My Strange Technology Career

Lessons learned from bottle to bus, Babbage to boat

You never know what life will bring you. I didn’t. I’m going to tell you a little about my career and the lessons I learned. Those lessons may help you, especially if you want to run your own business.

It’s a long-ish read because I’ve been around the block a few times and so it’s a road trip, but if you don’t have the time for a full read then I’ve summarised my lessons learned at the end of this article.

1974. It was a time of change and excitement. I had a bachelor’s degree in Physics and a master’s in Oceanography. And no career. I was working as a short order chef in a restaurant while I pondered the future.

None of the obvious career options attracted me and I didn’t have the intellect for research. Others had insight into Schrödinger’s equation. I didn’t, but I could empathise with his cat.

I was newly married and needed to pay the bills, so I followed in the family footsteps and became a milkman. Borrowed money and bought a small business. Maybe madness, maybe not, but it started me on a journey.

By 1978 the business was growing and I was bored witless, physically punished by the 2 am starts and the physicality of almost 40 miles a day on my feet.

Then one day I saw the light. I wasn’t on the road to Damascus. And it wasn’t really a light. It was a magazine in a newsagents shop. I can’t remember the name of the publication, but it started me on a journey, my strange technology journey.

I started researching hobby computers. In my small town nobody knew what they were. I read everything I could about them, devouring all the magazines, the only source of information in those days. Then I discovered that the local technical college was running a course on Information Technology. Cobol and punched cards.

I’d had some contact with punched cards during my masters degree, using Algol mainframe programs and paper data tapes to analyze sea water salinity/temperature/depth profiles in the Irish Sea. Leading edge stuff. Then. Something to do with the risk of Russian nuclear subs hiding under a thermocline…

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