late october 1970

Thursday

October ?

Thank you for the letter. I am afraid I carried the last one round with me for about a week without posting it so you may have had a gap without any news from me. .I have been very busy since Tony left going out to dinner nearly every night. I went to a concert last night and enjoyed it very much. Unfortunately I had a cold this week and have been feeling sleepy. Last week I went to Brno for 4 days and stayed with A.L and V.L.. I spent a whole day giving a lecture on discs and another trying to solve PERT problems. On Friday night we went out for a meal to the restaurant in Brno castle. I had a very nice Chinese dish- quite a surprise to see it on the menu. All the I.C.L. people were there. We have some extra programmers from London actually programming in the hope they can get the customer programmes working in time. We drank wine and listened to the gypsy band and afterwards went back to V.L.’s for coffee. It was 3 am when we finally got to bed.

On Saturday after a late start we went out in the countryside near Brno. The autumn tress were fabulous- just at their best with the sun shining on them, We found one mushroom in the woods, a bedela which I had for breakfast on Sunday- delicious not unlike our mushrooms. Now the trees are past their best- too many leaves have fallen but last weekend they were perfect.

On Sunday morning I helped with some apple picking and of course it reminded me of the orchard and home. I flew back to Prague Sunday afternoon so I had time to do some housework. This week I have been quite busy at work but remembered to post Auntie Dorothy and Nicky’s birthday cards. I sent Nicky’s card to your address as I thought Paula would probably be staying with you. Give her my love and say sorry that I have not replied to her letter yet. It is difficult with this extra person, Tony to write to in England. I hope Paula will be with you the weekend of the 23^rd as I would like to buy her something practical like clothes or shoes for Paula and Nicky’s birthdays.

Have you been bothered by the co-op insurance man at all? I suddenly realised I forgot to tell him we would be leaving England so I must be a little behind with my payments? I also realised the other day I had not collected my co-op dividend- I hope it is still there. I was also thinking (see what happens without Tony- all this thinking) I ought to have my eyes tested again as it is about 4 years since I had them done. Could you make me an appointment at the co-op or elsewhere on Sat 24^th October or Monday 10^th November and could you post any new glasses I needed to me later? I always seem to have a long list of jobs for you whenever I write. What would I do without my ‘agent in England’

I had better close now and look as if I am working!

Lots of love to everyone

Gill remembers giving the lecture on disc technology in Brno. Discs were the cutting edge technology of their time, and the ability to go to a piece of data without having to read through all the preceding records quite revolutionised the speed of processing programmes. These were not CD type discs but large and heavy 15 inch diameter things, housed in fridge sized cabinets. Initially such discs were ‘Fixed Discs’ that were not interchangeable. These were similar to huge magnetic ‘drums’ which were just coming into use (  We had one at a customer in Holland a couple of years later). The race was on to develop more immediate access to data to avoid trawling through large magnetic tapes when the data you needed might be at the very end. There were even machines (still largely prototype at the time at the UK Post Office I recall) using Magnetic Cards of about 4 by 8 inch held in a carousel and then picked up and projected at high speed along narrow shoots to be wrapped round a cylindrical reader before being whizzed back to the carousel for filing.

Gill gave a talk on the even newer exchangeable disc drives. This was quite amusing and typical of the way I.C.L. operated. She had the technical manual not given to customers and was able to tell them how the discs were organised and controlled but had never as yet written a programme using one.

The Czech and other European countries were very keen to use Pert and resource allocation. It fitted in very well with their central planning. Gill was lucky to have worked on the PERT Resource Allocation package for the smallest system 4 computer. Nowadays it would only be a fraction of the computer power in a mobile phone. She remembered having to reduce the coding to the minimum to fit into the main memory store. She was particularly proud of her coding to predict and take account of leap years. We wish Microsoft would be so diligent when writing their software which these days takes up more and more computer power and memory- always forcing you to buy the latest machine.