Network (JANET)
3.2 The Computer Board
3.2.1 Early Days
The Computer Board, or to give its full title, the Computer Board for Universi- ties and Research Councils, was created in 1966. It was brought into existence to ease some of the problems that were confronting the universities and research councils in their attempts to fund the provision of computing resources. In 1966, computers meant “mainframe” computers. Computers then were physi- cally large. Leeds University’s first computer, a Ferranti Pegasus, filled the nave of the non-conformist chapel in which it was housed and its second computer, an English Electric KDF9, filled the Sunday School room at the rear of the chapel. Computers then were also expensive. The KDF9 as originally installed in 1962 cost about £250,000. For comparison in 1963 I bought a three bed-roomed detached house, in a decent suburb of Leeds, for £4,000. That says almost as
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much about the movements in university salaries as it does about the changes in prices of houses and of computers. More to the point, an expenditure of this order was comparable with the university’s annual equipment grant. It was clearly very difficult for a university to fund the acquisition of a computer, and having once purchased the machine, the subsequent recurrent costs for mainte- nance, operating staff and user support staff were a heavy burden.
A report by Professor Brian Flowers (1966) led to the creation of the Computer Board, which first met in September 1966. Its remit was to make recommenda- tions to the Secretary of State for the provision and support of computers in universities, and to advise research councils on their proposals for computers, excluding computers “provided solely and essentially for the purpose of spe- cific research projects”. The difference between the Board’s role in respect of universities, where it advised the Secretary of State as to how money should be invested, and the research councils, where it advised the Councils on their pro- posals is highly significant. Thede factosituation was that the Board was able to assign funds to universities for the purchase of equipment and for at least some part of the costs of maintenance, operation and support. In general, provided that the Board’s advice did not run counter to Government policy, and fitted the overall financial envelope of the funds assigned, Secretaries of State would accept it. The Board was also required to ensure that equipment supplied was used and operated effectively. The Board’s role with respect to Councils was rather different, in that it did not provide funds for initial purchase, and it was not responsible for ensuring that equipment was effectively used. I do not imply by this that research council computers were not effectively used, but the con- trol was exercised by the councils rather than the Board. A brief account of the Board’s work can be found in Verdon and Wells (1995)
It is worth considering the different approaches to provision of funds that would have underlain the decision making of the Computer Board and the sev- eral research councils. It must be clearly understood that the Board was not a part of the University Grants Committee. However their general approaches were rather similar. In essence the UGC, and the Board, each approached fund- ing issues on the basis that its role was to ensure that minimum standards were reached and maintained; they were concerned to achieve a level playing field, by filling in any perceived inadequacies. In contrast, each research council, quite rightly, saw its role as seeking out and supporting the work of centres of excel- lence. Then, as now, the best research work being undertaken often relied heavily on the provision of adequate computing resources, and as a conse- quence the research councils concentrated their funding on providing comput- ing resources for what they judged to be their best projects. There was thus an inbuilt tension between the work of the Board, which was attempting to remedy inadequacies in provision, an activity which of necessity directs some funds towards those sites where the level of computing provision was weakest, and the research councils which were attempting to improve still further the computing provision for those workers and projects which were already well provided. This difference reflected into the whole approach to cooperation between separate universities in meeting their computing needs. In the 1960s, computing was in effect always done on mainframes, and in what was then termed “batch” mode.
The individual user would submit her job to the Computer Centre, usually by walking across campus with a deck of cards or a reel of paper tape. Computer operators would run the job on the computer and sometime later the user would collect her results. The whole process might easily take several days. This meant that it was quite feasible to think of the computer being remote from the user, possibly not even on the same campus.
3.2.2 Grosch’s Law: Regional Computer Centres
In general terms, the power of mainframe computers increased rapidly with its capital cost, a fact summarized by “Grosch’s Law”, which asserted that the power of the computer increased as the square of its cost. In these circum- stances, it made good sense for two or more sites (i.e. universities) to pool their resources on funding one large system, rather than several smaller ones. There was, of course, a down side; each university could advance compelling why it should be the one to house the only computer. Between 1966, when the Board first came into existence, and the early 1970s, several regional computer centres were established. They were based in one of the larger universities in a geographical region, and were required by the Board to offer services to workers at other universities in that region. Users submitted their work in a variety of ways. Some users simply travelled to the Regional centre; some universities offered a courier service; some used a “remote workstation”. At that time a workstation consisted of input devices (paper tape reader or punched card reader) and output devices (paper tape punch, card punch or printer) which were connected via some form of interface unit to a data link to the regional centre. These data links were invariably operated over telephone circuits leased from the GPO, for the very simple reason that the GPO at that time had a monopoly in the provision of such circuits. These point to point links between regional centres and their clients in other universities gradually evolved into simple networks.
Over this same period, the research councils, driven by exactly the same eco- nomic imperatives were also developing similar networks. Each research coun- cil system was primarily intended for that council’s own purposes, and was usually located at one of that council’s laboratories. Each research council’s computers served two communities, one based in the council’s own sites, and consisting in essence of that councils own staff, and a second community of that council’s grant holders based in universities. In some cases a research council which had a large enough group of grant holders in a university department would fund the provision of a mainframe computer to meet the needs of that group, and might require that group to provide remote access computing facili- ties to grant holders in other departments or at other universities. It was there- fore possible that a university could have several workstations, one connecting to its Regional Computer Centre, and another or even several others, connecting to remote main frames located at research council sites.
There was an important addition to this range of systems. In 1964 the Atlas Computer Laboratory was established, adjacent to the National Institute for
Research in Nuclear Science (NIRNS) at Chilton south of Oxford. This housed an ICL Atlas computer, at that time among the most powerful computers avail- able in the world, which was specifically designated to provide access to com- puting resources to anyone in the university or research council sector who could demonstrate a sufficiently good case. It was almost axiomatic that some of those bidding for time on the Atlas would also be holders of research council grants, but that was not a prerequisite. The Atlas computer was later to become a benchmark standard for assessing the power of a computer system.