Times Gone By: College's pioneering role to a computing de
Source: PERHAPS
INSPIRED PERHAPS ... Pupil 17-year-old Karen Deaville on a visit to the Stafford College’s computer centre in Blackheath Lane in 1978. Did she opt for a career in computer science?
ANYONE passing Stafford's Beaconside site on a certain day in 1966 would have watched as a massive crane lifted a gigantic box through a gap on the building's first floor where windows had to be removed to facilitate its arrival.
In reality, the "box" measuring 11 ft x 6 ft x 5 ft was an English Electric DEUCE computer and marked an early milestone in the pioneering of computing degree courses in an age when the word computer was still greeted with scepticism.
The site was that of the new Staffordshire College of Technology, later upgraded to polytechnic status and designated in 1993 as part of Staffordshire University.
Back in the early 1960s, engineers were dubious about the value of computers but those early pioneers of computer science successfully defended their ideas against traditional engineering disciplines.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine any modern shop floor being without computerisation and Stafford can be rightly proud of its role in computer history, its college grasping the chance to nurture those early would-be computer scientists.
A year earlier �C in 1965 �C Staffordshire College of Technology was one of five institutions to launch a degree course in computing, attracting just 11 students, one of whom was former Kingston School pupil Roy Newton, later to become the university's first professor of computing.
Those first computer students were aware that they were treading new ground. "You very quickly got the feeling that you are doing something innovative," he says, adding that subsequent changes in computer science have been "breathtaking".
Of those 11 students, 10 graduated (nine with honours) in 1969, one of them being Beryl Moore (nee Platt) who went on to lecture at the college and was selected to meet the Duke of Edinburgh to celebrate the first computing graduations.
It is fair to say that Stafford was well-placed to embrace the new technology... after all English Electric had been building computers for some years and the college was adjacent to the firm's prestigious Nelson Research Laboratories.
English Electric, above all, gave active support to the establishment of the degree courses which were led by Dr H L W (Les) Jackson, the college's head of mathematics and science.
Dr Jackson was supported by Oxford graduate Don Conway who became the course leader and had had a close relationship with English Electric, having worked at the Nelson Labs. Those pioneer students' tutors were Mr Conway (later to become professor), Derek Melluish and Dr David Sartain.
The arrival of the DEUCE computer was ground-breaking as course work got under way and involved much staff-swapping of the college and the Nelson labs which was also equipped with a DEUCE computer.
The course was spread over four years, with first-year students learning about programming, logic, statistics, economics and information theory. Examinations in programming were spread over six hours!
The students in their second year enhanced their knowledge of Information systems and the theory of programming, with staff of English Electric's Leo Marconi computer labs in Stoke contributing to the courses.
The course's third year was spent in industry where students put into practice the theory they had learned during the previous two years. Would you believe that among reading matter was Lord of the Rings, Alice in Wonderland and The Hobbit.
As Professor Newton explains: "The Lord the Rings is logically impeccable. These books helped students to adopt the thought processes required to be a computer scientist!"
Over the years, student numbers have increased. Those 11 pioneers were followed by 60 would-be computer scientists in 1966, and with the addition of HND courses, the awards attained now run into many thousands.
Computer scientists, of course, often talk in a language of their own and for those of us who regularly lose their patience with their home computers may be assured that in those early days the DEUCE computer took two hours to bring it into working order each day.
That particular model had 2,000 valves which needed the only air conditioning in the college and the mercury-filled delay lines (that is an original form of computer memory to you and I) had to be kept at a constant temperature of 44.7°C. Mild panic set in whenever there was a power cut.
When the Nelson Labs were no longer available, a former aircraft engine testing factory at Blackheath Lane became the computing department's headquarters coinciding with an expansion of courses and qualifications in a department of more than 100 academic staff and 50 technical and administrative staff.
By the early 1990s, the department was housed back at the Beaconside site in the form of the award-winning Octagon building... a far cry from those pioneering days of 1965.
Professor Newton underlines that Stafford played a major role in computing education and higher education levels in the UK and can be regarded as being in the pantheon as a pioneer in educating thousands of computer scientists in the past half-century.
Should anyone take the credit for Roy's own success as a computer scientist? He loved maths at Kingston school... as taught by a' brilliant' maths teacher called Nigel Gerrard.
If only he knew what role he had played in young Roy's career path.
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