Extra

ICL 2966 Mainframe

A short recording by me of the ex-Tarmac ICL 2966 mainframe in operational condition at the National Museum of Computing. Watch on YouTube

More info: https://www.tnmoc.org/icl-2966

This system was a larger, more capable grandchild of the ICL 2903e which was marketed to schools. More information on the excellent ICL-CES site.

BBC Schools/Open University - Computing and Computers

According to the BBC archive, this series was first broadcast in 1981, and was repeated several times in 1984. There are five or six episodes, and if you're interested in late 70s / early 80s computing, then you'll find these of interest. There is plenty of ICL mainframes on show, and gives you a great representation of many UK organisations computing in the early 80s.

• Mainframes and Micros Unite, featuring Scottish Gas
• Batch processing, featuring the Royal Bank of Scotland
• One Way or Another, featuring Akai & Sainsburys
• Operating Systems, featuring BOC Datasolve and Jobline
• Indexed Files, featuring Exeter Health Services
• File Hierarchies and Reorganisation, featuring British Airways

Paper Tape at the Centre for Computing History

At the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge you can punch a message onto tape. It uses a 5 bit (ITA-2 CCITT-2 Baudot-Murray) code: reference https://www.cryptomuseum.com/ref/ita2/index.htm. Watch on YouTube

Not directly related to ICL-CES but relevant to the context of how students' code, written on coding sheets, may have been converted into paper tape to be input into a machine for processing. Students would then have received (at a later date) a printout of their program output and their program on a roll of tape!

Mathematics in School — 1972 Advertisement

"Back Matter." Mathematics in School, vol. 1, no. 3, 1972. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30210760. Accessed 29 Mar. 2024.

Scotland's Computer Education Project

More details included in this article:

Smart, N. M. "Computer Page: The Computer — Yours Obediently." Mathematics in School, vol. 4, no. 1, 1975, pp. 13–15. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30211308. Accessed 31 Mar. 2024.

Mathematics in School — May 1975

Interesting article from 1975 — nice examples, although the images used wouldn't be used in the same way today.

Howden, B. "Computer Page: Should Circuit Algebra Be Switched from Mathematics Courses to Computer Studies?" Mathematics in School, vol. 4, no. 3, 1975, pp. 16–18. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30211376. Accessed 31 Mar. 2024.

Computers in Schools — 1970 World Conference Paper

Computers and Secondary Education
M.G.P Hutchinson
Paper from the 1970 World Conference on Computer Education