word.) A number of 6th Form maths pupils (me included) were introduced to the delights of programming in the then-popular 'Algol' language, in order to achieve such stunning feats as calculating a square root. "Why not just use log tables?" we wondered at the time. A TV crew (for Tomorrow's World or some such programme) came to film these pioneers and we all had our fifteen seconds of fame as the camera panned around our cherubic faces listening to Mr Broderick explain some of the finer points to us. Romford mothers beamed with pride when it was broadcast a week or so later. Curiously I lost interest after a few weeks and was happily oblivious of computers for the rest of my educational career. I say 'curiously' because I eventually rejoined the fold and I've earned my living programming, designing and managing computer systems since 1970. But the 'real' school computer was Mr J. ('Spook') Smith, an excellent maths teacher who continued to calculate the complexity of the school timetable by hand every September. Sadly the school's standards seem to have dropped considerably since then, as evidenced by the latest (1996) inspection report from Ofsted. Interested parties can find it at http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/htm/sec311.htm. (Andy Lee)
Chris, You said, “I want to be able to give my daughter a notion as to how it would compare to the iPhone's capabilities, for example”. It is a long time ago but as far as I can recall, the School’s 903 was a basic 8K machine so it had 8192 words of memory and each word was 18 bits in length. So to translate that into today’s byte oriented terminology, let us say that it was 18KB (it was not really comparable to 18KB but that translation is sufficient for this purpose).
The latest iPhone 6 at its maximum configuration has 128GB of memory. So, in terms of memory we have: RLS Elliott 903: 18432 bytes iPhone 6 plus: 137,438,953,472 bytes:
Crude processor speed? I think the Elliott would have had a cycle time of about 5µs (microseconds) so 200,000 cycles per second. The iPhone 6 has a processor speed of 1.4GHz (again, this comparison is not strictly accurate but will do for the purpose).
So in terms of processor speed we have: RLS Elliott 903: 200,000 cycles per second - iPhone 6 plus: 1,400,000,000 cycles per second
Those, at least, are two simplistic measures of relative performance. Plus, of course, you cannot put an Elliott 903 in your pocket or use it to access the internet or make a phone call or take photos with it or etc; etc; etc;-)
Note: If any of the above is off-beam then I am sure that Vince or one of the other 903 aficionados will correct it. ( Mike Watling, 903 (evening) user in '66 and former Elliott employee.)
What we did to Campions School - Other schools also used the computer. Bill can fill in the details, but I believe that it was only possible to have financed the system on the basis that all Essex schools should be allowed time on the computer. Sometimes, this encroached on our Wednesday afternoons, which meant sudden withdrawal from the drug!
Of course, the visiting schools were only taught Algol, and I guess that the poor teachers accompanying them used to teach maths, and were told by their head teachers 'You're teaching comuter science now.' so it was a case of the blind leading the blind.
Rather than pity them, we sensed the weakness and seized upon it. They had to be taught a lesson for getting between us and our beloved 903!
We had by now become skilled in reading the holes in the punched paper tape by eye. There were eight holes across, we could read the codes they represented, and write them down as machine language. Then we could work out what it was doing - in other words we could reverse engineer the software.
Algol was a two pass system. A tape had to be loaded, and all of the class submitted their programs to this stage and either got an error report, or a tape to be presented to the second pass. The second tape was then loaded, the class submitted their output from the first pass, and the program either ran, or it didn't. Each of these tapes had about a foot of information preceding it called the loader. This was read in, and contained information about the rest of the tape, and where to load it. We disassembled the one on the second pass tape, added our own code to it, and reassembled it, placing the tape in the rack ready for Campions.
For those that don't know, if you have a matrix of eight dots by as many as you want, you can display a text message - today you see running message signs in shops everywhere. Campions came in, ran the first tape, submitted their programs, got their output, and placed our modified tape in the reader. The tape ran, loaded, got to the end, and then started to print out a never ending stream of text messages on the punched tape. Poor Teacher was pressing buttons frantically. Of course the Stop button stopped it, so he assumed a mis-read, and entered it again, with the same result. Eventually, he twigged, and changed the tape.
Sadly, I can't remember the message content. It was probably rude, but nothing ever happened to us. Bill must have known who it was. I have to ask him now - did you
a) Promise Campions to find the culprits and punish them b) Pass it off as 'Boys will be Boys' or possibly, was the teacher too embarrassed to admit anything had happened, and is this the first you knew of this? Also, although it could not replicate itself, I just wonder if Colin and I can claim to be the first people to have written a virus in England?
So, I have to say that my business is not based on the computer industry in the way that most people see it, but I do write software for our control systems in assembler, PL/M and C, because writing huge programs in Visual Basic and Visual C++ still does not excite me, but designing control systems and writing the software for them does.
Bill and his business enterprises have had a great influence on my life, and I owe a lot to him. I still have the pleasure of being involved with him on projects from time to time. I think we would all agree that those early days were a great foundation, but we have all had to run very hard to keep up with developments in the computing and electronics worlds since then, but it did tech us not to be afraid of using computers. Colin, if my memory has failed me completely, and I co-modified the above mentioned tape with Steve Attridge (who I hope to get to join the list soon) my apologies!
For those really desperate for memories, I have attached a photo of one of the old punched tapes - possibly THE modified one - who knows! If any of you have an old Elliot 903 lying around, I'll try it. I have rambled on for long enough, and am going home to see how burnt the dinner is. (Vince Leatt)
Vince- I remember the incident but (damn those braincells) cannot recollect whether I was an integral part or wanted to be an integral part (and I am not just being a coward) - did we replac the Algol runtime (2nd tape) to produce the garbage and then replace it in the library draw ? If the answer is yes then it must have been me!! Does anyone remember the summer fair when we wrote the NIM gam that learnt from the players, the 'count the chads' competition and the reaction timing program which my father won (It wasnt fixed - honest!)? Any similar memories? (Colin Newlyn)
I remember the reaction timing prrogram. That was featured at the summer fair just before I joined. Being pedantic, I think it was an Eliot 920 then, which was exchanged for a 903 later....Bill?????? I can not remember the 'count the chads' competition, or NIM - and you say it was heuristic as well??!! We were ahead of our time, weren't we! I remember the nought sand crosses program, also referred to in the archives here, and actually uncovered a printout from the same, discovered while unearthing those computer tapes. I'm sorry my spelling of Elliot keeps changing, but I'm sure it was a funny spelling - Eliot seems to be my favourite at the moment.
Here's one for Steve to confirm if he gets to this list, and looks at the archives - I think after he left university, he got a job with the Dept. of Transport at Scratchwood, programming the warning lights on the M1 - controlled by an Eliot 903! So I suppose he could claim to have had a good start in life under Bill and Co.
I can't help wondering if those lights have got some hidden code to spell out an abusive message sometime - perhaps on December 31, 1999? Only Steve knows.
Can you remember hacking into the Ford computer on that acoustic modem, or had you left by then? (Vince Leatt
1965 Report: The school computer 1965 [Highlights:"Our computer is much smaller than the Cape Kennedy types but it can be used for weapon control systems ... In the school we are more concerned with its industrial uses.""The store has 8,192 store locations."] (Andy Lee)
Text from Romford Recorder/Review 8 Nov 1968 WE ARE SO ADVANCED WE DON'T NEED IT COMPUTERS - 'NO' TO SCHOOL SCHEME

Havering schools are so far advanced in their knowledge of computers that they don't need to take advantage of the nation-wide scheme introduced on Monday for computer education, claimed Mr. William Broderick, head of the computer department at Royal Liberty School, Gidea Park. The scheme was announced to teachers and education officers from all over the south of England at a conference at the Gidea Park school. The Royal Liberty School was chosen because it is one of only three schools in Britain which has its own computer. [Moderator's note: Pah! We're up to 1968 for goodness' sake!]Pupils from other secondary schools in Havering also use the computer. [Moderator's note: and we've heard what happens to them, haven't we? :-)] After the conference Mr. Broderick said: "Schools in Havering will not need to use the new computer project. The way we use the computer here is quite adequate." Earlier he had told the conference:
"Our aims here are to give pupils an idea of the applications, implications and limitations of computers. Our computer installation is a success. I have been taken aback by the way it has grown. I expected an initial burst of enthusiasm, but I am pleased to say that it has not tailed off yet.
It is used from eight in the morning to ten at night. Our problem is not to get pupils to come to us, but to get them to go away at night so that the caretaker can lock up."
Dr Bryan Thwaites, Principal of Westfield College, London, and originator of the School Mathematics Project, said:"One of Royal Liberty's great achievements is that they appreciated this great need for computer education, and got on with it."
Under the scheme which has been set up by a private management consultants firm, John Hoskyns & Co Ltd, schools will not have their own computer.
Pupils will be provided with everything they need to write computer programmes [sic] under the supervision of a teacher who will have received prior tuition as part of the scheme.
Their programme [sic] will be processed on a central computer via a postal service [Moderator's exclamation: !!!] so that the pupil can see his results without the need for the school to have its own computer. (posted by Andy Lee)

I well remember the excitement and pride at being the country's first school with a computer. It was nothing to do with me - I was on the Arts Side, and I seem to remember a slight sense of resentment that the only room in the school to have air-conditioning fitted was for a *machine*! On the other hand, it was quite something to be featured on "Tomorrow's World." (Geoffrey Biggs)

Saturday's Guardian included the following in connection with the demise of "Tomorrow's World."
"1965: Home computers The first ever Tomorrow's World featured the shocking news that a school had bought a computer. "Robert Cubitt is Britain's first child to be taught to use a computer at school," said the show's host Raymond Baxter (mocked for his posh accent and for telling viewers how things "ekshally wark"). He went on to correctly predict that every home and school would have a computer" Could this be...?  Is this....?   It surely must be ... (Tim Knights)

Does anyone remember the classes given by Mr Woodhurst on using mechanical calculators? The Ohdner and the Monroe stick in my memory. (Peter G. Underwood)

The original school computer was installed in a space once allocated to a large cloakroom to the left of the Hare Hall entry lobby. We have not yet determined the purpose of so many old large washbasins in the room. Were there any wash basins in the original outside toilets, or were boys expected to use those in these cloakrooms?
The space was gutted, divided up by glass screens into? three rooms, and was air conditioned (? for dust as much as temperature/humidity). The actual computer was a large metal box the size of an office desk. There were no computer screens in those days, and it had no keyboard. I wonder how its power compared with today's desktop PCs (or hand calculators).
To enter information into the machine, it was first necessary to prepare a punched paper tape on a free-standing teletype machine. This was then taken over to the computer to read in character by character. After some humming and whirring, the computer produced its own punched paper tape in response. This was eagerly taken to another teletype machine, which would read the tape and print out the computer response - usually something like "fail line2". After carefully considering this response, suitable changes were made to the input paper tape to hopefully achieve a more successful outcome, usually something like "fail line 4". Minor changes to paper tapes could be made with a hand punch, or the first paper tape could be copied up to the correction.
Puff Broderick managed to acquire the most attractive school secretary as a personal assistant, to work in the office beside the computer lab - the only teacher with his own secretary. We all admired her, and were envious of his power over her! Perhaps he would like to share his recollections of those days? (John Hawkins)

The school computer arrived in 1965. It required the conversion and air-conditioning of one of the games cloakrooms, the actual machine being he size of a large office desk. In addition tele-type machines were required to interpret input and output. At this same time the Apollo moon missions were also developing. They required a computer on-board the moon module to calculate and report in real time on the vehicle's position. This was, of course, limited in size and power consumption. I wonder how the Apollo computer compared in power with that at the RLS. And how did those machines compare in power with modern pocket calculators? (John Hawkins)

Could it have got me to the moon, possibly. It was a "hot" machine for its day. Firstly it came in two packages - a MacDonalds counter height "desk" with a control panel bolted onto the back. (There is, I'm sure no truth in the rumour that one stalwart had to stand on a box to reach it!)
Secondly, the military version for controlling tanks guns was called the 920M and was the size of a couple of shoe boxes. They were both constructed using standard circuits mounted on 2inch by 1 inch pcbs which in turn we mounted on platters. Those in the military version were encapsulated in resin. It had 8k of 18 bit memory (Ferrite core variety) which cost £1.00 per word or about 50p a byte. Today I was quoted £32 for 32mb - a price reduction of about 5*10^-6 in 35 years - wish cars had come down as much?
A stand alone Westrex Teleprinter cost about £550 and another £800 to put it on-line. Today’s laptops look quite good value don't they? In those days people took pride in the necessity of making their code small and fast. In contrast today they make it big and ugly, and them selves rich in the process. Funny old world - but progress would have been slower and software even less reliable if we (yes I include myself) had done it differently.
May be Vince or Colin could do a better job than I of relating the power to that of today’s watch chips - but reliability does seem to have improved!
We had good software - an assembler SIR that gave access to all the faculties of the machine and a two pass ALGOL compiler that was a forerunner of well structured all embracing languages.
The list price of the machine was £15000 - a real bargain - but what has inflation been since 1965 - I don't have any table to hand but 20x would not shock me. (Bill Broderick)

Thanks for your info Bill.... To expand the machine had an instruction set of 16 (the first RISC computer?) and was capable of 25,000 instructions per second (40us average instruction time) - it could be expanded above the 8k limit by using the B modifier - I used versions with 16k on and a 5m drum memory for military message routing. In comparison my current machine runs at 750MHz (30,000 times faster) with a 50G hard drive (10,000 times larger) and 256Mb memory (16,000 times larger) - Oh and it cost $1,600 CAD (600 sterling) - 20 times less (approx). I can actually still remember the op codes for this machine, how to boot itetc. - so, if anyone has one in their garage, ler me know and I will help you run it !! (Colin Sibthorp)

(From Andy Lee - selective extracts from the newspaper articles below)
1965: 'BBC TV visits local school'
The forward-looking School has a £16,000 computer on order (£3,000 of the cost still has to be raised) ... so a computer was borrowed for the day from the suppliers.
Cameras move in on a fair-haired 11-year-old boy expertly switching dials on a compact machine in a classroom. This is one of the steps that will eventually lead to computer-trained children throughout the country.
Fast-talker William Broderick brought a wind of change ... when he arrived as mathematics three years ago. "I've been dreaming of this computer for two years" said 24-year-old Mr. Broderick who has turned down £4,000 a year industrial jobs to teach children how to manage the computer.
"By 1970 Britain will need 100,000 computer staff - and nothing is being done to educate them. ... Ours is only a little move. ... This must be one of the most important experiments in today's grammar schools. Anyone can learn, you don't have to be a mathematician." continued Mr. Broderick, who can work any model on the market.
How do the [RLS] children view their new arrival?
"They're excited." said head of mathematics Mr. J. Smith. "Children are basically lazy and it solves their practical problems."
1968: 'Computers - No to school scheme'
"Havering Schools are so far advanced in their knowledge of computers that they don't need to take advantage of the nation-wide scheme" claimed Mr.William Broderick, head of the computer department.
After the conference Mr. Broderick said: "Schools in Havering will not need to use the new computer project. The way we use the computer here is quite adequate."
Earlier he had told the conference: "Our computer installation is a success. I have been taken aback by the way it has grown. I expected an initial burst of enthusiasm but I am pleased to say it has not tailed off yet. It is used from eight in the morning until ten at night. Our problem is not to get pupils to come to us, but to get them to go away at night so that the caretaker can lock up."
Dr. Bryan Thwaites, originator of the School Mathematics project, said: "One of Royal Liberty's great achievements is that they appreciated this great need for computer education, and got on with it."

David (Maltby) wrote:- "You lucky buggers who were fortunate to have been in the school at that time! I suspect that those of us who pre-date the Elliott, though we may now be "wired" have missed the boat in a big way. Just as in another area of my life, - I saw, I mocked, I was hooked! But I was born too early!"
I couldn't agree more with those sentiments, David. Without the Elliott 903 (and, more to the point, Bill's enthusiasm ) I would not have spent 30fairly happy years working in IT. I'm reasonably confident Steve East will tell you the same. So thanks once again to all who had the vision, and the energy to realise it, back in 64-65. And also a posthumous thank you to Jake Coles for allowing it all to take place in "his" school. (John Bailey)

Re: the computer. As much as I appreciate the forward thinking of those who decided to install the thing in school, I have to say that it was underused - nay, redundant - by my time. I never even knew it existed until reading of it on these pages! Presumably, Jakey deemed that the comprehensive yobbo intake were not to be trusted with such equipment! (Ray Liddard)

I can understand your confusion - I, my staff and the computer were moved to Harold Hill in 1972 - this was to provide a better "centralised" service for Borough. The move afforded my efforts to raise funds and raise the public profile of what we were doing etc. some protection against the ramifications of John Coles less conventional approaches to his job.
I must say I felt sad, and to some extent guilty, at leaving the school and taking the toys with me - but by that time the computer had been replaced and paid for by other funds, over half our running costs and staff were paid for by a Research Council and we had out grown the space available. (Bill Broderick)

I think the computer (I couldn't have told you what it was called) did have an influence on me eventually, but not straight away. I did the A Level Computer maths course from 1966-68, but failed it. I then switched to the standard A Level Maths with Spook instead of Bill Broderick, but failed it twice more in January and June 1969. Fortunately I didn't need it for my chosen course. Apart from a one term course in Cobol programming as part of my college course (not examinable) I didn't have anything more to do with computers until 1986.
At that time a couple of NCR DMV computers with all of 64k RAM, two floppy drives (no hard drive) and using the CP/M operating system (forerunner of DOS) arrived in my office to be used with a new mainframe system. These fascinated me, and I finished up taking a manual home to find out as much as I could about them. The manual was very detailed and even included a section on assembly language. This led to me becoming the first person to try out the new system and setting it up for general use. By the time it went live in 1988 I had bought a computer for home use, an Amstrad CPC6128 which, as well as having its own operating system could also run on CP/M. This was a great computer for hobbyists, supported by good specialist magazines and books. I started doing some programming in Basic, and found that the grounding in Algol 20 years earlier came into its own as there many similarities and I could still remember the logical approach required. I also tried a bit of assembly language programming, but that was much harder and I never got any further than a bit of minor hacking (of games, etc.)
Even though the computers at work were gradually updated to DOS and then Windows I was quite happy with my Amstrad at home, until it was stolen in a burglary round about 1995. It was obsolete by that time and the insurance company found it hard to value, eventually giving me more than I had paid for it and enabling me to buy a PC which I am still using at this moment, although I have upgraded it in many ways in the intervening years so that it is still reasonably up-to-date.
I am sorry to have bored the non-computing types amongst you, but I am totally hooked on all aspects of computing now and I tend to think that my early introduction to computers at RLS has something to do with it, even though there was such a long gap with no computers in my life at all. I'm glad I can appreciate RLS for something, because apart from just getting enough exam passes to go to college I don't have particularly happy memories of the school, although reading the messages on this group has brought back a lot of long-forgotten events and made me smile a bit. Maybe I'll write more generally about my time at the school another time, but for now I've bored you enough. (Mick Lee)

I seem to remember another teacher (biology or geography) who left teaching subjects and concentrated on investigating the use of the computer across the curriculum (1967ish). There is also no mention of the computer that followed (it used to read cards/sheets marked off by pencil). There was also the introduction of a teletype link to the Ford headquarters at Warley for running programs on their computers. Also I remember the 'constant' stream of coach parties from other schools in the borough who came to use our computer (and probably the link to Fords as well). (Chris Fribbins)

Bill, What happened to the computer. I remember it being replaced with 'something' after a few years. I remember filling out the program sheets 'HB' pencil only. I also remember the teletype connection into Ford's computers. (Chris Fribbins)

We started off teaching about how to program computers but it was virtually no time at all before staff and students developed an interest in teaching with computers. Derek Hardy got very interested in using them to teach genetics, Roy Franklin was interested in Computer Graphics to teach art, Alan Woodhurst came up with a new idea every other day - but then so did many of you - the A level groups wrote some brilliant programs. Tim O Shea (now Master of Birkbeck College, London) showed me one not long ago that he had written which was quite visionary in the way it taught and the techniques he used to program it.
The problem was in the man machine interface (paper tape and a teletype) was light years away from our cheap PC Colour Monitors - and price was a factor 20k - 25k for a single mono screen - 30k for colour. So the teletype was really all we had - 10 characters per second was also a major speed limitation.
I therefore decided that we should focus on the Management of Learning and received a large grant from the Social Science Research Council to fund a project. Keith Lovatt joined the team to be our educational analyst. We upgraded the 903 - but it all went horribly wrong and was resolved many years later on the steps outside the High Court, as is the way of these things.
The Eliott was replaced with a Hewlett Packard 2116B, with OMR reader and line printer: the first in a long line of hp systems that we used. (I have always had hp kit somewhere in my office {or now domestic network} since that day.)
For various reasons, which I have touched on before, we moved out of the cloakroom to the Quarles Building on Harold Hill where we had more space for staff and teaching....
Our link with the GE system at Fords in Dunton was quite an eye opener - modems were slow 300bps, but quicker than the teletype. The big GE system was an indicator of the power of access to a world wide network of information - I don't think we told you much about that at the time as it was not a really secure system - but it led to our making the hp system multi-user, putting 1200 baud modems in each school and writing an email system (Hermes) as well as other applications in the early 1980s.
Those days were real fun! It was tantalising and frustrating to see the potential of both computers and communications but not to be able to deliver them. I decided to move on to the second phase of what some would call a career and leave the hard work to a new generation of brighter teachers and more patient advisors... (Bill Broderick )

The other thing that stands out in my memory is how noisy the Eliot was. Some of the 'whiz kids' had programmed it to play tunes for the Summer Fair and Open Days (as well as noughts and crosses). When I went out to work in the big wide world (IBM 360/50), we had an IPLable card deck (Booting from a card reader device) that did something similar, but we had to tune in an FM radio to hear the tune. We also had a stripper program which loaded from the card reader that printed out a picture of a woman (using characters) and you could type in which item of clothing she took off, then the result was printed again - sad life of 1973 Computer Operator. By the way I don't remember the full spec. of the first machines, but I operated 360/30's with 32K memory and the 'big one' 360/50 with 64k. (Chris Fribbins)

After the Elliot 903I am also trying hard to remember the students in the year ahead of me that were very heavily involved in Computing on the Elliot at the time - I seem to remember Vince as one of the main ones. I have checked the '71 year book and see that L.D. Washington was the Vice-President, and Vince and S P Attridge were the secretaries of the Computer Club - does anybody know of anybody else that was involved in earlier years as well?
I know I was one of those who often got kicked out at lunchtime or after school in the early years, but missed out on a lot of potential 'programming' - I remember my 'programs' (Algol and Fortran later?) being nothing more than doing a random sum and after all the hassle of getting the program to compile (2 pass) and run, the excitement when I ran the output paper tape through the teletype to get the answer '3.34748362539'. I became an expert at using the manual paper tape winder (and being fascinated when I got to use an electric one later in my career in the big wide world). The other program I remember being run on a regular basis at summer fairs etc. was calculating and printing the value of Pi to many hundreds or thousands of decimal places (filling up many sheets of computer output). At the time I was becoming aware of computers, and only knew that the school were really getting in to expanding it beyond the Maths lessons (which were the school's main user) into other areas of the curriculum. (Chris Fribbins)

(Reply to above) I have absolutely no recollection. It can't have been much of a club! Colin Sibthorp was another very active computer person. We were not really interested in printing out 100 random numbers. We wanted to get beneath the Algol and Fortran compilers and find out what made the 903 tick.
One of our successes was to make the 903 play tunes. Recent postings, and a TV program on hackers, have shown that this was pretty groundbreaking stuff at the time, but we did not think so. It all seemed so natural.
I still have some fragments of code from my program that allowed crude musical notation as input to produce any (monophonic) tune to be played. We were featured on a Home Service (Radio 4 to you youngsters) program which was the equivalent of Tomorrow's World, and played Puppet on a String, which had won the Eurovision song contest the year before.
I take some pride in that the notation I used 30 years ago, is almost identical to Nokia's notation for entering personal ring tones on their mobile phones, but I don't think I could claim that they have ever seen it, so a copyright lawsuit is out of the question.
(On the paper tape winder) That winder was lethal. Running thin paper tape past human skin at great speed equals many deep paper cuts. It also had amazing potential to snap ones masterpiece in two if it got tangled.
(On the Pi calculating program) That program was the bane of my life! It was an integral part of the sixth form course, as I remember, and took about 24 hours to run. It was considered that A level course work was more important than fourth formers playing tunes, so we could not use it for days on end during that part of the course. (Vince Leatt)

I turned up this reference to the old Ford teletype & modem we used to play with after Bill & his computer outfit departed for the leafy suburbs of Harold Hill and Quarles school. Hacking in those days was a little easier than now. The teletype used to rotate around half a dozen or so schools and Havering Tech. Password security consisted of the teletype laying down a bed of overprinted characters designed to obscure the password when typed on top. However, this bed of characters was the same each time, so with careful inspection and a bit of trial and error, one could often work out which characters had been overprinted, particularly if the passwords were simple words or names. Fortunately, the previous school in the rotation often forgot to tear off the printout paper, so it didn't take long to compromise their security. Pulling out the teletype ink reel and working backwards through it reading the key imprints yielded further passwords, particularly if the reel was fairly new and hadn't cycled round more than a couple of times. Ds were easy as they were consecutive sequences along the lines of MP1006A, MP1006B etc. Before long, I had access to the accounts of all the schools in the rotation. This enabled wheezes like editing other kids’ programmes in other schools to print out abuse and ding the teletype bell to various rhythms, etc. One could also create files and directories with names like '.' which could barely be seen on the teletype printout, and allocate large amounts of disk (drum?) space to them. I used to borrow the teletype and modem at weekends sometimes and plug it into my parents' phone (not sure who was daft enough to give me permission to do this - assuming they did). I remember setting batch jobs going on a number of different accounts one night to calculate 'e' to an infinite number of decimal places. Apparently the computer time-share operating system at the time couldn't handle this, and as I understand it the whole Ford computer (which may have been plugged into their production lines) fell over for some considerable length of time. I never knew the full consequences of my actions, but an inquiry was instigated and Bill Broderick (who looked after the system) arrived at the school to interrogate the suspects. Somehow I got wind of this and threw a sickie, but Colin Sinclair and Keith Belcher (not sure about John Phillips) were called into a fuming JPC's office for interrogation. It all gets a bit hazy day I left school (fortunately it was just after my A level exams in 1975, so he had limited sanctions he could impose). On the last day when, as was his habit, he shook hands with every boy and wished them well with a smile, he grudgingly took my hand and with just a flicker of a smile in the corner of his mouth, hoped that Ford's would charge me for the damage. Shortly after that, Bill offered me a job as an operator/programmer at his computer-aided-learning centre at Quarles. I'm not sure if the two events were related. Bill - good to see you are still around, and do you have any memory of this? (Chris Boivin) I knew nothing of the exploit until well after the event. In fact you've just about doubled my knowledge of it today. I don't recall distinctly being interrogated by JPC (but on reflection I think that may have been one of the occasions I was in his study). (John Phillips)

Paul Teulon wrote :- "As a youngster amongst the group, I was wondering whether it was true that RLS was the first school in the country to have a computer?" .....and my old contemporary Colin Sibthorp reminisced accordingly about

the dear old Elliott 903!

Paul, there are a number of us on this list who owe our current livelihoods to the "first school computer in Britain/Europe" and the enthusiasm of Hon Member Bill Broderick for teaching us how to program the thing.  Apart from myself, there are Hon Members Byrne, East, Sibthorp and Herbert from my year alone, and I'm sure those from other years will put their hands up if prodded.  Like Colin, I actually worked on a 903 when I left school  - for seven years in my case! Amusing to think that the PC I'm using now has power beyond the wildest dreams of those who built the old school computer - unfortunately it also has Bill Gates' bloatware to slow it down to a speed we humans can keep up with!

First Computer: I am not sure of the date which is being offered for the first computer in a school but President Kennedy School in Coventry took possession of a computer whilst I was Head of History there in 1968. (K.L.Saxby)

As another of those with a career built on the mighty RLS computer, I was touched by Ian Mac's references to the PDP. I started work on an IBM 3031, but soon found the pleasures of the PDP much more enticing. 'Halt, Reset, Bootstrap Run, Load'. My employers (oil company) were also pioneers in computer drafting, using primitive M & S (??) machines, which morphed into Intergraphs. (Ian Puxley)

I remember our school having a computer in the middle 60's and our form teacher/maths teacher' Mr. Woodlice', as he was nicknamed, actually programmed it to play music. Do you remember this Andy? (John Perdrisat)

Colin Sibthorp wrote:- "The Liberty installed its 905 in 1963 or 4 I think. The music that was programmed into the 905 was the Entrance of the Queen of Sheba..."

Nay Lad, 't 903 appeared some time thereafter, 65 or 66 I believe (without going and looking it up). I do have vague memories of it becoming a 905 later but that may be total fantasy.

T'was indeed the Entry of The Queen of Sheba that she played - a paper tape about 3" in diameter when fully-rewound, god knows how it fitted into memory. The music went on for 2/3 minutes, too. I had a copy for the 903 which I looked after for 7 years after leaving school. (John Bailey)