By Julian Goldsmith, 15 July 2008 11:37
NEWS
IT chiefs have hit out at the lack of respect the UK as a nation gives to its computing heritage following the mothballing of the Museum of Computing in Swindon.
silicon.com asked a number of CIOs whether the UK made the most of its computing history and the answer was a resounding no.
CIO50 2008: Top 10
The UK's leading CIOs revealedÂ…
1.Robin Dargue Royal Mail
2.David Lister Royal Bank of Scotland
3.Neil Cameron Unilever
4.Catherine Doran Network Rail
5.John Suffolk UK government
6.Gordon Lovell-Read Siemens UK
7.Paul Coby British Airways
8.Tania Howarth Birds Eye Iglo Group
9.Simon Post Carphone Warehouse
10.Ben Wishart Whitbread
Some invoked the names of pioneers from the past and the present to illustrate how much the UK has contributed to modern computing.
European IT director at Key Equipment Finance, Nic Evans, said: "Heritage counts for naught in the information economy. Bletchley Park cracking Enigma or Brit Berners-Lee inventing the web gives us as much advantage as Stephenson's Rocket gives us a good national rail network."
Others reflected on the way the UK seems to have failed to make the most of its computing breakthroughs, allowing others to take advantage of our innovations.
Graham Yellowley, head of IT for investment bank Mitsubishi UFJ Securities said: "We have a history of brilliant people creating the most inventive computing related tools on limited budgets and then the intellectual property gets taken over by countries whose commercial sponsorship of such initiatives is much deeper than the UK's."
However, some questioned the point of venerating the past of an industry that reinvents itself so regularly.
David Supple, head of IT at Ecotec Research & Consulting noted that the industry as a whole might prefer not to remember the past.
Supple said: "Heritage and computing are seen as curious bedfellows - it seems an industry that strives to promote itself on bigger, better, faster is somewhat reluctant to mention its smaller, weaker, slower roots however worthy."
Nic Bellenberg, IT director at Hachette Filipacchi UK also questioned the usefulness of exhibiting computers in glass cases. What is more important is recognising the impact these machines had on the societies of their day.
He said: "I feel the most relevance for general interest is gained from seeing things working, and being able to understand what they were used to do. And then you really appreciate what home and work activities have changed immensely over the last 40 years. It shouldn't be about museums of computers, it should be about understanding systems and computing in a social and business historical context."
Mark Foulsham, head of IT at insurance company eSure agreed. Although not enough is done to remember the UK's computing heritage, less is being done to secure its computing future.
Foulsham said: "We can reflect on the past to assist in forward planning but computing history is littered with organisations who looked back rather than forward. So the more important issue is to ensure we're looking forward to invest in skills for future development in the UK. We need the next Google to be a UK start-up."
Comments
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1. Dr John L Dimmock
As a country we appear to take no interest in our achievements, a group of us fought for many years to PROVE to the Americans that Tommy Flowers invented the fist electronically programmable stored computing device (Colossus) and to be fair, a lot of the reasons why it took us so long was that Sir Tommy himself was mothballed for 50 years, national security and all that stuff
Fortunately that battle has been won
We also need to remember that the WORLDS first dedicated office computing device LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) is now on display in a museum in South Africa as those that run our country did not consider this machine to be of any public interest
LEO was designed and built to run the administration and kitchens at Hammersmith for Joe Lyons of the “Lyons Corner House” tea rooms
Dr John Dimmock
2. anonymous
This museum was the most un-comercial i have ever come accross! If i approach any other museum in the country and tell them i want to use them for a seminar event they fall over themselves to service me. When i eventually found out about the Computing Museum i immediatly approached them and got nowhere :-( none of these types of venues survive purely on visitors anymore they have to be comercial and this one just wasn't. Perhaps one day it'll come back in a more comerce friendly format. or maybe the idea (and enigma machine) will end up in the Science Museum who have a great corporate team :-)
3. Richard Sarson
The best reason why the early machines should be celebrated, is because they were much more innovative than what the UK industry does today – and were more advanced than the American machines of their day. Look at Colossus, the Frerrant/ Manchester Univ Mark One Star, Mercury, Atlas; the Cambridge/Joe Lyons LEO; the Birkbeck/ICT Hec4 and others. An unrepeated golden age of computer design.
Why today’s generation can learn from them is:
1. They were created by much closer ties between Industry and Universites than happen today.
2. They were created for a specific purpose, like breaking German codes or counting tea cakes.
3. The academics helped to create product, and were not diverted into writing airy-fairy learned papers.
4. The people who wrote the software had business experience rather than “computer science” degrees.
Since then, what have all the clever fellows in British academia and Industry produced? Other than Tim Berners Lee, just about zilch.
4. Michael A. Banks
Computing, like so many things, is very America-centric.
May I mention a book that credits Donald Watts Davies with his research in "packet-switching" (as well as coining the term), and discusses early teletext and Videotex in the UK, as well as the dialup service CIX? It's "On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders," which should be reaching bookstores just now.