The IAP at 50. Reflections from John Davis, Fellow.

My own early years saw computers become available and then essential. During this time I have maintained civil, mechanical, water and environmental interests and been glad to support IAP which linked such interests whilst I was abroad for so many years. I joined when Bob Charles was Secretary and when I was in Sri Lanka, where I lived for ten years. I lived in Colombo and Arthur C Clarke lived nearby. He had six computers and a telescope on the roof. We used to have great discussions about fractals. Arthur was a Director of Underwater Safaris and I did a lot of diving. Happy days.

I became a graduate engineer Under Agreement in 1961 in offices in Park Lane. It was effectively an apprenticeship and older colleagues said I was lucky that my parents did not have to pay a Premium for my training, and that I had been hired at a salary (£750 p.a.). The essential tool was the slide-rule. There were mechanical calculator machines that pinged in reverse to divide. It was another world. I remember a colleague who had completed his Agreement and bought a bowler hat.

Years passed and it was not until 1977 that I wrote my first program in FORTRAN. The punched cards were given to a technician to run and get back either ‘failure’ or the magical Output.

My career took me abroad and during a flight stopover in 1979 I bought an HP41 programmable calculator. I wrote programs on magnetic card that enabled engineers to rapidly check their reinforced concrete design for compliance with codes of practice. I was able to increase the power of the machine using EPROMs and update these after erasing them with ultra-violet light in the aptly named DHOBI box and was soon using them for various admin tasks.

I was in California in 1982 and for 1200 dollars bought an Osborne 1 ‘portable’ computer (weight 32lbs). This had twin floppy disk drives and a five inch diagonal monitor. It was bundled with disks for CP/M, WordStar, SuperCalc, CBASIC and MBASIC. I was also able to get FORTH and CardBox. However the real prize was the superb ‘User’s Reference Guide’ which is the best I ever saw and was in my view worth the total price on its own.

When next visiting the UK I was asked by one of the firm’s accountants how I had compiled accounts and various admin information, and explained that travelling with a computer was like taking an office along.

Soon computers became essential. I may have been one of the first to use a dive computer. My current computer has SSD but I recently got out the Osborne 1 and floppy disks and found, in almost childish wonder, that after 40 years, it is still able to run.