From Card punch processing to Artificial Intelligence
A review on IT history in simple language to be understood by both IT and non IT specialists interested in the cource of events and the impact that the third and forth industrial revolution had on society with a glimps on what is coming in the future.
Introduction
Information technology has been transforming the economies around the world since the end of the 2nd World War. The effect, which Information technology would have on society, was not so obvious at the beginning. At the beginning people thought that computers would have an impact only on science, or defense, or automation, and in general, would enhance or replace human competences in speed of executing accounting activities and improve performance in numeric calculations. In fact, humanity was relating computer evolution, which took place over the last 80 years, to what had happened during industrial revolution of the 19th century.
Nobody could imagine how far, the dramatic improvements. the third and fourth industrial revolution, would lead to.
It is already difficult to contemplate where we have already reached. So much more difficult it is to predict where we will have reached in the next 80 years, following this rate of exponential evolution in technological advances..
We have already reached and we are experiencing technologies, such as Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), Big Data analytics, predictive systems, predictive models, robotics, cloud computing etc.
Integrating these technologies with 5G communications speed, new technological horizons will be opened that one could only encounter in science fiction.
Looking back and navigating through various stages of this evolution will help us visualize our future more accurately.
The trip has been so wide that I can only cover part of it, focusing on my personal experience, as I was lucky and privileged enough to experience, first hand, some of these dazzling speeds in technological evolution.
From card punch and Tabulator equipment to commercial Mainframe computers. (50ies to70ies)
IT industry evolved in USA and Europe since the end of 2nd World War but expanded, exponentially, in the following decades starting from of 50’s.
Greece was one of the very last countries, in Europe, which managed to implement and benefit from computer technology for various reasons. These reasons were not different from those which kept Greece back from an early economic development.
To start with, it is important to remind ourselves, that personal computers did not exist at the beginning, neither internet or data entry screens. Operational instructions were keyed in on main frame consoles which were used to interface with complex operating systems, all data and programs were keyed in on card punch or paper tape equipment, while cards or tapes were imported on card and paper tape peripheral readers creating files on computer memory and magnetic peripherals
At the beginning programming languages were either pure machine code, very close to binary instructions, while higher level languages were created later, initially used for scientific purposes in Universities, such as ALGOL and FORTRAN. Other languages were produced later to be used for commercial purposes, such as COBOL, and RPG, etc.
Most computer companies, in Greece, were subsidiaries of foreign mainframe computer manufacturers, except from very few, such as International Computers Co (ICL) which was initially represented by a Greek company “Pan Solomos”, a pioneer in office automation and business organization equipment and UNIVAC represented by Doxiadis Associates company.
Before mid-1970s, commercial main frame computers were very expensive and used only for simple batch processing applications that could ran only a single «job» at a time, one after another.
Main frame technology was expensive not only for the cost of hardware and its operating system but also for the need of special computer room environment under which computers could operate with special air conditioning, temperature and humidity control, dust or smoke control conditions. The first computer prototypes, of the 50ies, were even using special water cooling systems due to high temperature generated from vacuum valves, used before transistors were invented.
Another very important aspect of cost, for main frame installations, was the human operational cost for developing and maintaining applications on proprietary operating software, it took years for the market to standardize on open operating systems and computer languages, that would, eventually, help to reduce operating costs.
These factors restricted the use of computers, to large government and Banking organizations and some very large private corporations.
Marketing strategy applied, by Main frame manufacturers, was mainly focused on revenues produced out of sales of hardware and their operating systems, as well as from maintenance services; no attention was given to revenues that could be generated from software application development or other services. As a consequence, customers were investing on hiring and training high numbers of IT personnel, to develop software applications in house, on proprietary operating system software and languages. Outsourcing was nonexistent, especially in Greece.
Lack of collaboration between computer industry and Universities in Greece was not helping to generate an adequate number of IT specialists needed. This was exactly the opposite to what was taking place in Europe and USA where collaboration among computer industry and Universities or research laboratories was exactly the reason why computer technology emerged.
Therefore, these personnel were becoming scarce and indispensable, for each computer user company, This, unfortunately, created an unexpected, side effect, a peculiar resistance to change from some individuals who were delaying the introduction of new technologies for purely personal reasons, in order to retain their jobs as highly trained specialized personnel.
The main computer companies operating, at the time, were IBM, monopolizing the market,(90%) with DIGITAL, UNIVAC, HP following closely, with products produced in United States, the only companies from Europe were Bull, a major French company and International Computers (ICL), a British company which came later in the Greek market, and Siemens the German company which came even later,
One should not forget Control Data which established the first computer training institute complementing Universities in Greece, a very important contribution for the Greek market which was in such need of computer programmers and consultants.
Let us have a look on some of these pioneering computer companies which played a significant role in the international as well as the Greek IT market.
IBM
There is no better way to understand the early IT history than making a list of milestones of IBM‘s evolutionary history, which proves why IBM played such a leading role in this industry,
1911: IBM foundation
H IBM was founded in June 1911 as Computing – Tabulating – Recording Co. (C-T-R) which adopted the name International Business Machines (IBM) in 1924. IBM punch card was at the origin of IBM Business Machines and became the industry standard, all over the world, since 1928, holding, nearly all of the world’s known information, for the next 50 years, and enabling large-scale projects like the US Census. This was a fact even if punched card processing had been developed by Hermann Hollerith as far back as 1884. IBM Business Machines grew, indisputably, to a real pioneer in Data processing and Information technology; even today IBM retains the 10th company position worldwide.
1936: Social Security, made possible by IBM
IBM works with the government on the US Social Security Act of 1935, tabulating employment records for 26 million Americans — the largest accounting project of its time.
1952: The inception of digital storage
IBM introduces the world to digital storage via magnetic tape data, marking the transition from punched-card calculators to electronic computers.
IBM 701-The first large scale computer based on vacuum valves
1956: AI before AI
IBM 704 to play checkers and learn from its experience. It is considered the first demonstration of artificial intelligence.
1957: 60+ years of FORTRAN (Formula Translation)
Possibly the most influential software product in history, FORTRAN liberates computers from the exclusivity of programmers and opens them to users worldwide. A computer language based on rules of algebra , grammar and grammar syntax.
1957: Storing data on a disc
IBM 305 Random Access Method of Accounting and Control (RAMAC) – the first system storing data on a disc.
1959:, Transistor technology.
IBM system 7090 was one of the first mainframe which was based on transistor technology. Το IBM 7090 could perform 229.000 calculations per sec
60ies:, Flight reservations
IBM continued to focus in the development of solutions which would help to bring companies to a new age IBM technology was applied in a series of commercial applications from managing flight reservations in real time up to support the first space exploration in landing the first man on the moon. ..
1964 System/360, the first family of large scale main frame computers
System/360, was the first family of large scale main frame computers which could use alternative software products and peripherals. This approach was the starting point for a new era that departed from the philosophy of «one system for all».
1981: Introducing the IBM PC
The PC revolution begins with the IBM Personal Computer, computing goes ‘mainstream’, beyond hobbyists and into the market of common household commodity.
1997: Artificial Intelligence (AI) defeats a reigning chess champion
IBM Supercomputer defeats the best chess player in the world. Thinking computers take a giant leap forward toward the kind of AI that we know and use today.
2011: First AI to understand fluid language
In an unprecedented demonstration of natural speech recognition and cognitive computing, IBM Watson defeats the champions of the TV quiz show Jeopardy!.
The IBM history in Greece started with the first installation in the banking sector with a major mainframe installation at the National Bank of Greece which served as the first training center that produced the first programmers and computer specialists and consultants. Even before this initial stage, IBM implemented a project at the Greek statistical department in the ministry of finance using card punch equipment.
BULL
Bull SAS is a French computer company based in Paris
The company has also been known at various times as Bull General Electric, Honeywell Bull, CII Honeywell Bull, and Bull HN, Compagnie des Machines Bull.
Bull was founded in 1931, to capitalize on the punched card technology
Compagnie des Machines Bull was an OEM supplier to BTM, a predecessor of ICT, future core of ICL. Bull first patents were related to the pre-selection of data inside punched cards reader in 1919 (35 years after Hollerith).
Bull has a worldwide presence in more than 100 countries and was particularly active in defense, finance, health care, manufacturing, public, and telecommunication sectors. Bull was nationalized in 1982 and was merged with most of the rest of the French computer industry. The company was re privatized In 1994,
The origins of Bull lie in the need of insurance companies to process their voluminous data quickly. By 1935 Bull had launched its first significant line, the 150 series of tabulators, and thus found itself locked in a struggle with the French subsidiary of IBM.
For the remainder of the 1930s Bull grew at a modest rate. Most of its customers were banks, nearly all of them French. The company’s real expansion came only after World War II had spurred the French scientific community to develop a computing machine.
In Greece, Bull started with a major main frame installation at the Greek power corporation DEH, which was later replaced by IBM. The major success happened when Bull succeeded to win the international bid for Taxis of the Greek Ministry of Finance during the 90ies
ICL
ICT established International Computers Ltd in UK during 1968. ICL absorbed most of the existing computer industry in UK including English Electric Computers, Elliot Automation Leo Marconi etc
An ICL installation of historical interest is LEO I (Lyons Electronic Office I) was the first computer designed with vacuum valves, used for commercial business applications during1951. This claim is in conflict with similar claims that both Univac and IBM have been making. ( LEO I was, surprisingly, the creation of J. Lyons & CO. a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing and hotel management conglomerate founded in 1884. LEO I ran its first business application in 1951. In 1954 Lyons formed LEO Computers Ltd to market LEO I and its successors. LEO Computers eventually became part of English Electric that then became part of ICl. The LEO computer room, which took up around 2,500 square feet of floor space was originally relocated and kept as a museum at Kidsgrove ICL factory where the latest ICL Main frame 2900 series was built.
Lyons used LEO I initially for valuation jobs, but its role was extended to include payroll and inventory. One of its early tasks was the elaboration of daily orders which were phoned in every afternoon by the shops and used to calculate the overnight production requirements, assembly instructions, delivery schedules, invoices, castings, and management reports. This was the first instance of an integrated management information system an impressive achievement for the time.
I was privileged having the opportunity to work as computer design engineer at Kidsgrove ICL factory where had the experience of many technological advances that took place during the design of ICL 2900 mainframe series and contribute in the design of the 2900 series File Peripheral Controller (FPC2) and the error correction system that was applied for magnetic discs to correct bursts of errors due to smoke and dust in the atmosphere for which magnetic disks were extremely vulnerable at the time.
I also experienced the problems that ICL and most of computer manufacturers had to overcome with the previous computer technology. At the time, the complexity of the circuitry was increasing and the speed of data transmition over transmition lines, due to long cabling, were causing serious “ringing problems”. Many companies failed to enter the higher technological level needed for digital computer design and stopped their efforts. This problem was eventually solved by applying four layer board technologies.
Another area worth mentioning was an advanced technological ICL innovation, CAFS (Contend Addressable File Store) which was a high speed hardware search engine, to access information using part of the information at extremely high speed.
ICL failed to enter the Greek Mainframe market with the 2900 series but made its presence strong with its Medium Range Computer Series 2903 and ME29 and DRS Distributed Computing Range, a few years before its purchase from the Japanese Computer company Fujitsu.
I cannot forget a speech made by the ICL European Director addressing a European gathering of country managers during the end of 70ies, warning that the real threat for the European computer industry was coming from their chip supplier from Japan.
UNIVAC
The UNIVAC I (UNIVersal Automatic Computer I), was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer design for business application. The first contracts were with government agencies such as the Census Bureau on March 31, 1951, the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Army Map Service
In order to understand the progress made since these first generation computers, in comparison with today’s technology it is worth noting that UNIVAC I used about 5,000 vacuum tubes weighed 8.3 short tons; 7.6 t), consumed 125 kw and could perform about 1,905 operations per second running on a 2.25 mhz clock. The Central Complex alone (i.e. the processor and memory unit) was 4.3 m by 2.4 m by 2.6 m high. The complete system occupied more than 35.5 m2 (382 ft²) of floor space.
Univac was represented in Greece by a Technical company Doxiadis Associates which implemented one of the first computer statistical calculations for the Geek Customs Organization
The first data processing applications in Greece
It is not surprising that the first data processing applications, in Greece and elsewhere, were with tabulating and sorting of data collected on cards
It is of historical interest that the first attempts to apply data processing technology, even before IBM with the National Bank of Greece, were made by Univac in applications used for scientific calculations at Greek customs and by Pan Solomos Ltd for the ministry of interior, during Greek elections. This was done by using ‘International Computers and Tabulators’ (ICT) card punch equipment and tabulators that produced the election results, automatically, for the first time.
This is how major mainframe manufacturers including IBM, UNIVAC, BULL, ICT started their operations in USA and Europe.
Main frame computers were mostly used for commercial applications in Government, public utility companies, Banks for loan applications and some very large private companies mainly in insurance. The applications were mostly invoice preparations for printing thousands of bills to be posted to customers. One of the most difficult applications was considered to be payroll as well as banking applications. Some reservation systems were developed later as main frame computers acquired some real time online and real time interactive capabilities.
The newest mainframes include the latest Fujitsu GS21 series announced April 2018 along with Fujitsu Software GSS21sx V20 which supports connections with open systems. In September 2019, IBM launched the IBM z15 showcasing key capabilities such as encryption anywhere, cloud native development, and instant recovery. As a follow up IBM z16 delivers breakthrough technologies for AI and cyber resiliency to accelerate decision velocity, protect against threats across business, and modernize for hybrid cloud meaning common use of Mainframe and Cloud technologies.
Magnetic ledger accounting computers in the 60ies and 70ies
Most medium to large companies in the private sector were just using accounting machines with multiple registers printing on hard copy ledger cards, mainly covering accounting applications.
These accounting machines evolved to the first magnetic ledger computers which used ledgers with magnetic stripes and peripherals with paper tapes and magnetic discs and tapes.
These magnetic ledger or hard copy ledger accounting machines were small computers with processors and memory that used proprietary computer languages limiting the development of wide spread software applications restricted to commercial applications focused mainly on general ledger, invoicing and payroll.
This is the time that a new group of companies appeared in the Greek market such as NIXDORF, KIENZLE, Burrroughs, OLIVETI, REMINGTON, Logabax, ect, which dominated the private sector market during the 60ies and 70ies but gradually some vanished as far as some of their magnetic ledger products during the 80ies, some became intelligent computer terminals, as communications were becoming more accessible.
These first accounting computer machines, equipped with simple paper tape peripheral, were used to the extreme of their technical capabilities, to satisfy advanced accounting requirements.
As an example, I can refer to an inventory control application implemented for the Greek shipping company AEGIS, owned by a well-known ship owner Papalios. The solution was implemented on a Remington paper tape computer, programmed in binary machine code language, as early as 70ies. Nobody that is aware of today’s facilities could even contemplate that similar solutions could be implemented with paper tapes used as files to maintain a huge inventory control.
Similar applications were developed on similar Remington computers in other areas such as a hotel software package for hotel reservations, even main currant.software. The system was installed in major hotels in Greece, including Porto Carras group of hotels, major hotels in Rhodes, Skiathos Palace and a number of hotels in Crete, the system was even exported to six hotels in Porto Roz close to Ljubljana. This hotel application was later converted to operate on ICL DRS distributed processing small computers under the name WELCOME which was installed in international cruiser lines enhanced with Point of sales cash registers operating around the world.
This type of computers helped the wider market to be educated in the concept of computing and the benefits it could produce. It helped accountants to get reed of those long black sleeves and communicate at a higher level
This type of applications was an indication that the Greek IT market was maturing to step up the next stage of technological evolution which came with the introduction of minicomputers and improvements in communication networks
Minicomputers , microcomputers and medium size mainframe systems in the 70ies and 80ies .
Before the mid-1960s, main frame computers were still very expensive and used only for special-purpose tasks, such as military or scientific research. Computers were also very slow for interactive or multitasking operations. A simple batch processing arrangement ran only a single «job» at a time, one after another. But at the end of 60ies, faster and more affordable minicomputers became available, and as prices decreased, such computers supported time-sharing, which were allowing multiple users to share processes on same CPU and memory.
Main frame manufacturers did not jump to the opportunity to proceed with this new minicomputer technology or move to the concept of open operating systems as it would deprive them of their ‘protected’ proprietary environment that was locking the investment of customers to one manufacturer.
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC, the first implementation of UNIX operating system
A breakthrough was initially made from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), a major American company founded in 1957. (DEC) became «the nation’s second-largest computer company after IBM. Its initial major impact was in minicomputers.
The technology introduced by DEC computers was based on much earlier work that started with projects for US Air Force that demanded much more interactivity than even faster main frame computers could provide much later.
Real time environment was needed for projects like flight simulators used by the US Navy and Air force since 1944. Such technology was needed to allow operators to interact with radar data stored in the computer
The real breakthrough came during 1956 when old vacuum valve technology was replaced by the first transistors
So, this gave a big advantage to DEC, for the development of computer systems which were promoted in universities and later in commercial applications in competition to IBM and other main frame manufacturers.
One of the most famous mini computers produced by DEC was the PDP-7 introduced in December 1964, The PDP-7 is most famous as the original machine for the UNIX operating system, Unix only ran on DEC systems for a certain period, but later became the fundamental operating system on which the total OPEN SYSTEMS philosophy was based upon.
Most computer companies followed the technological example of DEC and started the promotion of minicomputers or middle range computers capturing significant sections of the market due to lower cost to performance ratio.
DEC was acquired by Compaq in June 1998, in what was at that time the largest merger in the history of the computer industry. Not long thereafter, Hewlett- Packard bought Compaq, «creating a technology company second in revenue only to IBM.
Some of the new names included:
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was founded on February 24, 1982. Sun for was an American technology company that pioneered in IT technology after the Mainframe era introducing computers, components, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Network File System (NFS) a distributed file system protocol and SPARK microprocessors (Scalable Processor Architecture) a reduced instruction set computing
Sun contributed significantly to the evolution of several key computing technologies, among which UNIX, RISK processors, thin computing,
In general, Sun was a proponent of open systems, particularly UNIX. It was also a major contributor to open source software, by purchasing later MySQL an open-source relational database management system. Eventually, the company was acquired by Oracle on January 2010
Data General was one of the first minicomputer companies founded by former employees of DEC the late 60ies.Their first product, intended to both outperform and cost less than the equivalent from DEC, the PDP-8, eventually proved a better system that sold thousands during the 70ies.
Data General, although successful, and very innovative in hardware and software could not face the introduction of the IBM PC in 1981 an event that marked the beginning of the end for minicomputers, and by the end of the decade, the entire market had largely disappeared
ICL’s entry in the Greek market. (The story of ICL and Pan Solomos co)
With the successful entry, of mini and medium range computers that started in the Greek market, the Greek company, Pan Solomos Ltd, invested to bring the first ICL Medium Range computer of the 2903 series.
The 2903 range was a rapid development to produce a small business computer to replace the 1901A. As far as possible, it was developed from existing hardware and software, but configured for an office environment without under floor cabling. It was urgently needed to generate a cash flow that would support continuing 2900 development. The hardware was based on the 2900 FPC2 (Disk File Controller), 2903/4 system cabinet housed the BASIC engine, disk storage and a punched card reader, the operator’s console was a visual display unit for 1900 users who were accustomed to teletypes as console, 2903 used microcode emulating 1900 main frame hardware. The operating system was George 1* In consequence, the 1900 compilers and utilities ran on the 290x range without any changes or recompilation. For some sites, a microcode floppy was available that would make the system work as an IBM 360 running the IBM operating system.
A new feature provided, on this range, was “Direct Data Entry”, a system with up to eight dedicated VDU data entry stations, with which card image files could be created; these could be assigned to a program’s card reader and processed accordingly.
290x computers would run in an office environment, still quite an innovation for this class of machine, which very soon became a runaway success. Roughly 3,000 systems were sold, ten times as many as ICL had anticipated.
The smaller machines in the 290x family were replaced in 1980 by the ME29 system.
Pan Solomos had already established one of the first data processing service bureau on ICT Card Punch equipment, which had been used in Greek elections, so the company used the first 2903 computer to re-established its service bureau replacing card punching equipment with the first “Direct Data Entry”, system on the 2903 computer, later renamed ME29.
Among the first service bureau customers which used this new data entry technology were, “Chalivourgiki”, the Greek Steel company owned by Angelopoulos, the Lebanese contractor company (CCC), the Greek Social Security Company “IKA”, “Springfield” Onasis shipping company and the Greek Radio and Television company “ERT”. Two more service bureau companies were impressed by the replacement of card punch machines and invested on this system as well.
More companies from the private sector were impressed by the success of this service bureau and invested in ICL 2903 computers, Including Lambropoulos Bros the biggest department store, KAROLOS FIX Brewery, Adriatiki insurance co, “ION” the biggest Chocolate producer, “Minion Department Stores”, Meimaredis group of department stores (Akron Ilion Krystal), “EVZ” the Greek Sugar Industry with an installation of six 2903 systems, the biggest 2903 installation in Europe, ”Mitera” the biggest private Maternity Hospital etc.
It is of historical interest, worth mentioning, is terrorist event that burned down the total “Minion department stores” including the 2903 computer installation, which maintained the accounts of all suppliers and whole sale customers including debtors balances. By total coincidence, the EDP manager of Minion had taken with him a back up disc with all programs and data. The system was reinstated in Solomos service bureau overnight, that helped Minion to reopen the department store in a new, close by, location within a few weeks. This was a unique event in EDP history.
Some of these installations replaced IBM medium size computer installations, hence the impact made in the market for the entry of ICL in the market and the competence of the Greek company, Solomos, were very impressive.
Meanwhile ICL internationally proceeded to absorb Singer business computers the US computer company.
Singer Business Machines
Early in 1976, ICL acquired the Business Machine division of Singer, which was acquired by purchasing “Friden”, a computer company, whose flagship product was the “system ten” a small business minicomputer. The acquisition shifted the geographical balance of ICL’s sales away from the UK, and also gave a presence in industry markets such as retail and manufacturing. ICL subsequently developed the System Ten into the System 25, and used the product to spearhead the growth of its Retail Systems business during the 1980s.
Datachecker
In 1988 STC major share holder acquired US retail systems specialist Datachecker Systems from National Semiconductor Corporation. At the time this was the second largest supplier in the US retail market, and greatly expanded ICL’s US presence.
Any merging activity in Europe and USA was considered a natural part of an evolutionary process. Integrating skills and management was always a difficult process but management practices and culture was advanced, so solutions were always found to the benefit of the new company created out of a merger or takeover.
Unfortunately, the situation in Greece developed to a tragedy which led to the bankruptcy of several companies including “Pan Solomos” company, a real pioneer of the Greek office organization market and the newly formed company “Prooptiki SA” generated out of merging “Eurodata” the Singer Business machine agent in Greece and “Pan Solomos” representing ICL. This dramatic development happened due to lack of management culture of the shareholders of both merging companies to the benefit of ICL.
ICL eventually founded ICL Hellas SA with ICL controlling majority during the end of 80ies.
ICL’s presence was still expanding in Greece, especially in retail industry, having retained all personnel and customer base utilizing ICL point of sale products which enriched existing customer base such as Minion Department stores, Duty Free Shops, Royal Cruise line operating in Aegean Sea, the Bahamas, North America and North Europe. Similar ICL Point of Sales installations were implemented on major coastal shipping companies among which ANEK LINES of Crete, ANEL LINES of Lesbos and DANE of Rodes (Dodecanese lines) which was expanding on their ticket reservations applications software and OTE the Greek ptt.
iCL managed to promote one of the first office automation systems that run on Middle range computers with office automation packages a such as “Office Power” package installed on a 2903 ICL computer for the ministry of exterior. Other systems included the installation of 2903 to “Arios Pagos” the supreme court of Greece etc
Fujitsu relationship with ICL and eventual acquisition
ICL’s relationship with Fujitsu started in 1981, when ICL needed a cheaper source of technology to develop lower-end machines in the 2900 range to compete with the IBM 4300 Series At this stage ICL was developing its own Large-scale integration (LSI) technology with tens of thousands of transistors per chip, for use in the higher-end machines, designed as a successor to the highly successful 2900 processor). ICL had visited a number of companies during 1980, including Fujitsu and Hitachi to identify potential suppliers.
As part of the 1981 restructuring, ICL cancelled in-house LSI technology development, and negotiated an agreement that gave access to Fujitsu’s LSI and packaging technologies, which, when combined with ICL’s in-house CAD capability, enabled ICL to design and manufacture Series 39 level 30 and 80.
Initially the collaboration with Fujitsu was presented as being an arm’s length one, to avoid diluting ICL’s credentials as a European and British company. However, Fujitsu’s involvement with ICL at both the financial and the technical level steadily increased over the subsequent two decades, and in 1990 Fujitsu acquired 80% of ICL plc from its parent STC plc, In 1998 Fujitsu became ICL’s sole shareholder[ and the ICL brand was dropped in 2002.
This fulfilled a prediction that the European director has made earlier, warning ICL and the rest of the British industry of the future threat coming from Japan.
Fujitsu managed to absorb eve more of the European computer industry by the creation of Fujitsu Siemens Computers during 1999 which also acquired Nokia Data personal computers and severs marketed under ICL brand and all the business of Siemens Nixdorf with the exception of its banking and retail systems. Fujitsu Siemens was merged back into Fujitsu in 2009.
European Union funding provided to improve IT infrastructure in Greece. Mediterranean programs during the 80ies and 90ies.
During the same period, Public organizations, which were in need of immediate introduction of computerization, still straggled with manual processes and bureaucracy, partly due to incompetence and partly due to lack of properly established public procurement procedures?
Organizations such as Inland Revenue and tax authorities, social security (IKA), pensions, public hospital administration, various ministries, public television companies, public utility companies, legal administration, central government and much more, which could benefit from large mainframe installations, they either did not use any or they failed to make good use of them. It was only after Greece’s entry into the European Common Market the problem was seriously addressed in terms of funds being made available and methodology followed.
Two areas which were considered to be of great priority were Inland Revenue (TAXIS) in the ministry of Finance and Public Hospital administration within the Ministry of Health, especially maintaining medical record historical files. Efforts had already been made. For the various tax offices Novel network distributed systems were installed from Greek companies “ABC” and “Informer SA”, this solution had not proved to be adequate. IBM installed a central main frame to complement the initial implementation to the TAX offices, but still the problem was not solved. Eventually the project was to be funded by a gigantic Mediterranean program that was won by Bull.
The medical record problem has always been a serious unresolved issue, on previous attempt took place in one of the general hospitals “Genimatas General hospital’ during 1976. This attempt was done by Pan Solomos Ltd based on Microfiche Remington equipment, nothing to do with computers.
Yet, in spite significant funding that was provided for both areas the public administration did not manage to take advantage of this huge opportunity.
In both cases the projects proved to be failures, in the first case, TAXIS, the two front runners were two European companies Bull and ICL. Both companies submitted proposals for the same system purchased from Siemens, the bid requested the execution of a bench mark which both companies completed, at great cost, the result was that ICL produced double performance at significantly lower price but the company was disqualified because , at the original proposal, the company did not include a software simulator product of minor cost, but submitted this, subsequently, with the results of the benchmark, as a result the government lost a significant amount of money. One might say that this was not so bad; the bigger failure was with the second project with the 15 hospitals and the patient medical record history file.
The companies participating for the hardware system was DEC, HP and ICL, the Greek company INTRASOFT got the contract for developing the Patient Medical record history file.
The bid committee had an advanced idea, instead of declaring one company as the winner it decided to allocate five hospitals to each of the participating companies, as long as they could all agree to run the software under the same OPEN SYSTEM environment with UNIX operating system. They all agreed including INTRASOFT the software producer.
The project was successfully completed for both for the hardware supplied and the Medical record software, yet the project was never fully paid, one of the reasons was that the Greek Ministry of Health had failed to make provisions for the budget needed to cover maintenance cost, not covered by European funding…many Billions Drachmas were lost….The ministry is still straggling for a standardize Medical history file. This was an enormous failure that discredited Greek public administration for years.
The only activity that survived out of the hospital effort was the implementation of basic accounting applications, such as general ledger, payroll stock control completed by Pan Solomos on an ICL 2903 computer at the largest Greek Hospital ‘Evagelismos’ .
The train of technology in Greece
Eventually, everybody was talking about the risk of ‘losing the train of technology’. So, the Greek public administration had to run faster, thus, it was after the 80ies that the train started moving to gain some of the wasted time.
The multiplicity of installations in various commercial companies gave birth to the need to standardize on certain operating system and programming languages, hence the concept of ‘Open systems’ during the 80ies was introduced.
All this technological evolution had a direct impact in the international IT market as well as to the Greek market.
European IT industry was struggling to survive in competition with US and later with Japan for both Main frame and minicomputer manufacturing industries, till the first personal computers appeared during late 80ies and 90ies. That was a game changer for both OPEN SYSTEM and the rest of the software industry due the rise of Microsoft which developed to a monopoly.
This gave a big boost to hardware manufacturing in China and Taiwan, but even stronger impact to the spreading of IT, had the rise of OPEN SYSTEMS applications and faster communication networks with internet diving deeper to human societies.
OPEN SYSTEMS, UNIX AND LINUX
As computer hardware was becoming smaller, faster, easier to install and operate as well as at considerably lower cost, more companies were purchasing systems which started outsourcing software development services. As a consequence a number of third party software houses started developing commercial applications, marketing standard software packages that run on different hardware system platforms.
Open systems refer to computer systems that offer interoperability, portability, as well as open software standards. The open systems indicated the Unix world because Unix runs in more types of computer hardware compared with other operating systems.
It was a natural trend for software producers to seek a common environment to transfer their products and implement packaged solutions on different hardware platforms,
That is how “Open Systems” became the surviving trend against legacy systems which were prevailing at the time. However, the trend was resisted by IBM and other firms for decades which were protecting their legacy platforms as much as possible..
The situation starts changing in the first part of 21st century. Many of same legacy system vendors like IBM and Hewlett-Packard begin to adopt Linux as part of their overall sale strategy
The history of UNIX dates back to the mid-1960s, when MIT, AT&Bell Labs, and General Electric were jointly developing an experimental time-sharing operating system called ‘Multics’ for the GE mainframe. Multics introduced many innovations but also had many problems. Bell Labs, frustrated by the size and complexity of Multics but not its aims, slowly pulled out of the project. Their last researchers to leave Multics decided to redo the work, but on a much smaller scale, The resulting system, much smaller and simpler than Multics, was to become Unix which was first ported on a PDP-7 DEC Computer during 69. For the first time in 1970, the UNIX operating system was officially named and ran on the PDP-11/20.
During the 80ies, multiple minicomputer installations gave birth to plethora of software houses that started developing commercial application on UNIX, and service bureau companies, both of which acted as an introduction to what was called later, outsourcing of IT services.
One of the first companies that developed most of the original UNIX software was UniSoft Corporation an American software developer established in 1981, originally focused on the development of UNIX ports for various computer architectures.
UniSoft Corporation
By 1989, UniSoft Corporation had completed over 225 UNIX implementations on various hardware platforms, which were estimated to have been about 65% of all such ports. This included porting of
UNIX Version 7, as the first operating system, on Sun Microsystems. UniSoft also developed Apple’s UNIX variant for the Apple Macintosh II.
The first UNIX release was written entirely in assembly language in 1971, as this was common practice at the time.
UNIX was rewritten in C programming language during 1973,
The availability of a high –level language implementation of UNIX made its porting to different computer platforms easier.
In spite its contribution to OPEN SYSTEM, UNIX was marketed as a proprietary operating system, portable to different platforms, yet its source code was closed to any third party due to an earlier antitrust regulation forbidding the entry to commercial computer business, AT&T was required to license the operating system’s source code free to anyone who asked.
As a result, UNIX grew quickly and became widely adopted by academic institutions and businesses. In 1984, AT&T disengaged itself of Bell Labs, freed of the legal obligation requiring free licensing; Bell Labs began selling UNIX as a proprietary product, where users were not legally allowed to modify UNIX.
Linux operating system
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) Project was free software, mass collaboration project announced on September 27, 1983. Its goal was to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaboratively developing and publishing software that gives everyone the rights to freely run the software, copy and distribute it, study it, and modify it.
Development was initiated in January 1984. In 1991, the Linux Kernel appeared, developed outside the GNU project and in December 1992 it was made available under version 2 of the GNU General public License, it allowed for the first operating system that was free software, commonly known as Linux.
Linux was originally developed for personal computers based on Intel architecture, but has since been ported to more platforms than any other operating systemBecause of the dominance of the Linux-based Android on smartphones, Linux also has the largest installed base of all general purpose operating systems. Linux is the leading operating system on servers (over 96.4% of the top 1 million web servers’ operating systems are Linux) leads other large systems such as mainframe computers and is the only OS used on most supercomputers (since November 2017, having gradually eliminated all competitors).
Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free and open-source software collaboration. The source code may be used, modified and distributed commercially or non-commercially by anyone under the terms of its respective licenses, such as the GNU General Public License.
PART B FOLLOWS SHOTLY
Times for Change 
