So here I was going from Radar Simulators, Data Loggers, Power Factor Improvement, Flowrators and Complex Industrial Instrumentation to Traffic Signals, Parking Systems, Security Systems, Industrial scale light dimming systems and Traffic Counting as well as Radio Pagers etc..
Employed as a Senior Sales Engineer with Harding Signals Ltd in Christchurch it seemed that my travelling days we now over. YEAH RIGHT.
At this stage there were really only two places in New Zealand that I had not been to 'on the company'. They were The Hermitage (at Mt Cook) and Te Anau – both of which I had been to privately of course.
My first day saw my new boss and I off to The Hermitage !!
Some time a bit later I was sent to commission and sign off our hall dimming system at Te Anau College. So mission completed! NZ covered!
I continued see a wide range of customers – not only in Christchurch but throughout the South Island. Many of whom I already knew.
I was subsequently promoted to become Project and Service Manager.
Once this happened I had 12 staff to supervise, based in Christchurch, Dunedin and Invercargill.
Needless to say my need to travel did not decrease !!
And again our house became the social meeting point for many of the staff.
One aspect that did not worry me but sure worried my wife was that because we were on call 24 hrs a day we had one technician on call every night, but if he was on another job and a new one came in the the call came to me to deal with myself.
Like Queen Victoria, my wife was not amused!!
I regularly used to take young Kat or Goose on jobs with me, perched in the back of the company station wagon.
I also recall how some Technical Terms are not easily understood by outsiders.
On one occasion I had a guest in the vehicle with me and the office girl said over the Radio Telephone something like 'George Frederick as got a hard on can you deal with it?' perfectly understandable, one of the detectors had developed a permanent output.
But the chap I was with almost had a heart attack !!
It was sometime during this period that having changed jobs I got a new company vehicle so we sold Pat's car and she was promoted to the Zodiac. Sure a great vehicle to drive, but it did have quirks and required quite a lot of maintenance,
On one (notable?) occasion Pat had it at school with her (a commercial and typing teacher) and it would not start at the end of school day.
She released the bonnet, hopped out grabbed a 10” spanner, whipped off the air-cleaner lid. Stuffed the spanner handle down the carb, and the engine started fine.
Apparently the watching '5th form boys were MOST impressed' . No doubt this added to her reputation somewhat.
I guess our main business (but not the only by any means) at that time was supply and installation of Traffic Signals, and then their subsequent preventative and emergency maintenance.
In late 1977 I decided to have a look at computer programming and took a night class at Christchurch Polytechnic.
To say I took to it like a duck takes to water would be another gross understatement !!
Again, a couple of first class teachers / tutors, Barry Frost and Durham McAven.
By the end of the first month I was ecstatic that this THING could make my life so much easier.
Let me explain!
As Service and Project Manager I had the annual task (among other things) of preparing maintenance quotes.
At that stage we had 126 intersections in Christchurch (more in Timaru, Dunedin and Invercargill), each with its own mix of hardware – detectors, poles, lanterns etc.
Prior to this we had to work out a nominal price to charge for maintenance for each item (multiplied by how many of each item at each particular intersection) on the individual schedules, intersection by intersection, were then typed up and eventually submitted.
However if we wanted to increase, or decrease the price for any particular item, for whatever reason then the reworking could be a week long process!!
But by using the computer, we could not only make any changes to the base rate, but then have the recalculations done in seconds and actually printed out without using the typist at all.
So within about a month of starting to learn I did the entire annual quote by computer in a matter of hours.
Subsequently I progressed to become a part time tutor in my own right. Eventually teaching 4 hrs. per week at night and 4 hrs. a week during the day!!
Karen Was A Really Good Sport
During this time we decided to add another 800 sq ft to our 1200 sq ft house.
We enlarged the kitchen, added another 'good lounge', A dining room and a study (office) for me and another one for Pat. (I should add also that by this time we had also bought the section next door – and paid it off!)
Sister Sue and Ian who by then also lived in Christchurch, helped, we employed one carpenter to supervise etc. and subcontracted out anything we could not do ourselves. So there you have it a 2000 sq ft house on half an acre of land at Hoon Hay in Christchurch.
As I said earlier I continued to regularly take Kat or Goose to work with me ( just throwing them in the back of the Company Station Wagon)
My days at Hardings were coming to an end though.
How come?
Well, as the Service and Project Manager I was responsible for both sales, and seeing the project through.
At the time Hardings were manufacturing a marvellous Traffic Signal Controller the CT250.
It could be made to do anything, and that I can virtually guarantee., configurations were endless as were specific modifications to suit particular requirements.
This meant that no other manufacturer (read overseas) really had a look in to supplying traffic controllers for this market.
A couple of disgruntled ex employees had left the Hardings, formed their own company and did a deal with a major international company who had agreed to support them to the hilt and to make up any losses they might incur.
So in reality it meant that if I quoted to 'get the job' then there was no way we could make a profit on it (because they had a policy to simply quote for half the 'proper price') which they knew and if I priced it to make a modest profit then we simply didn't get the job.
So I was under tremendous pressure.
Eventually I had had enough.
I had an opportunity to move into a pure Computer Programming job – which I subsequently did.
Mind you with my agreement to 'work out my notice' I continued to work at Hardings each afternoon for the next month or so
As an aside (well not really an aside), It was only subsequently discovered that the deal referred to above had only been 'any losses incurred in the 1st three years will be made up'. So after three years they were no more !!
If I had only stuck around for another year or so I might be still there.
Mind you my wife was delighted that as a simple programmer based in Christchurch my travelling days would finally be over and so would my having to work all manner of hours. YEAH RIGHT!
So I was off to NZ Wool Testing Authority, with its main test lab in Christchurch and Branches in Auckland, Napier,Wanganui, Wellington, Timaru, Dunedin and Invercargill.
I think it fair to say that NZWTA was probably the first serious entity to use true distributed computing in New Zealand. . We had (almost) identical computers WANG 2200, multi user minis in each location. Two terminals at branch level (with printers, modems etc.) and up to 12 in the labs,
Each place had 1200 baud (dial up) modems and at least twice a day everyone would ring everyone else, pass the data on to be printed nearest to be where it needed to be.
Yes I did by far the majority of the actual computer Programming As time went on we also provided a 300 baud dial-up option for data direct to farmers, Such as Forest Range – more of that later.
Once more we had technical terms not quite understood by outsiders.
Most (but not all) of the operators were female, and during the (at least) twice daily phone calls it was often said, who is going down first? And then I'll go down first. This was because the modems all had a large lever to press down for data flow !!
I was responsible for all the programming, and also oversaw the entire data entry operation.
This proved to be a somewhat daunting task and I eventually asked if I could possibly employ someone else, when it looked like my request might get approved I went back to Christchurch Polytechnic and asked if they had any 'bright young things' who might be interested.
The very next day one of my former star pupils (Lynsey) knocked on my door and said I'm here for your job!
Hang on a mo – I haven't even had the position approved as yet – never mind I'll work for nothing until your approval comes through!!
She was not going to risk the job going to someone else.
This was the start of a friendship which endures to this very day!
There is just so much happened over the next few years that I struggle either recall it all or summarize it sufficiently.
In those days, access to the computer was difficult to obtain.
The lab worked at least two shifts each day, often three. So getting at the computer(s) when not being used was always a mission.
On one such occasion I was again in to the lab early to get the computer to myself, I was there about 4.30 a.m. (My wife was, again - not amused)
When who else should arrive about 10 mins later but Lynsey. Bloody Hell what does one have to do around here to get the computer to myself she said
We used to backup the entire system every morning before anything else happened – yes I know it should have been the night before, but data entry could have been going on till say midnight anyway, so every morning it was.
For other systems that Wang themselves managed they used to employ University Students to undertake the two (or more) hour backup from about 4 a.m. each morning.
As time went on we managed to develop auto data entry direct from the lab with tickets printed with OCR (Optical Character Recognition).
We printed these tickets ourselves with a Golf Ball typewriter. I well remember even going to Dunedin City Council (an old stomping ground of mine) to see how well their OCR system worked too.
Whilst at NZWTA I steadily progressed up the ranks, from Programmer, to Senior Programmer, to Data Processing Manager, to Manager – Communications and Data Processing etc., etc With the company's blessing I also did lots of work for Forest Range, also Fuhrmann's and others.
I sort of became regarded as the wool industry Computer man.
I hesitate to say expert because expert comes from 'x being an unknown quantity and spurt is a drip under pressure' say no more.
A new laboratory was built in Napier and I had to relocate (I rented a brand new house in Bay View Rd overlooking the Port of Napier on Middle Hill.)
I designed the computer system layout (still the good old WANG 2200) but now with the full 16 terminals, direct input from devices in the lab and what seemed to be an amazing increase in data storage capacity.
I also had considerable input into the design of the country wide PABX system interconnection.
We now had direct phone lines from Napier to Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
As I had a PABX extension at home that gave me free calls to these cities too.
But this too was not to last.
For reasons I still cannot fathom, the WTA decided to 'sell out' to big brother AWTA (Aust WTA).
This was not good!
They decided NZWTA should become just another branch for them, and they set about getting rid of any personnel not Australian.
Thus, Kiwis (like me), Scots ( like Fred) and any other non Australians got the DCM (don't come
Monday), and despite a small redundancy payout this was an utter shock!
I registered with a number of employment agencies all of whom reckoned there would be no problem placing me – yeah right.
At this stage Derek from Fuhrmanns rang and said something along the lines of you are too valuable to be lost to the industry, what say you come back to Christchurch, you can have our downstairs office rent free for a year and we will increase our retainer so you have a base income to work with.
You can imagine it took be a hell of a long time for me to decide. About 2 seconds !!!
As will be covered later Forest Range station also came to the party.
And I was back in Christchurch!!