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Tracking technological changes in our 40 year history

03 October 2005

CITEC celebrates its 40th birthday in 2005.

Beginning life as a small government computing branch with less than 300 staff, CITEC has evolved to become the second largest Australian-owned information systems outsourcer (IDC 2002), with 550 staff and offices around Australia.

Along with its own evolution, CITEC staff have witnessed major changes in the role of ICT within business.

This article looks at some of the major technological milestones in CITEC’s history. We hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane.

“The” computer arrives in Queensland

For today’s generation, it may seem unusual to refer to a company’s computing capability in singular terms but in 1965, computers were so new and novel that to own just one was a newsworthy event.

CITEC acquired its first computer, the ICL 1903 (pictured above arriving at Queensland Treasury), in 1965 when the organisation was known as Electronic Data Processing (EDP). A small branch of Queensland Treasury, EDP’s main role was to manage sensitive applications for government departments and carry out large volume processing such as public sector, teachers’ and police payrolls.

EDP was also responsible for such diverse tasks as processing electoral rolls, calculating rents for the Housing Commission, predicting growth rates for tree plantations across Queensland and processing births, deaths and marriage data.

The ICL 1903 was the first computer of its type in Australia. With a memory of just 32k, it could run three or four jobs at a time - 4k had to be left spare to run the machine itself.

CITEC Points of Presence Manager, Grant Ellis, worked in the EDP computer room as an operator in the early 1970s. He says the memory constraints of the 1903 meant programmers had to be very creative.

“Looking back, they did a great job creating programs which achieved a lot while using minimal memory,” Grant said.

“The programmers had to be very conscious of resources and as operators, we would juggle the jobs to optimise the use of the machine within the 28k limit.”

EDP was situated in what is now the Treasury Casino building in Brisbane. The building’s close proximity to the Brisbane River meant rats were quiet but constant companions for the computer operators, who worked around the clock.

“In the quiet of the night, if there wasn’t a lot of activity, you could hear the rats running around under the false floor of the computer room,” Grant said.

“On one occasion, the rats even chewed through the power cables supplying the 1903.”

The 1903 would process 27,000 teacher’s pay cheques and around 5,000 police pay cheques on a fortnightly basis.

CITEC Service Manager, Domenic Galati also worked at EDP as a computer operator in the early 1970s.

“Each pay run took between six and eight hours, although all the other manual tasks involved meant the entire process could take up to 48 hours from start to finish,” Domenic said.

“Data was input by paper tape or card. Program changes had to be documented on punch cards and there was a separate group of staff who were responsible for punching up the cards for the computer.

“The pay cheques were printed in continuous form. We then had to separate or ‘burst’ the cheques using a bursting machine.

“You definitely drew the short straw if you had to spend an eight hour shift operating the burster.”

With an upgrade to a 1904, the computer’s memory doubled to 64k. This had a significant impact on productivity but the next major leap forward came with the purchase of a Univac 1100.

The Unisys era dawns

In 1976, EDP became the State Government Computer Centre (SGCC), and a year later moved into its current head office at 317 Edward St in 1977.

The SGCC managed major Queensland Government computer applications, and the increase in departmental requirements led to the development of more complex systems and the employment of more staff.

It was at this point that SGCC purchased a 1100/42 Univac computer (Univac was soon to become part of Unisys). The 1100/42 was replaced in 1979 with a Univac 1100/82. CITEC archives described the 1100/82 as such:

“The system incorporates advanced semi-conductor integrated circuitry….and two communications processors are included within the system to handle the messages sent over the telephone lines.”

The purchase of the Univac 1100 series signalled the introduction of native terminals, enabling multiple operators to use the machine simultaneously. This meant the SGCC could expand the range of functions it performed – creating the front-runner to today’s CITEC, which provides a wide range of ICT services and products.

On the storage front, magnetic disc devices replaced tape. The Univac’s discs were about 30 centimetres in diameter and held just eight megabytes of data. Today, CITEC’s data centre houses the newest StorageTek tape library, which houses cartridges with an average capacity of 200 gigabytes (uncompressed).