The Amazing PACE 231R
Whenever I do a presentation, I always put in a plug for the amazing PACE 231R analog computer, I used for the simulation of chemical processes at ICI in the 1970s. Here are a couple of pictures.
In my view, there are computers, good computers and the PACE 231R.
The 231R was built in the 1960s and it was all valve or vacuum tube, if you are from the United States. It was a formidable beast for solving differential equations and I have a feeling that there isn’t one left even in a museum. These pictures taken by a colleague at ICI seem to be two of the very few of a 231R in a working environment. Hopefully the Internet will preserve them for ever!
The biggest claim to fame of the 231R was that two of them were used in tandem to solve all of the mathematics and differential equations of getting the Apollo spacecraft to the moon. They were actually linked to what was almost a complete spacecraft to test everything out.
So when Apollo 13 blew up and they had to use the Lunar Excursion Module to bring the astronauts home, it was these two computers that were reprogrammed to try to find out how to do it. They wouldn’t have stood a chance with a digital machine, but the engineers, programmers and astronauts were able to get the two 231R’s to find a strategy. I’ve never seen the Apollo 13 film, but I suspect that the role of the 231Rs is downplayed or ignored.
So when you ask me, what is the greatest computer ever made, there is only one answer. The amazing PACE 231R.
Rules For Success? – My Three Main Successes
I have had three main successes; LCAS, Artemis and Respimat, in the technological field over the past forty years, since I left Liverpool University. I’ve done a large number of things that I consider innovative, but generally although they satisfied my need for solving problems, they weren’t great financial successes.
Sometimes it disappoints me, that some of the technology I played with forty or fifty years ago has never been fully developed and could have applications today.
Perhaps someone should research the sort of things being done in that time and see if some of the products that didn’t work then, will work now with modern methods, materials and computing.
I think in general, the large problems we face in life haven’t changed too much, but the solutions have changed greatly.
Rules For Success – LCAS
LCAS is a strange one, that went on to have a profound effect on my life. I was employed by Lloyds Bank as a consultant to program a system to work out how much the individual transactions in a bank actually cost them.
The system actually was used by the bank for nearly twenty years and was only retired when they couldn’t find a PDP-10 to run it on.
I never got the contract for the replacement system, as that went to one of the major consultancy firms. Lloyds dismissed my proposal on the grounds that I was too small an organisation and couldn’t offer the support they wanted. Twenty years of support didn’t could for anything!
Banks have never understood technology and especially anything that involves risk. After all the collective noun for bankers is a wunch!
I’ve only ever met one decent banker with intelligence. David was on the committee that proposed LCAS and later by chance was my personal branch manager. Over the years we became firm friends.
Rules For Success? – Artemis
Artemis was and still is a project management system, that used PERT and critical path methods, coupled with advanced computation and graphics to solve the problems of managing, budgeting and controlling costs in projects.
I programmed the original mini-computer based system in the mid-1970s, building on earlier PERT and other programs I’d written for a company called Time Sharing, which allowed people to dial-up a large mainframe computer.
By the 1980s, over half of all the world’s major projects were managed by Artemis.
The software ranged in size from the PC through our own hardware to large mainframes.
In 1984, we sold the company to Lockheed for $128,000,000.
Since then, the company has suffered many changes of ownership and is just a shadow of what it could have been.
As an example, our database system was fully relational and pre-dated Oracle by a few years. But we didn’t realise totally what we had.
So always make sure that what you develop, doesn’t have more important applications in areas that weren’t in your original thoughts!
Rules For Success? – Respimat
Two guys approached me for funding, as they were doing unusual things in the field of fluid dynamics. As I understood a fair bit about that from my past at ICI and at the time I lived in the family home of Osborne Reynolds, I decided to fund them in their work.
The first product was an aerosol valve that instead of working with HCFCs, worked with compressed nitrogen. Actually, we always talked about using purified air. (Sad, but the general public believes nitogen is poisonous!) We spent a lot of money on IPR and then sold the whole idea to Johnson & Johnson at a small profit. Whether they ever used it in a real product, I don’t know.
We were then approached by a major pharmaceutical company, who asked if we could use our technology to power a metered-dose-inhaler for asthma drugs and they gave us a near six-figure grant for research.
We couldn’t, but the two guys came up with another idea that worked.
Strangely, our contract with the pharmaceutical company, gave them no legal rights to the device, if we decided to go elsewhere. So we put in nearly half a million of our own money to complete all the IPR and obtain the patents.
When the patents were granted, we sold the device and all the rights to Bohringer Ingelheim, the German pharmaceutical company, who called it Respimat.
It had been a project with a long and difficult history, that somehow managed to limp to a successful conclusion.
Rules For Success? – What Can We Learn From These Successes?
The most important thing about these three projects is that those involved all had a clear set of the objectives they wished to achieve.
In the case of LCAS, it was about trying to get the bank’s costs under control and also to satisfy the Prices and Incomes Board, which had been setup by Harold Wilson’s government.
With Artemis, we’d seen how project management was going and how computers were getting smaller, so a personal system based on a computer in a desk was now feasible. We’d set the secondary objective of selling the company in perhaps three or four years and walking away with about a quarter of a million each.
Respimat to me started as a bit of a punt that I could afford, but gradually became a challenge that would give me a good return on my money.
So the first rule to me in being entrepreneurial is being clear in your objectives, both technical and personal.
In some ways the technical objectives are easier to define, as you wouldn’t be going into a project, where you didn’t have at least some grasp of the technology involved.
Often though, your personal objectives are much more important, as clashes in the partners in these can destroy the best of companies.
I shall deal with these first.
Rules For Success? – Personal Objectives – The F-Words
Fame – Do you want to do this project to become a celebrity and have your fifteen minutes of fame? Like perhaps I am now!
But would you trust someone in a business venture, who wanted to appear on the X-Factor?
Financial – Do you sincerely want to be rich? This was said by a crook called Bernie Cornfeld, who started a vehicle called Investors Overseas Service or IOS.
I would put it this way. If your venture breaks even, and pays you a bit of a salary that’s good. But if it makes a small profit in the end, then that’s a bonus.
Fun – Perhaps this is the most important of personal objectives. If I don’t think my partners in a venture won’t be fun, then I don’t follow it through!
Friendship – I’d rate this second and confirm that with many of the things I’ve done, I’ve made a lot of strong very long-term friendships.
Some have been involved in more than one thing I’ve done, which makes ventures a lot easier.
Feelgood – Are you doing what the future will value.
Family – This is a negative objective, in that you mustn’t put too much strain on your family. I didn’t and was married to a marvellous woman for nearly forty years. But then Celia said she always married me because she knew life wouldn’t be boring. I’m hoping that I’m not letting her down with this talk and boring you stiff!
Rules For Success? – A Few Principles
I’m going to go through a few of the things that I believe are essential to bring a project to a successful conclusion. They’re in no particular order and are very much the prejudices of myself and my friends, I’ve been involved with over the past few decades.
Remember too that the inverse of a rule for success is a rule for failure.
I’m going to start with organisational and financial rules, as if you don’t get these correct and to everybody’s liking, it is unlikely you’ll be able to create a successful idea.
Rules For Success? – A Good Leader
I doubt there has not been a project, in either technology or the wider field, that has come to a successful conclusion, without a real leader in command.
Take this statue of a man in the seventeenth century dress at an important road junction just north of the City of London.
A Statue on Islington Green In London
The statue is of Sir Hugh Myddelton. He was a Welsh goldsmith, clothmaker, banker, entrepreneur, mine-owner and self-taught engineer. He is mainly remembered for the New River, which he built to bring fresh water to the fast-growing city.
The New River is still in use today, despite opening in September 1613. So Sir Hugh was obviously a man of vision and a real leader.
Incidentally, there is a book called 100 Great Welshmen. He’s not in it!
Rules For Success? – Team Size
How many engineers does it take to create success?
Alec Issigonis, the creator of the original Mini, and many others of his generation worked virtually alone or in teams you can count on one hand.
So you could argue for a small team! But then you have a problem in that what happens if one key member falls off their bike and breaks a leg.
I’ve always found a team of perhaps four to six, where you have duplicated and complimentary skills works best.
But then there is a tendency to get too big and pull in friends and others who might have felt left out in the first place, with all the petty jealousies that involves.
A good compromise might be to be a little bigger, but with very small groups of people on particular areas of the development.
The Anonymous Widower 