The Fascinating History of Computing and Communications Technologies in Galway

 

On Tuesday night in the wonderful Portershed, I was guest speaker at the launch of  the GIT (Galway IT) group, a gathering of tech enthusiasts who range from veteran developers to young passionate beginners. Thanks to the hard working Liam Krewer for seeing the need for such a club and doing something about it.

My presentation gave an overview of the proud heritage that Galway has in communications and computing from the establishment of the Marconi transatlantic radio station near Clifden in 1907 (the birth of the Global Village), onto the arrival of the world’s second largest computer manufacturing company to Mervue in 1971 (the birth of Ireland’s first ‘digital city’), to the opening of computer stores in 1980, to the establishment in 1983 of an interlinked network of computer labs in the city’s secondary schools (the birth of ‘cloud computing’ and ‘online social media’ in Ireland), and onto the setting of the West of Ireland’s first mobile computer classroom (2008).
 
For a deep dive into the fascinating history of such technologies, their Galway connections and much more besides, come along to the Computer and Communications Museum of Ireland, that is supported by the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, between 7pm and 9pm on Culture Night (this Friday Sept 22nd). Eircode H91 AEX4

Climate Action - 'Makers & Fixers' give a new lease of life to a 1980s MicroVax

Well done Gerry Kavanagh for bringing back to life a 1980 MicroVax mincomputer system manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).
Gerry assisted by Pat Moran has the computer running DEC's VMS (Virtual Memory System) operating system.
We hope to have the full system up and running at the museum by the end of next month.
In line with the Climate Action theme of the Galway Science and Technology Festival, our recent batch of recycling and upcycling repair projects at the museum are designed to reduce eWaste and to make computers and other communications equipment, that was otherwise considered obsolete and worthless, usable again.

Resurrecting 1980s 'cloud computing'!

The term 'cloud computing' was first used by Eric Schmidt (Google's CEO) at a conference in 2006 during a discussion on data storage.

But network-based computing was popular in Galway city from the early 1980s. Thanks to the generousity and foresight of the Galway-based DIgital Equipment Corporation (DEC), then the second largest computer corporation in the world, eleven second level schools in Galway were then sharing and storing online data via a server at their manufacturing operation in Ballybrit on the east side of the city.

Gerry Kavanagh (right in photo), who as a young teenage boy used such a system in St Mary's College, is leading a project team, that includes Pat Moran (left in photo), to resurrect a DEC MicroVax network system. Once this initiative is completed, visitors to the museum will be given the opportunity to try out and experience this pioneering technology.

Directly to the left of Gerry in the photo is a MicroVax server topped with a album from St. Mary's College showing an image of the school's Computer Room from the 1980s.

Insight’s new Digital Makerspace facility, adjacent to the museum, is providing the opportunity for enthusiasts to develop exciting projects such as the MicroVax Resurrection.

‘Back to the Future’- 1980s Galway city was so 21st century

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An invitation is being extended to those who were employed in electronic manufacturing companies such as Northern Telecom, Information Sources Ltd(ISL) and Digital Equipment Corporation, as well as to those who had worked or studied in information technology, telecommunications and computing retail sector in Galway, during the 1970s/1980s, to attend a gathering at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics of the Data Science Institute, NUI Galway in the Dangan Business Park at 8pm on Tuesday June 11^th. The purpose of the event is to connect with people that helped make Galway the country’s first ‘Digital City’ and one that was uniquely cosmopolitan during this era, in order to tap into their expertise, memorabilia and stories for the benefit of the national Computer and Communications Museum based at the Data Science Institute.

According to Brendan Smith Public Engagement Officer at Insight and curator of the computer museum, “21^st century Ireland is defined in so many ways by technology-related issues such as cloud computing, social media, robotics, artificial intelligence, youth coding clubs, online digital media, video conferencing, computing gaming, a government focus on investing into science subjects, developing third level centres of scientific research, promoting the country as a high-tech global hub for foreign direct investment, attracting in skilled workers from overseas, as well as on the dark side by concerns over hacking and the negative influences of modern devices on family life and wellbeing.

Amazingly these issues were also symptomatic of Galway during the 1980s. The city was a key European manufacturing plant for Digital Equipment Corporation(DEC), then the world’s second largest computer company and for Northern Telecom, a global pioneer in the development of telecommunications products. Attracted by high tech jobs and a better quality of life, people came to work in Galway from the Americas, Asia and the European continent who had no Irish ancestry as well as from the Irish Diaspora in United States and Britain. As early as January 1981, all second-level schools in Galway city and county were equipped with Apple computers. The university was providing coding workshops for teachers; and ‘Coderdojo’ type clubs, aimed at children and their parents, were operating in city centre locations. Eleven city schools benefitted from ‘cloud-computing’ technology for mathematics and programming applications. Thirty years before Facebook, many teenagers took advantage of this online network connecting schools to communicate with each other for meet-ups, dating and other social engagements! Households in Galway were using digital devices via telephone lines to access online services for emailing, shopping, banking, hotel reservations, airline reservations, news, weather and information services. From 1984, robotics was taught at the Galway RTC (GMIT). UCG (NUIG) was renowned for its’ research on computer-aided manufacturing.  In 1985, a young boy invented Galway’s first computer-controlled robot. Two years later, an employee at DEC Galway produced probably Ireland’s first online newsletter by emailing news stories to colleagues working in DEC plants across the globe. As a prelude to Google, a Galway-based company(ISL) in 1982 was developing a digital search engine for American libraries.  The first satellite link between Ireland and North America, that allowed transatlantic business communications including video conferencing, was launched in 1987 at the Telecom Éireann (Éircom) headquarters in Mervue. 

We want to record these fascinating stories from this innovative era and make them known to the wider public.  Furthermore there is a huge repository of technical expertise amongst people from that generation who could form a veteran ‘digital makers’ club to pass on their vintage computer repair skills to younger museum volunteers.  Some individuals may be able to source key Galway-made or associated equipment absent from our museum collection or to volunteer as tour guides for a technology heritage and learning facility that is the only one of its type in Ireland and which could become an important element of Galway 2020 in promoting our unique digital cultural heritage.”

‘Back to the Future’- Online Social Media, Video Conferencing & Cloud Computing in 1980s Galway

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'Computer Society' stand on Student Societies Day UCG (NUIG), Sept 1980

Technology innovation, communications and learning is so much part of the fabric of modern Galway. Children and their parents are together attending Saturday morning classes to learn how to code; people of all ages are daily accessing online services for hotel bookings, banking details and information services; teenagers are flirting online with their boyfriends and girlfriends in different schools during class time; robotics are taught in our third level colleges; our pre-teen and early youngsters are becoming renowned digital makers who are demonstrating their own programmable automated devices at the Young Scientist Exhibition in the RDS; a multi-national Mervue-based company employing over one hundred college graduates is developing a revolutionary new type of search engine; Galway’s high tech industry is creating thousands of jobs that is earning the city a worldwide  reputation for business and responsible for a large slice of Ireland’s export trade. Mobile phones and video conferencing communications are changing the way we socialise and do business.
 

Whilst these details could define Galway city in 2018, there are in fact stories of Galway as it was during the 1980s! 

Test of PDP-11 computers in Ballybrit Galway, 1975

Find out more about the city’s proud digital heritage at a fascinating talk by Brendan Smith, curator of the Computer and Communications Museum of Ireland based at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics at NUI Galway, that will take place at 2.30pm on Saturday February 24^th in the Galway City Museum.

Colin Laferty at the 'Computer Society' stand, Student Societies Day UCG (NUIG), Sept 1980

Night of the Robots: Computer Museum, Culture Night Galway

As part of national Culture Night on September 19^th, a selection of vintage and modern robots will be on show from 7pm-8.30pm at the Computer and Communications Museum of Ireland  located in the Insight Centre for Data Analytics at NUI Galway.

According to Brendan Smith, curator of the museum, “Robots, which can be defined as programmable electro-mechanical machines capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically and oftentimes autonomously, have been part of popular science fiction since the early 1920s when the term ‘Robots’ was first coined by writer Karel Čapek  from the Czech word for ‘serf’. 

 These devices have been used since the 1970s to perform repetitive and heavy duty tasks in manufacturing industry particularly in vehicle assembly. We will have on display a large robotic arm controlled by a Galway-made DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) computer that was used in the British aeronautics industry during this period. 

Volunteers such as Alanna Kelly, John Lonican and Darren Tighe will also demonstrate at the museum the workings of low-cost easily assembled robots that can be programmed and operated by children from small computers.  We are honoured to have present Diarmuid Keaney who as a young boy in 1985 made his own and probably Galway’s first computer controlled robot. He will show us the original Commodore Vic 20 home computer and BASIC language programme that he used to operate the device.

There will also be an exhibition of rare science fiction comics and literature on the themes of robots dating from the 1920s onwards.  

 

But pride of place will go to a delightful machine called HERO 1, a R2-D2 lookalike from Star Wars, which took part in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade of Galway city in 1984! Manufactured by the American Heathkit company, it was the world’s first mass-produced affordable robot capable of interacting with the environment.  Its built-in programmable sensors allowed it to detect light, sound, motion, and obstructions. It had a computerized voice, could sing, could move and pick up objects. Frank McCurry and Tom Frawley then staff members of the local Regional Technical College (RTC) now known as GMIT, entered HERO into the March 17^th parade. It had been used in the Galway college as a device to teach students about robotics and represented what many thought at the time would be the dawn of the new Age of the Robot.”

Thanks to current advances in sensor technologies, a new generation of robots could physically look like humans, display intelligence in their responses and gestures to their surrounding environment and take on the role of companions to people.  This is already happening. ASIMO from the Japanese corporation Honda is able to recognise and respond to individual sounds, faces and moving objects; to interact with people and to give a handshake or courtesy to a person that he is facing towards.

Killer Robots

However there are genuine concerns over the technology of automation that allows an electronic device to work by itself with little or no direct human control particularly in the area of lethal autonomous weapons systems known as killer robots. Though not yet in existence fears expressed by many at such possibilities has led to the United Nations recently discussing the issue of banning outright research into such weaponry.
I for one am in favour of a complete ban of development of such weaponry.

Ireland’s oldest working computer showcased at Technology Museum in NUI Galway

Joe Hurley switches on a 1971 PDP 11 minicomputer

--> A forty three old computer of the type manufactured in Galway during the nineteen seventies formed the centre piece of a major tribute to Ireland’s rich technology heritage that took place last Saturday in the Computer and Communications Museum of Ireland located at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics (formerly DERI) in the Dangan Business Park NUI Galway. The event formed part of the national Engineers’ Week  being held from February 9^th to February 15^th,

As curator of this museum (in my capacity as Insight Outreach Officer), I believe that this PDP 11 minicomputer from 1971 is probably the country’s oldest operational computer. It is the size of a very large fridge but has only a memory capacity of 128k which seems puny in today’s term when one considers that the latest mobile phone can have 64gigabytes as standard. But forty years ago it was the flagship of computing. The PDP was repaired and restored by Joe Hurley of Quicktec. For Joe it was a labour of love as he had worked as a technician at the Galway factory where these computers were manufactured. In 1971 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), then the world’s second largest computer company, opened its first overseas manufacturing plant outside the USA  at Mervue in the city which produced a range of minicomputers and software that became the backbone of many industrial and engineering plants across Europe. One of the key reasons that the corporation located in Galway was the presence of a university which could provide an ongoing skilled creative educated workforce. This was further reinforced the following year with the establishment of a third level technology college, now known as the GMIT, near to the DEC plant. Not only did it become a major employer for the city and county, but its decision to set up here encouraged other US high-tech companies to follow suit with the result that the Ireland became a leading global electronics hub. New and exciting job opportunities in the areas of science, engineering and commerce for young Irish people resulted, significantly transforming the nation’s economy and society in the process. 

So Galway can rightly claim to be the country’s first and premier ‘Digital City’, building on an unbroken tradition of computing innovation dating back to DEC’s arrival.

During the Open Day at the museum, facilitated by Pat Moran (who joined DEC in 1973) visitors were able to view a full range of the DEC hardware including VAX systems, VT100 terminals, Rainbow microcomputers, PDP 8s and LA printers, as well as equipment manufactured by Northern Telecom (later Avaya) during the 1970s and 1980s; computers associated with the early 1980s Mervue-based Information Sources Ltd (ISL) which was Ireland’s first international digital archiving and cataloguing enterprise; and an 1993 IBM PC compatible microcomputer made by the Irish-owned QTech company. 

Zenith Heathkit computer from ISL (1983)

There was also on display electronic apparati made in Limerick (Wang), Cork (Apple) and elsewhere in Ireland during the nineteenth seventies and nineteenth eighties.

Thanks also to Philip Cloherty and Alanna Kelly for their wonderful stewardship on the day. Alanna has brought the museum into state-of-the art 21st century technology with her demonstrations of 3D printing.

Máire Bean Uí Chonghaile with Pat Moran (Museum Director & ex-DEC)

Galway: Birthplace of Computing in Schools

One of the visitors to the event was  Máire Bean Uí Chonghaile (neé Ní Chonceanainn), who was a founding member of the Computer Educational Society of Ireland (CESI) which was established in 1973 with its first conference being held in Galway. The group grew out of a series of computer courses for teachers that were hosted at University College Galway (now NUI Galway) during the summers of 1971 and 1972 by the staff of its Department of Mathematics.  
Máire was one of the earliest teachers of computing in schools. From 1977, she used a PDP8 minicomputer with two teleprinters provided by DEC Galway to teach Fortran computer language to students at Coláiste Chroí Mhuire An Spidéal . 

42 Year old renowned Galway Computer Comes Back to Life!

A minicomputer of the type that was made in Galway from November 1971 was switched on last Friday as part of the special The Gathering Ireland reunion weekend attended by c320 former staff of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).

After days spent repairing and replacing parts, former DEC technician Joe Hurley got the 1971 PDP11 minicomputer up and running much to the delight of the ex-DECies that came along to witness this historical moment in the 'Computer & Communications Museum of Ireland' located in the INSIGHT (formerly DERI) Centre for Data Analytics in NUI Galway. The 16-bit minicomputer was the flagship of the corporation's product line for much of the 1970s and 1980s. 

As Joe switched on the unit, rows of lights started flashing on its front and a noise like the sound of a jet taking off filled the room, followed soon after by an almighty roar from the crowd of onlookers. A few tears were shed as happy memories flooded back of life in DEC, a corporation that made Galway one of the main centres of hardware manufacturing in Europe.