ABOUT BOB
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Where do you start?
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How did I get from the Steam Era to the Computer Era? ... I think that I just blinked.
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The steam Locomotion era was an exciting time for the world. Since George Stevenson’s first steam train ran in 1825, the world of travel has been changed by fast transportation. We have moved from 15 MPH (24 KPH) in Stevenson’s Locomotion No 1, to Shanghai’s Maglev 267 mph in 2017. Steam trains have always been a fascination for little boys.
My interest in steam trains was inevitable, having been born into a small railway town called Junee in 1938. My father worked as a shunter and my mother in the Railway Refreshment Rooms. My grandfather also worked for the NSW Government Railways as a fettler and when I asked him why a lot of his cutlery was branded R.R.R. he claimed it was his personal initials Richard Robert Rosengreen. I had my doubts!
My father Joseph Rosengreen took up a Shunter position in Enfield marshalling yard in the early 1940’s, so we made the move to Sydney. Our home was less than a mile from the largest marshalling yard in the southern hemisphere, which became the playground of my brothers and myself.
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By 15 years of age, our destiny had been pre-ordained and my older brother Athol started in the railway as an Apprentice Electrician, followed by me, and then younger brother Noel. My sister Margaret escaped her destiny by walking into the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) and suggested that they hire her.
Well, what of my own personal ambition?
During my 5-year apprenticeship, I read a lot about the Australian Snowy Mountain Scheme which was a major hydro-electricity scheme. It involved the diversion of a number of rivers into large storage dams for later release. I wanted to be part of this great project. I made a couple of trips to the Snowy Mountains looking to secure a position but nothing came about.
As my apprenticeship was completing, I applied to an advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald for a position as a Technician/Service Engineer in an Australian subsidiary (Hollerith (Aust) Pty Ltd) of an English Punch card equipment manufacturer called British Tabulating Machines. They eventually, through a number of mergers became International Computers Limited (ICL).
When I was accepted in 1959 I moved from the Steam Era, as it was dying, to the Computer Era, as it was growing.
Little did I realise that I was actually moving from the Industrial Revolution to the Information Revolution.
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There were of course very few computers in Australia at that time.
Sydney University became the first Australian university to build a computer. It built SILLIAC which was based on the plans of Illinois university computer called ILLIAC.
As you would expect in Australia, it was built with the aid of a gentleman who made a lot of money from his horse's Melbourne Cup win.
I did attend to a couple of SILLIAC service calls in the early 1960’s, but I was only working on some peripheral machines that converted punch cards to paper tape. When I started at Hollerith I had to go to Melbourne for three months training. Every subsequent year more training came with new equipment, as we moved from electro-mechanical equipment, to valves, to transistors and then onto solid state circuits.
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I was continually training to stay in the same position for over six years, not to get ahead. I thought Accountancy hadn’t changed much in a hundred years, so I went back to college to study Accountancy which qualified me to move from Technical Support to Operations Management in a number of computer centres.
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This is a Work in Progress
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