An interview with Brian Grimshaw conducted by Mike Halley on 9 February 2021 as part of the LEO Computers Society Oral History Project.

Transcript :

Brian Grimshaw, interviewed by Mike Hally 

Transcribed and edited with audio 24 Jan 26 – Jon Hales, volunteer at CCH

INT: It's the 9th of February 2021 and I'm Mike Hally.
 I'm interviewing Brian Grimshaw to give us the story of his involvement with Leo Computers from the earliest days.
 Good morning, Brian.

BG: - Morning.

INT: We are recording this interview as a part of the Leo Computers Society Oral History Project.
 The audio version and the transcript will be lodged at a central archive and made available for researchers and members of the public.
 So perhaps you'd like to introduce yourself for the recording and then we can get into the questions and answers.

BG: Right.  So my name's Brian Grimshaw.
 I went to work for Shellmex-BP as it was when I left school at the age of 18.

INT: Okay, let's get back to just get a few basics in place then.  So can you tell me where and when you were born?

BG: - I was born in Stretford in Manchester which is about a mile from Old Trafford.

INT: I used to know it all very well.  I lived in Chorley for many years.

BG: Right.

INT: Very familiar with the whole area.

BG: Okay.

INT: -It's great to be speaking to someone who lives there now and was born there.
 So what did your father and mother do?

BG: Well, my father, I can't remember what he started doing but he, not long after he was demobbed, which I think was in 1948, which coincidentally was the year I was born, he started working for Kellogg's Cereals or Cornflakes, whatever you want to call them, which was based in Trafford Park.
 So we used to, I think he's used to cycle to work in those days.
 And my mother used to work, well, she worked in munitions factory during the war, of course.
 She went to work for Goblin Foods, which made things like steak and kidney pies in a tin.
 And she think she worked in the packing department and that was based, not just about in Urmston, which is the next borough to Stretford.

INT: It's interesting you mentioned cycling to work.
 I can remember seeing pictures of people in the fifties, thousands of cycles leaving big factory gates.

BG: That's right.

INT: Not a car in sight.

BG: That's right, yeah, and no car park.
 
INT: So, no, absolutely. So just before we get onto schooling and education, any particular very early memories of before you'd even gone to school, of growing up in that area?

BG: - Well, yes, we used to live very close to the public baths.
 And I remember one evening, 'cause [because] I was a bit of a night owl then, I still am, my father and I went round to the back of the local baths with a tin bucket and helped ourselves to some Coke [fuel for heating; not the drink Coca Cola].
 And as we were in a metal bucket, perhaps not, well, plastic buckets didn't exist in those days.
 But we didn't think it out really very well.
 And halfway through filling the bucket, there was a voice which said, "Good evening", it's the local Bobby. So my father had to do some grovelling.
 Bobby understood what the situation was, so he got away with a caution.
 And another time, being quite adventurous, I managed to climb out of my cots quite early on in my career, if you like, by pushing all the bedclothes to one end.
 And my mother apparently knew that I could do this, 'cause [because] she could hear the bump when I dropped to the floor of the bedroom.
 But she didn't hear me then creep down the stairs and go out the front door.
 I used the chair from the hall to reach the Yale [lock] on the front door.
 And out into the night I went.
 And I was standing at the crossroads, quite a busy crossroads, looking at the traffic lights, when again, the local policeman came up and sort of said, "Good evening, what's your name?" And I saw him and he said, "What are you doing?" And he said, I said, "I'm looking at these traffic lights." And he said, "Oh, does your mummy and daddy know you're out?" So I said, "No." He said, "Oh, do you know where you live?" So I said, "Yeah." So he said, "Well, you want to take me back?" So he took me home and I didn't come to any harm.
 But again, it was in the days when the policeman were out there walking about.

INT: - Absolutely, yeah.
 So moving on to schooling then, [would] you tell me about your primary school?

BG: Yeah, Moss Park Primary.  So I used to walk to that.
 That wasn't too far away, about a mile and a half, maybe.
 And then from there I passed the 11 plus and went to Stretford Grammar School. 

INT: What sort of subjects interested you there in the grammar school?

BG: I was very much into taking things to pieces, but not necessarily putting them back together.
 And science, really, I was sort of a science, maths person. But I also ... [interrupted]

INT: So really from quite early on then you're into the technical side of things.

BG: - Yeah, yeah.
 Quite early on I got a Meccano set, which was one of my favourite things to do.
 And building things and finding out how things worked, things like that.
 So I was quite inquisitive, which I suppose led to my career choice in a way.
 Although when I did my O levels, I got seven O levels, that was quite good.
 So I went on to do A levels, but I think I discovered girls around about then.
 So I didn't get any of my A levels.
 But I was looking through the news page, the Manchester Evening News, and there were a couple of adverts in there.
 One was for Shell as a computer operator, which I didn't know what that was, but it sounded quite interesting.
 And another one was for ICI as a lab technician.
 So I applied for both of those.
 Shell came back first with the offer of a job interview.
 I did the job interview, did the aptitude test, got offered the job and took it.
 And that was all before ICI had even replied.
 So if it had been the other way around, I'd have had a completely different career. 

INT: Yeah, so what year would that be?
 Were you still 18 when you ...

BG: I think I was.
 I've been trying to work this out, but because my birthday is in December, Christmas Eve, terrible day to have a birthday, but I don't think there was much planning went into me, so... 

INT: And that was 1948 you were born, wasn't it?

BG: Yes. 

INT: So that would be about '66, '67?

BG: - Yeah, it would be, yeah.
 But I was probably a year older because it went to September usually.
 So if you were before September, you were in that year.
 And if, so I would be in the year behind.
 So I'd be quite old for my age group, yeah.
 So you have to be 18 because it was shift work.
 So I was definitely old enough.
 So I was probably 18.
 I think it was about September of '67 or '68, '67 probably, yeah.
 - 
 
INT: Yeah. So, and you said you didn't know what a computer operator was.
 Did you know anything about computers then?

BG: - I think I did.
 Well, I'd had encyclopaedias, I think, which had some early mention of them.
 So I had a vague idea.
 And then they were, around about that time, they were starting to appear in television programs like "Doctor Who" and things like that.
 But all the usual ways that they showed computers in those days with lots of flashing lights and things going round and stuff like that, so.

INT: And of course, we were into the space race at that point.
 So there must have been ...

BG: Yeah, yeah. 

INT:  Fair amount of talk about computers for the moon shots and so on.

BG: The moon shots, yeah.
 - Mm-hmm.
 
INT: . - Yeah, yeah. And did you have any friends or people in the family who knew about computing or was it just something you picked up, yeah?

BG: - No, it was completely unheard of, really, in all my circle of friends anyway.

INT: Yeah.

BG:  And of course, my own father [interrupted].

INT:  Sure. So can you tell me about starting with Shell and becoming a computer operator?

BG: - Yes, so as I say, it was shift work, which the early shift, which I think started at about seven o'clock in the morning, that was quite difficult to get to from Stretford.
 It meant getting two buses and they didn't always run on time.
 So a few times, and I was in the probation period, which was about three months.
 So in that time, I had a little bit of trouble.
 Sometimes I was late.
 The other shifts, so you went 7-3, 3-11, 11-7.
 Though the other ones weren't too bad, but the early one.
 So I did get called into the shift leader's office and told, you know, I need to.
 So I did something quite drastic, really, and I left home because somebody who I work with, they were sharing a house in Didsbury.
 And one of the persons in the house was leaving 'cause [because] he was getting married.
 And he said, "Oh, you've got a spare room if you want to move in." So I said, "Right, I'll do that." And of course, I'd only been working about three months.
 My mother was absolutely mortified when John came to pick me up in his sports car.
 So I put my stuff on the seat and then I sat on the back scuttling off.
 We went down the road and she was very upset about it, really, but at least then I could get to work on time 'cause [because] John was on the same shift as me and he had a car, so. 

INT: Then there has to come a point when you leave home, isn't there?
It's becoming an adult.

BG: - Well, it is, yeah.
 But it was rather a sort of rushed thing because, really, the job necessity that I had to be there at the early time and public transport wasn't right up to the jump, so, well, not from where I live. 

INT: So what were you doing in that probationary period with the computer?
 What was your job and what was your training?

BG: - They actually started you on a department called 'Chopping and Decalating'.
 So this is when the invoices came off the printer and then they all had to be chopped into their individual sheets and the sprockets taken off, that was the decalating part.
 And then we used to put them in the envelopes in the mailing room on the night shift and everybody sat around and did that, folding them up, putting them in the envelopes.
 And then, of course, as technology moved on, they got machines to do that and then they got, because they had mailing staff in the daytime, but none in the evening, but they got machines to do it and eventually we stopped doing that.
 So, but in between the menial tasks, if you like, you was learning to, so I went on the course and I've still got my manual upstairs and then when you came back, you were put on the console or take loading, that was another sort of starter for 10.
 But eventually, after about three months, you could run the machine single-handedly, not that you ever had to. 

INT: Did that include learning how to program as well?

BG: - No, no, that was, I never did any Leo programming.
 Now, Leo programming, they had their own language or languages, the high level language.
 So that would be equivalent to COBOL in the business world.
 It was called CLEO, which was Leo with a C on the front for commands, I think.
 And then as with the COBOL, COBOL gets translated into assembler, that's with the compiler.
 And then the assembler goes in to another phase, which converts it into machine code.
 Well, on CLEO, with CLEO, CLEO went to Intercode, so you could write in Intercode, it was the lower level.
 And then Intercode was translated into machine code.
 And we had a program, I remember, 52301 was the pricing program.
 And at month end, it used to run for 19 hours.
 And if anything went wrong, like we had an I/O error on a tape or something like that, it was a nightmare because we'd have the engineers out, they'd be taking the tapes off the decks and transferring them to different decks, trying to get over this hiccup.
 So a couple of guys who were the top guys in the coding section, they recoded it in Intercode.
 We ran it for these 19 hour things, we ran it for the first time and it took seven hours.
 So that's how much time it saved by not having, 'cause [because] obviously the CLEO is a compromise.
 So it generates a code that can fit lots of different situations.
 So there's lots more of it.
 Whereas if you go straight for the Intercode, you can just concentrate on your particular problem and make it much more efficient.
 So that was quite an achievement, but I didn't actually ever get involved in that because after about probably getting on for a year, they also ran, there was a department called Agency, which ran the fuel card system for customers.
 Basically you buy your fuel with a credit card or an Agency card, and then you get your bill at the end of the month.
 And they had a separate system for that, which was a 1004, I think it was an ICT originally, but then Univac took them over, 'cause [because] we got a second one.
 And that was card-based tape units, two tape units.
 And we had the double memory version, which was 2K instead of 1K.
 And that was mostly done, they ran it in the daytime.
 The data vets were done in the daytime because then the reports would go back, be corrected and resubbed.
 But there were trays of cards with batch headers.
 And in the night, you did all those cards that were accepted, then went into the two, the invoice and the credit note runs, and that was done in the night.
 So I started, we had ladies in the day running them, and then the ops took it over at night.
 And I was quite keen, and the thing was, you worked on your own, and that suited me.
 I wasn't really, I wouldn't say I wasn't a team player, but I was very keen to set my own agenda.
 So I volunteered to do that, and I did that for quite a few years.
 And then I went to programming on that, but that was a strange system 'cause [because] it involved wires and a plug board.

INT: Oh yeah.

BG: So that was a completely different concept to how I ended up when I started writing proper code.

INT: So just going back to the LEO, couple of points I should clarify here.
 Do you know which model of LEO it was?
 Would it be a LEO III by that time?

BG: - Yeah, we had three, I think one of them was a 36.

INT: Right.

BG: And I can't remember what the number of the other one was, but it was quite low down, I think it might've been 313.
 That sounds awfully unlucky though.

BG: Well, we had two, and of course they had two in Hemel Hempstead, which was, but because we were, they'd amalgamated the accounts side of Shell and BP, and set up Shellmex and BP.
 So we processed the Northern regions, and the BP site processed the Southern regions.
 And so the batches went to the, the sales went to the various places depending on which garage you purchased the fuel at.
 So Shell people, BP garages, that meant that BP did the credit note for their garage, but we did the invoice for our customer.
 So there were tapes going up and down the M6 every day with the transactions that were to be done in the South.
 We got the ones that were done in the North for our customers, yeah.

INT: Right, and I see from the email you originally sent Mike to Tyzac that the training manual was specifically for a LEO III, so I guess that...
BG: - Yes, yes. It's an operator's training manual.
 So we've got all the things, all the commands in there. 

INT: Your input was always by tape, was it, for the LEO?

BG: - Well, the commands ... [interrupted] 

INT: Or did you use punch cards?

BG: - No, the commands were put in on switches, which is like a binary system.

INT: Right.

BG: So there were three banks of four switches.
 So no switches was zero, and all switches would be F, I guess, which is, we didn't have that many channels, but it went up to about 13 on the tape units.
 And what you used to do is, if you wanted to allocate a program, you put an allocate command on the switches, and part of that command read the paper tape that told it which program it was loading, and various other things, parameters, I think, for it.
 But you have to remember, it's a TOSPA, it's a tape operating system.
 There were no disks on it.
 So when you typed in the program number, they would be on a tape, and there might be half a dozen, a dozen of them.
 So it used to scan the tape to find that reference number, and then load it from there, and then it would allocate the devices that it needed, and you'd have to do something called RTI, which was the piece of tape you put in that allowed you to write on the tape.
 So unless the librarian had given it the okay to be overwritten, you wouldn't have been able to write on it.
 That'd stop you from getting the tapes wrong and writing on something vital, like the customer master record or, and then ... [interrupted].

INT: So clearly, if you could write on it, you're talking about magnetic tape, aren't you?
 Not paper tape in that case.

BG: Yes, yes, yes.
 It's very much like the old cassette stuff, except twice as wide, because the engineers had built a splitter, and you could get the half-inch wide tape, put it through the machine, and you got two quarter-inch tapes out, which you could then put on a spool and use in your cassette player.

INT: Right. (laughs). 

BG: You had to do something in the night time, 'cause [because] they were [inaudible] full of wood.

INT: (laughs) Yes.

BG: Well, they used to fix faults.
 They had a test deck in their office, and used to be able to push the boards in, find the faulty component, replace it.
 So it was much more hands-on than it would become now, because like with your central heating, you'd just come and take the old PCB out, put a completely new one in, charge you up 130 pounds or whatever, and drive off with the old one, which presumably gets skipped, I would suggest, yeah. 

INT: Yeah, and was the Leo 3 quite reliable by that time?
 Or did you have a lot of engineering?

BG: It was quite reliable.
 We did have some, we had a couple of issues.
 One, we had a lot of trouble with certain tape units, but they'd start giving parity errors.
 And we got to the point where the engineers scraped some sort of deposit off the heads, the reading heads, sent it away, and it came back, and it turned out to be nuts and raisins.
 And one of the guys, it was because we had overalls, little grey overalls, he'd had a pocket full of these, and he'd be eating them, and then putting the tapes up, and of course he transferred whatever on.
 And so we sorted that problem out.
 And then another famous incident, the paper tape came on a cardboard core, which was like a section of a toilet roll, but quite ... [incomplete].
 And occasionally these got dropped on the floor, and somebody casually walking down to the computer room, kicked one, and it hit, underneath the console was all the power unit's controls, and it hit the AC off button on the [...], and the close down sequence specifically said, make sure you turn off the DC first, and then turn off the AC.
 So the machine went, "mm", and could we get it going again?
No, we couldn't.
 So we were all nights, we got the engineers that were there, the resident two guys, they went through all their jets [unclear], and they couldn't get it going.
 So then they rang Kidsgrove, which was where the boffins were.
 And the next morning, a group of guys arrived, and you could tell they were slightly higher up the ranking, 'cause [because] they had bigger screwdrivers than our guys, a longer version, 'cause [because] one of the things he used to do was run them down the relays, and any that were on the blink, that would make them fail.
 So that was like a standard maintenance procedure, sounded a bit Heath Robinson, but it did the job.
 So, and they've spent about six hours, and they couldn't get it going.
 So they called in the top boys, they've had massive screwdrivers (laughs) like spades, but they managed to get it going.
 Then we had to have the post-mortem.
 Well, that was fascinating, because the guy that had kicked the core was a famous guy called Jim Hitchin.
 He was legendary, I can only say.
 And, but he was also a chief operator at the time.
 So when we got on the office, the first thing he said was, I could just say, he said, "I don't think we should have a witch hunt for this." He said, "I think we should just, you know, "take it on board as a lesson learned and move on." So that's what they did.
 So we didn't find out it was him, but we all knew.
 He denied it, but we knew.
 So, but we had, you know, other than that, they were fantastic things, they really were.
 We had an interesting [...], we used to have visitors came down the corridor, looked through the glass at these tapes going round, and we'd be feeding white tape in to the tape reader.
 And these tapes would be going round with brown magnetic tape on them.
 Somebody said, "At what point does it change colour?
 "What, how would you get it to go from white?
 "Do you have to dye it?" 

We'd say, "No, no, it's not the same." It goes in into the machine as data and it's getting registered.
 But people didn't understand it.
 It was all new stuff, amazing.
 It was a fantastic time, yeah.

INT: It sounds like you were having a good time as well, you and your mates.

BG: Yeah, yeah.
 Yeah, they were. They used to work quite hard, but they played quite hard as well.
 So we had a number of pubs quite conveniently located.
 My group, we used to go to one called the Portway, which was a bit, it's a 'spit and sawdust', but we managed to talk them into getting Guinness on.
 'cause [because] there were quite a few people very keen on drinking Guinness.
 So that was our, but there were other ones in the area that the clerical staff favoured different ones.
 They didn't want to mix with these.
 They didn't want to mix with these technical people.
 They were a breed apart sort of thing.
 But yeah, it was very, very good.
 It was an amazing time, really.

INT: I'm just interested in what you mentioned about that, not mixing with the clerical and so on.
 'cause [because] I was at British Aerospace at Wharton for many years.
 And even at the time, it seemed extraordinary.
 It's stranger still looking back.
 There was something like seven different levels of canteen from the hourly rated staff up to the directors.
 And as you got up to another level, you might get tablecloths.
 And another level, you might get silver service.
 And then there'd be waitresses and directors canteen.
 You had wine, just unbelievable.

BG: Yeah, no, it wasn't quite that bad.
 We did have one canteen, but it was definitely ..., it was a bit strange because the clerical side was almost like a bolt on.
 So it was a computer centre, really, with clerical departments.
 So I think the feeling was that they were second class citizens in that environment.
 But when I started on the programming side, I used to go around at least once a week and talk to the people that were using my systems and say, you know, is it all right?
 Is there anything I can do?
 Guy would say, this report you produce, it could seem he's putting stickers in it.
 He's got yellow stickers coming out of it and all.
 I said, why are you putting those?
 He said, it's not in the right order.
 I said, well, why don't you say?
 I can change it for you. Can you?
 I said, yeah.
 I said, it's no problem.
 It'll take me about half an hour.
 Well, that'd be brilliant then, okay.
 So I went and changed the sort parameters.
 Next day I went, brilliant, he said.
 It's brilliant that now, fantastic, perfect.
 I thought, they don't have feedback meetings.
 So I went to the boss and I said, you know, some of you old guys out there are struggling and they should be able to talk to us.
 So can you?
 He said, yeah, we'll have a meeting.
 We'll put in the meeting and the schedule every week.
 So if you can come down and I said, that's not a problem.
 So I mean, it was just that sort of environment 'cause [because] we were finding out things.
 I mean, he was the guy that we had, the customer number was 10 digits all one after the other.
 And the punch girl used to lose where she was.
 So she put the same one in twice and then the check digit failed.
 So he said, I need to know how many of each type of report we're getting.
 And I'll start with the worst that was failed GAC number.
 And he said, right.
 And he put, he was the guy that's either seen it somewhere or he put spaces between them.
 So if you look at your credit card, it's so many numbers then a space.
 And that meant the girl had somewhere to stop and then start again.
 And the numbers went down by 80% just by making that simple change.

INT: Ah, it's fascinating, yeah.

BG: - Yes, yes.- Yeah, there's all sorts of things that we did. 

INT: Yeah, just moving on then from the Leo days, did you mention you went to an ICT computer next?

BG: Yeah, 1004 [ten-oh- four].
 And so that was plug board.
 Very strange concept once you got the hang of it.
 And when it got complicated, the wires, they were different colours and different lengths.
 And the boards that we'd had a while, they used to get pot belly on them because the wires had sag.
 So they were wider at the bottom than they were at the top.
 And making changes to those was quite something because you had to push the plug out from the opposite side to the wire and then try and find, take it out and remember where it went in case you had to.
 But that was another, we had an incident with that where the girls' aprons had buttons on and these wires were exposed.
 And when they put the boards in, you have to hook them on and they'd pull the buttons off them.
 So he said, we'll put covers on, we've got covers.
 And I'm going, well, this is going to be a nightmare 'cause [because] they got four screws in to hold them.
 And every time we had to go down and put a plug back 'cause [because] somebody had pushed it in when the pin was bent or we had to take the cover off, put the cover back on, he said.
 So he said, oh, we can't have this.
 Anyway, he said, I know, we'll get Velcro.
 So they just changed the overalls to use Velcro and then it solved all the problems.
 So we were even doing clothes modifications as well, as program modifications.

INT: That's amazing, all these sort of simple practical solutions.

BG:  Yeah, but it was quite that .... 

INT: Did you stay in computing for your working life or did you move, yeah?

BG: Yes, yes, yes.

INT: So just tell me briefly what other computers you worked on.

BG: Right, so from the 1004, the Agency system went to a DOS-based system, which was produced by Univac called Univac 9400.
 So the program was on the 1004, there were about four of us by then.
 We all had to go on this three-week intensive course to learn how to write code for a disk-based operating system.
 I was designated as the assembler man because I was given the data vets [unclear] and the guy they gave us, the expert, he said, well, I've looked at the spec of the program and it's not gonna [going to] fit in the memory if you write it in COBOL.
 He said you're gonna [going to] have to write it in assembler.
 So you'll need to go on the assembler course and the technical, not the programming guy, but the technical guy, he went on that course as well 'cause [because] he was gonna [going to] have to write a print program that stayed in the machine all the time.
 So he was gonna [going to] have to write it as small as he could make it.
 'cause [because] he had 65K of memory, is what it had.
 And the operating system took 15 of that.
 So he wrote his print program was 8K, which left us with 42K for our programs.
 So I wrote my program in assembler, which is fantastic language.
 And when we came to run it, it wouldn't fit.
 So the Univac guy, he said, well, what we're gonna [going to] have to do, we're gonna [going to] have to overlay it.
 He said, now, you and I are both on a learning curve here, he said, because I've never done one.
 So we got the book out.
 Anyway, we sorted the problem out, managed to do the overlay on it.
 
 And those were the days when the guy said, can you produce a report of number of errors, each type of error?
 I said, well, I'll go and have a look, but I think I've only got about 16 bytes left of memory left.
 So all you're gonna [going to] get is the error report number and the number of errors, that's it.
 There's gonna [going to] be no headings or anything.
 And he said, no, that'll do as long as I've got a can [unclear].
 So I managed to squeeze it in just about, but that's how tight it was, yeah.
 It was fantastic days, it really was. 

INT: And beyond the Univac?

BG: So that really got me going on assembler.
 And that was compatible with IBM.
 It was very similar code.
 So I took the opportunity then to jump ship and switch to the IBM department.
 Because obviously by then we'd got a couple of 360s.
 And I think primarily we got them to run the pensions fund scheme.
 But I sort of changed over to IBM at that point.

INT: I was gonna [going to] ask about the IBM 360 if you hadn't mentioned it, 'cause [because] it seemed to be the one that swept all before it.

BG: Yeah, yeah.
 Well, it was the one that when the pictures came out, you know, it was like the vision of the future and you had disks and things like that.
 So at some point we got new management and they decided that everybody that worked in the programming department should have a degree and I didn't have one.
 So they said, right, we're moving you to documentation.
 So I went into documentation for about six months and I hated it.
 And so I thought I'm leaving.
 So I took a job with an agency.
 My first posting was Holland.
 So I took the car onto the ferry and then I sat on the boat and watched the white cliffs of Dover disappear thinking: I think I've made a big mistake here. [...] I don't think...
 Anyway, it wasn't too good for the first two weeks 'cause [because] they put me in an old people's home 'cause [because] they rented out spare rooms that weren't being used.
 So that wasn't too nice but then I found a nice apartment.
 So and the rest of my career took off from there.
 Self-employed, if you like.

INT: So again, just briefly, but tell me a bit about the rest of your career.

BG: I did four years in Holland.
 First of all, I worked for Philips.
 Then I went to work for Fokker who don't exist anymore.
 Somebody said that's probably 'cause [because] of having to meet your wage demands.
 I said, "Well, not really." And I did some work f one of the insurance companies and I worked for one of the banks.
 Then I came back to England, I was getting a bit homesick by then, and did just different contracts in London.

INT: This is all as a sort of consultant programmer.

BG: Yes, yeah, yeah.
 And then by then, I specialized in security.
 So I became an expert on the IBM security system.
 And so I went around doing initial installations and implementations, customizations, and that kept me going for 16 years.

INT:  Right, yeah.  And that was all the way to retirement, was it?

BG: I got up to 58 and then my wife was offered redundancy because her job was being outsourced to Manila.
 And part of the deal was she went for three months to train them.
 So I took the opportunity, I went out for the last month because she was in an apartment and so it was free for me, apart from the flight, I had to buy the flight myself.
 So I gave up my job, I was working for Barclays then, gave up my job and did a month in Manila, which was okay, but it wasn't great really, I wouldn't go back.
 And we came home, so she's now retired effectively.
 And I'm still a contractor.
 So I left my name out there and I think I got one job in the next two years, which was two weeks at Cable and Wireless and that was through a buddy of mine.
 And then I got to 60 and I thought, well, I might as well pack it in now because the phone wasn't ringing, the world's moved on.
 I mean, two years out of IT is a long time.
 And the security system has integrated now with your desktop environment, which I knew nothing about.
 So I'd have been struggling to be honest.
 Because one of the things with being self-employed is you've got to organize, you've got to keep up yourself.
 Very rarely, if ever get sent on a course when you're a contractor, you're expected to know what you're doing and get on with the job.
 I was always disappointed that they never used us to inform other members of staff as a training opportunity in a way.
 But they just wanted you to do the job and as quickly as possible and get on with it.
 So it was tough sometimes, but it's been a fantastic life for me really. 

INT: So '60, that would take you up to 2008, would it be?

BG: Yeah, '10, I think.
 So, well, I think '08, yeah, was '60, yeah.
 So I left the company...

INT: Sorry, go on.

BG: I left the company, still in existence.
 And then in 2010, I closed it down.  That was officially the end of it. 

INT: Yeah, what about since then in your retirement?
 What's your activities?
INT:  Do you still keep up the technical side at all or?

BG: - Not really, no.

INT: No, other things then?

BG: - DIY, I'm a big DIY fan.

BG: Golf, but now you can't play.

INT: Yeah.

BG: I've given up my membership at the golf club because I can't see it improving much this year.

INT: No.

BG:  And lockdown. And also, unfortunately, I've been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
 So recently I've got a course of chemotherapy and my last session, six sessions, last one's this week.

INT:  Right, yeah.

BG: So, and then we'll see how we go from there.
 It's not affecting me unduly, it makes me tired.

INT:  - Yeah.

BG:  I'm quite tired.

INT: And it's a fairly treatable one, isn't it, I think?

BG: Yeah, it's not bad, about an 80% or a bit higher now.
 It's going up, I'm on a new scheme, which has got a longer period, four years before it comes back, if you like, or get back to a bad level.
 Before the old treatment, it was only two years.
 So you'd have to have chemo every, but now they've got it out to four years.
 So I'm hoping I'll keep going for a bit. 

INT: What about your earlier home life away from work?
 'cause [because] you mentioned a wife and a family.
 Tell me about meeting her and so on, and when you got married.

BG: Well, Wendy [...]. I knew Wendy when she came to work in the mailing room when she was 16, straight from school.
 And I'd be, I was 10 years older than she is, so I'd be 26.
 And I was still working in, I'd been programming by then, but I used to go down to the print room to get the printouts from the programs that I'd compiled.
 And she'd be there, but they had pigeon holes.
 So you just went to your pigeon hole, took whatever was there, took it back up to the office and then distributed it around to various people.
 But she'd be there and perhaps have a chat.
 And then she got married.
 And then I left the country and we didn't see each other until her 30th birthday.
 When I was paying a visit to the Shell Social Club, I was still working then, but I come back.
 '83 I left the country, what would it be then?
 I'd be too old then, wouldn't I?
 Oh, I must've been working somewhere.
 Our paths didn't cross anyway.
 And then she came in, it was her 30th birthday and she was a bit the worst for wear.
 And the friends, when they found out she knew me, they said, "Oh, well, can you look after her then?" 
 And then they all left because she was becoming a bit of a liability.
 So it all started then really.
 Now we've been 30 years now. 

INT: Right, so when did you actually get married?
 When would that be?

BG: 1990.
 Well, we got together in 1988.
 So we did two years and then we got married. 

INT: Yeah, you've children as well, did you say?

BG: Yeah.

INT: Yeah, how many?

BG: Oh, no, we haven't got any, no.
 I've got two by our first marriage.

INT: Oh, I see, yes.

BG: One, I've got two grandchildren, one child by my first marriage, yeah.

INT: Yeah, as you said, they're in Australia now, is that right? 

BG:  No, no, that's Wendy's sister.

INT:  - Oh, right, yeah.

BG: Wendy's family are in there.
 No, mine live in Keele.
 - Oh, right, yeah.
 - In the Midlands, well, Stoke.

INT:  Yeah.

BG:  My daughter's a lecturer at Keele University.
 She used to be a nurse, now she specialises in special needs.
 And there's a girl, Lily, and a grandson called Isaac.

INT:  Right.

BG: She's 16, he's 13.

INT: Yeah, yeah.

BG: So we're seeing them like this [During Covid-19 restrictions, visiting was not permitted – contact probably via Zoom on phone].

INT: Yeah.

BG: Every week, but we can't go and see them, so. 

INT: No, actually, I didn't ask you, I don't think, are you based back in the Stretford area, or where are you now?

BG: We're actually close to Warrington now.
 We've moved sort of halfway between Stretford and Liverpool, which is a dangerous thing to do for somebody from Manchester.
 'cause [because] Scousers and Manx don't get on.
 It becomes manifest when we have the football match.
 :  Far worse than...

INT:. You're in no man's land, aren't you, really?

BG: Yeah, United versus City is nothing compared to United versus Liverpool.

INT: Absolutely, yeah, yeah.
 So I think just finally, just reflecting back, 'cause [because] I've been struck doing these interviews, how even a few years working on Leo often seem to be the basis for a computing career.
 So for you, how significant were those years on the Leo computer?

BG: Absolutely massive, massive.
 They shaped me as a person.
 Obviously, technically. I was able to spread my wings because if you had ideas, people wanted ideas.
 That's what the whole thing was about, was taking this basic mechanism, if you like, and then deploying it to solve as many problems as you could think of.
 It was phenomenal.
 Still is, really.
 I couldn't do it now though, 'cause [because] all this code you write for PCs doesn't look right to me at all.

INT: Looking back, one thing you said was about the company saying that everyone working in the computer department had to have a degree.
 That sounds to me, extraordinarily short-sighted, and you clearly had the skills to go on and develop your own career.

BG: Right, yeah.
 Yeah, I think it was misguided, but some of it was from, they took graduates with a view to fast tracking them to management.
 So, really, they were looking to do maybe six months at the coalface, just so they had an understanding of the business at the grassroots level, and then they would move them up.
 So everybody was going to do everything, or maybe not everything, but if they were going to go in a certain area, they would go and do the jobs that were in that area, and get first-hand knowledge of them.
 And of course, programming was one of those.
 If they were going to become an IT manager, or even the director, they would be fast tracked.
 So that really was the thinking behind that.
 But in my case, I mean, I didn't mind working in a company, I mean, I didn't mind working in the documentation department to some degree, and it came in useful.
 So I did a contract with IBM in Ireland, and they were developing a new product from scratch.
 And I've got to say, that's one of the best jobs I've ever had, IBM are brilliant.
 They did something called Clean Room.
 So the coders wrote the code, pushed it through the hole in the wall to the testers, the testers tested it, wrote down the results, pushed the results back through the hole in the wall to the coders, the coders went down the list, corrected the faults, pushed it.
 And then seven times, seven iterations, you ended up with the final version.
 And then my contribution was to keep the environment ticking over and sorting out any problems that the programmers had.
 And I remember having a meeting, or I went to see the chief programmer and I said, this thing we're developing, I said, it relies on timestamps.
 So he said, does it?
 I said, yeah, 'cause [because] the records that we're going to apply when we move it from one site to another are going to be applied in timestamp order.
 He said, right.
 I said, well, is it going to, I'll be putting a site to anybody who are going to be in different time zones.
 And he said, oh yeah, he said, in America, he said, there's a company there, he said, and they've got another factory, which is two time zones.
 I said, well, as it is now, it's not going to work because the records we send them, they are going to have the wrong date and time in them, the time zone.
 He went, tell you what he said, don't bring me problems, bring me solutions.
 So I said, well, you need to put a timestamp in the header record of the file and then they can adjust it accordingly and that will solve the problem.
 And that was, you know, that was massive.
 And just that thing alone is like, makes the job so worthwhile.
INT: Yeah, yeah.

BG: He brought something to the table, you know.

INT: Yeah, absolutely.

BG: And it's an important thing.
 So that was the highlight of my career, I think, really. 

INT: Yeah, so is there anything else that I've not asked you about that you were expecting to talk about or have we pretty well covered everything?

BG: Not really, no, it's, I mean, we could probably sit here for about three hours, but it'll get boring.
So, no, it's good.
 When I was thinking about doing this, you know, I got quite emotional actually, 'cause [because] it's a step back in time for me.
 I still remember, you know, and I don't see hardly anybody now.
 We used to have a, I'm in something called the 44 Club, which is a SMBP [Shellmex-BP] people, 'cause [because] SMBP existed for 44 years.
 So when I joined, it was SMBP.
 And then they went through brand separation in I think about 1973, decided to split.
 So BP did their thing down in Hemel Hempstead.
 We did our thing for Shell in Wythenshawe.
 And that's gone now, by the way.
 The site's gone completely.
 It's been bulldozed, flattened.
 There's nothing left of it.
 So it's really strange when you drive past it, but ... Yeah, so it was just that time of being able to be there and help out and learn and just have a good time as well.

INT: Right, well, thanks so much.
 Again, there's a little paragraph I need to read just to round off this recording.
 So this interview with Brian Grimshaw has been recorded by the Leo Computer Society.
 And the society would like to thank him very much for his time and reminiscences.
 The interview and the transcript form part of an oral history project to document the early use of electronic computers in business and other applications, but particularly in business.
 Any opinions expressed are those of the interviewee that is Brian Grimshaw and not of the society.
 The copyright of this interview in recorded form and in transcript remains the property of the Leo Computer Society 2021.

Provenance :
Transferred from Frank Land's Dropbox to Lisa McGerty

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