LONDON IT HISTORY (With some assistance from Sid Ings ......Chris Watkins, who eventually became IBM...

LONDON IT HISTORY

By Dick Milnthorpe

(With some assistance from Sid Ings, Julian Rye and Eamon

Veaney)

September 2020

As in Australia the IT Dept. grew out of the Punched Cards Dept. which had been formed in the

late 50s to handle sterling traveller’s cheques and subsequently the Bank Share Register and

dividend distribution (the ANZ was a British Bank with its HQ in London until 1 October 1976

when the domicile was transferred to Melbourne).

John Sanders installed and managed the first equipment assisted by Johnnie Walker and later

on Dick Sanders (later Mgr. Warnambool). Sandy was later promoted and replaced by Phil

Scattergood, and after Dick Sanders left, Dick Milnthorpe from FX replaced him in 1960.

Between 1960 and 1965 the dept. expanded its work over many areas including Staff current

accounts and two new share issues, banking computerisation became common and Phil

Scattergood produced a recommendation that the Bank install an IBM 360/30 of 32 mg

capacity with three 2311 disk drives to replace the punched card operation in London. This was

duly agreed and the 360/30 was delivered in May 1965 and installed in a prepared air

conditioned site on the 3rd floor of 71, Cornhill.

In the meantime volunteers from staff were aptitude tested by IBM and the initial team was

selected to attend IBM programming courses. We were assisted by an excellent IBM SE tutor,

Chris Watkins, who eventually became IBM U.K. SE Manager.The initial plan was for

Scattergood to be Manager, reporting to Frank Knight a senior executive Walker to be I/c

systems design, and Milnthorpe to be I/c programming and operations.

Unfortunately Johnnie Walker became ill after two months and had to leave the Project. As a

result Scattergood also took overall responsibility for the Current Accounts and General Ledger

design and those team members involved, Milnthorpe took over responsibility for all other

systems, in addition to his other duties, reporting to Scattergood.

Front row. Tony Pycroft. Bruce. Peter Carmichael, Peter Rawlings, Phil Scattergood (IT

MGR).Second row... Dick Galpin, Frank Knight (Services Mgr.), Dick Milnthorpe, Ken Hendry

(methods), Sid Ings, Mgr. Strand Branch,

Back row. ???, Colin Haddow, Mike Halliday., Mike Jose, Anton Archer, Julian Rye.

Not all the older ones were team members. Pycroft, Halliday, Carmichael, Jose, soon left to

join other firms. Peter Carmichael and I were the only RPG trained members although we all

did Assembler Except the oldies. John Coleman took the photo and by rights should have

been in it as he did the Assembler course.

Chris Baker, Dick Galpin, Bruce Plaice-Leary, Dick Milnthorpe, Sid Ings, Brian Nice

The new organisation worked reasonably well and the work of the punched Card dept. was

gradually redesigned and transferred on to the computer whilst programming commenced on

the accounting systems involving paper tape input.

In 1966 Scattergood was moved out of IT (he subsequently became Asst Mgr. Guernsey). The

reason for this is not clear but there had been friction with IBM over the lack of a suitable card

reader in the equipment for which Scattergood (to his credit) had remedied by using part of

the budget allocated for a cheque reader. Unfortunately the Bank did not approve of the way

this was done. The IBM sales team was also changed. Dick Milnthorpe was appointed to

succeed Scattergood reporting to Frank Knight.

Progress continued and by end 1967 most applications were Live, Ings (eventually Manager

USA support based in NY) replaced Tony Pycroft as Chief Programmer when he moved to

Chicago with Sears Roebuck. Warren Roe was I/C Operations (eventually Director Corporate

Banking in ANZ/Grindlays), Dick Galpin (eventually Manager Premises ANZ Grindlays) was also

in a senior role. Julian Rye left to take up the IT management role at a City Merchant Bank, and

Bruce Plaice Leary replaced him as Chief Systems Designer. Other personnel changes also

occurred due to trained staff seizing opportunities elsewhere and were replaced by external

and internal recruitment, notably Chris Norton who made a considerable contribution to the

success of the IT operations in the Bank world-wide, and eventually became Head of UK IT in

1991, which included Grindlays Bank.

In 1968 the rapid expansion in Nominees business volumes was causing severe problems and

it was requested that it be assisted by use of the London computer. Plaice Leary was assigned

to lead this project which had become urgent.

Bruce Plaice-Leary

Adaptations of existing computer systems were evaluated but a system based upon an

adaption of the General Ledger system (originally designed and programmed by Bruce) was

adapted which dovetailed in with the availability of paper tape output from the Nominees NCR

equipment already in use. This proved very successful, so much so that Bruce was sent to

Melbourne to install the system at the IBM Bureau for use in Australia which he successfully

accomplished. Bruce was offered a position on the Melbourne Team but decided to return to

London. (Later became a GM in Melbourne)

The unplanned addition of Nominees processing created a strain on the capacity of the

existing equipment and considerable software tuning efforts were made to contain processing

times. The 360/30 was exchanged for a leased Mode 40 with more memory, and also the

original disk drives were exchanged for ones of larger capacity even so the computer was

operated over three shifts. It was during this period that another programmer was recruited,

namely Eamon Veaney who had originally joined the Team as an operator. (Later became an

AGM in Melbourne). There is little doubt that the quality of the London team was high, all of

those transferred achieved high management positions. (London IT retained responsibility for

the International systems development of the Bank. With a reporting line to Melbourne until

the Bank centralised global development to Bangalore, India. This centre had originally been

set up using the Indian based computer team created by Milnthorpe in 1987. Milnthorpe was

its temporary first Board Director until replaced by Reg Nicolson in 1988 when the Bank

became aware of its new subsidiary. This development was the brainchild of Gurmeet Malhotra

who managed the Indian computer team)

In 1976 John Holberton, GM International in Melbourne came to London and requested

assistance in the opening of a computerised branch office in NY. Milnthorpe spent a week

there examining options, initially accompanied by Plaice Leary who was en route to Montreal

to examine some Controllers facilitating the addition of VDUs to the London 360/40.(later

installed successfully). Assisted by Warren Taylor (an Australian in the NY Rep Office) there

appeared to be no suitable package system available and with the new branch set to open in

May, Milnthorpe returned to London to consider the limited options, if any.

Warren Taylor and Mike Tong

Some months previously Milnthorpe had become aware of a new system being developed by a

small software house in London (later taken over by BIS). It was still largely on the drawing

board but there was now a rudimentary demo available. The system covered bank accounting

and was FX biased was written in RPG code and ran on the small IBM System 32. Milnthorpe

was familiar with RPG and had an FX background. He decided to adopt the system for NY did a

deal with BIS whereby they agreed to install the system with our team in NY, for a total price of

$US 13000 ! A loss leader which would prove to be very successful for them in the future. The

package costs several millions now. A big punt on both sides.

In early 1976 Milnthorpe took a small team to NY. The ream

comprised Milnthorpe, Veaney, plus John Gilbert from BIS.

The team installed a System 32 computer in 63 Wall Street

NY and set to work adapting the rudimentary package

software for NY operation assisted by Warren Taylor of the

existing Rep Office staff, and Mike Tong from London FX.

Plaice Leary was delegated to manage the London

operation in Millthorpe’s absence. After much effort and

sterling work by Gilbert and Veaney the system was

completed in time for the opening of the new branch in

early June under the management of Tom Williams from

NZ. Subsequently the system facilities were further

expanded to accommodate input from the CHIPS clearing

system in NY, with help from Mike Cancilla (office manager NY) John Gilbert

and also London and Australia. Via telecoms and Veaney wrote software to include the

processing of Australian Letters of Credit Reimbursements , assisted by Ed Tanner from

Melbourne’s International Division (Ed subsequently became Snr Mgr. SWIFT for Australia and

Head of Branch Payments.)

Sid Ings, Mike Cancilla, Frank Donovan, Ivan St Clair, Roger Dorian

New York Office 1982

Dick with Ed Tanner Dick with Brian Christensen

Valerie Chestnut John and Dick

The system was very successful and in 1977 Milnthorpe and Veaney were despatched to

provide the system for another new branch in Los Angeles, (Manager Rupert Thomas) this

again was effected successfully, and during this period it was arranged to replace all S32s with

the new S34, Milnthorpe also did a deal with BIS for ANZ to use MIDAS world-wide in

exchange for the Credits software created by Veaney. On return to London Milnthorpe was

assigned to install the system in Hong Kong.( Manager Rolly Isherwood), again working with

Warren Taylor and John Gilbert who had been recently recruited by Milnthorpe to join the

London ANZ staff. The HK installation was also completed successfully with assistance from

Melbourne by Bob Wheeler and John Winders, who later helped to install the system in

Singapore, NZ, and Japan.

Los Angeles Team 1977 Dick and Rupe John Winders

On Milnthorpe’s return to London in early 1980 he was transferred to Melbourne IT, having

been promoted to Senior Manager, and Bruce Plaice Leary was appointed to succeed him as

London IT Manager. Support for NY, LA, and a new Chicago Branch was carried out by Veaney,

later succeeded by Ings who became resident in NY for many years until his retirement. Over

the course time the Midanz system was successfully migrated to new machines such as the S38

and the AS 400, as well as the PC! And is still in use. After nearly 45 Years.

IBM Mid-Range Computers

Dick and Bruce

In 1984 ANZ took over Grindlays Bank, then the sixth largest in the UK. This was the brainchild

of Reg Nicholson who wished to expand the Banks area of operations, particularly in India

where Grindlays had some 55 manually operated branches. Milnthorpe was offered the posts

of Director of IT in Grindlays, or to head up IT Operations in Australia. He chose the former

(even though the latter was the better career move) because at the age of 54 the UK pension

scheme was more attractive, and there were more systems development opportunities in that

role (Nicholson had already asked him to automate India).it also enabled him to reunite the

whole family in UK with his daughter and elderly mother.

In early 1986 Milnthorpe arrived back in London and after resolving many domestic issues

concerning Schools, housing, and dog transfer quarantine, joined the Grindlays organisation.

The main issue then urgent was the choice of system between Midanz on IBM S38, and the

Grindlays Gas Automated System on IBM 370 145 with subsets of the system in overseas

branches as MIGAS, and MICROGAS using IBM S34s and NCR computers. Milnthorpe called a

meeting of all interested parties at which the Grindlays HQ accounting team expressed their

wish to continue with GAS and its interlinked relationships with its overseas branches, and

Treasury with its marked preference for MIDANZ. At the meeting Milnthorpe proposed to

utilise MIDANZ everywhere for Treasury operations and to feed the resultant accounting

entries into the Gas, MIGAS, or MICROGAS systems as appropriate. This was agreed as a simple

and quick way to resolve the problem and was rapidly implemented by Veaney and Chris

Norton.

Chris Norton and John Stoakley

Milnthorpe then appointed Veaney as head of Systems, Norton as head of operational

software, and a senior Grindlays man, Alan Swarbrick to head up Operations. The loss of

Grindlays IT staff slowed to a trickle and the new combined department settled down. This

enabled Milnthorpe to concentrate on India although additional areas of responsibility

required some minor attention, such as Grindlays Merchant Bank, Grindlays Private Bank, an

Esanda type Agricultural Machinery finance company, and a Timber importing company.

In mid late 1986 Milnthorpe travelled to Bombay to meet up with the nucleus of the Indian

Computer team namely Gurmeet Malhotra, Dhrubo Chaudhuri, and Satyendra Chelvendra.

Gurmeet and Chelvi Chelvi and Dick Ravi and Dhrubo

There were 55 branches in India all operated manually. Obviously these three had thought

about this a lot in the past and were well aware of requirements. The main problems at that

time were poor communications and inability to import new computer equipment. Thus only

obsolescent hardware was available second hand. The sole new equipment manufacturer in

India was ICL who had a factory in Poona. Milnthorpe requested Gurmeet to propose a

solution and this resulted in a package called BANKMASTER being purchased from KINDLE in

Dublin to be adapted for use ( it is worth noting that Standard Chartered Bank had already

adopted this system in India) an Indian staffed computer team was created with Gurmeet in

charge, assisted by Drubho and Chelvy. The Project was named GERONIMO for motivational

reasons. The new system ran on ICL hardware similar to the IBM S34 in size. The package was

purchased in late 1986 and suitable communications were established with Kindle in Dublin for

technical support during implementation. Bob Wheeler joined the team in India as

Milnthorpe’s representative and provided assistance to Gurmeet this worked well and

Installation of the first branch was achieved within four months! A great comment on the

quality of the Indian Team under Gurmeet who with Drubho and Chelvy were invited to a

celebratory Dinner in London presided over by Ashok Dayal, Director Far East and with whom

Milnthorpe had developed a friendly relationship. No authority had been formally obtained

from Melbourne for this new system but Plaice Leary subsequently formalised it by submitting

a retrospective system Proposal to AHQ.

Eamon Veaney and Bob Wheeler

In mid-1987 Milnthorpe was again asked to return to Melbourne as head of the new systems

development department, having regard to domestic circumstances Milnthorpe declined the

offer saying that the dog was now too old to travel! (Plaice Leary was subsequently appointed

to this role.) Milnthorpe was asked to add Australian Branch banking to his Grindlays

responsibilities and thereafter spent much time commuting in a 747! Gina Healey his secretary

performed a valuable link with London and himself during his frequent lengthy absences in

Melbourne; “she phoned me every night whilst in OZ and also kept in touch with Pat”.

In 1989 Milnthorpe was again asked to return to Melbourne this time as Head of IT, but

although flattered by the offer, again declined effectively bringing his career to an end. He

retired in July 1991. He was succeeded by Norton in London, and Veaney transferred to

Australian staff and later became an AGM in IT.

From Julian Rye

As the one renegade amongst those sharing these memories, perhaps I can add my bit.

Hope it’s not TOO verbose.

I was sitting in the Marble Arch branch in 1965 when a note came round inviting us to take

aptitude tests if we wanted to join the computer team. I didn’t think I did very well, but found

myself later at Imperial College with over 300 other people being given a presentation on the IBM

360 by a chap using photocopies of a manual he'd been sent from New York. He couldn’t

answer most of the questions as he’d only done the course the week before!

One of the people who did not join the team was Peter Mather. He’d just applied to join IBM, so

that caused a conflict. He eventually joined what was then ICT. We kept in touch and sang in the

Royal Choral Society for some years. One of his claims to fame was that he was a leading light in

telecommunications during the Gulf War. (Lieutenant Colonel in the T.A.) Sadly he died about three

years ago.

As with everyone else, we were pioneers in understanding what these things did and those who

weren’t logical and clear thinking floundered. Sadly, I think Phil was one of those or he was not

confident in his position and we found it confusing. That chap Milnthorpe was running the

tabulator system in the basement recording traveller’s cheques and when he took over the

computer department, a sense of organisation appeared. That’s what comes of a being a sergeant

in his National Service. A rare achievement confirming his skill at handling people and having an

agile mind! I have not met a better boss during the rest of my career.

Our first programs were tested at the IBM Bureau in Basinghall Street. We took down sets of

punched cards and collected the results the following day. At least once I found that nothing had

happened as I had mis-punched a control card. 24 hours wasted!

Travellers Cheques processing was the first to run. They were simple days because you could only

run one program at a time and multithreading (!) didn’t appear for some time. How often did a

program fail because we didn’t get the BALR instruction right?

We had help from IBM trainees, and when one program failed it took hours to learn that the

programmer had coded it so that a branch on condition instruction was amended later on in the

program. KISS! There was great camaraderie across the IBM user base. Dick and I visited

Worthy Down (Royal Army Pay Corps) where we found privates running 805 valve machines and

1401s! They had to learn the 360 operations codes by heart. Barclays (then DCO) and Standard

Banks owe us for providing the testing facilities in those early days. decided that they would

actually charge for what they knew!

After TCs it was staff accounts. One of the bestselling points occurred when Bank Rate changed. All

the supervisors of customer accounts had to stay and recalculate the interest points. The Staff

Accounts supervisor went home at the usual time!

It wasn’t long after that that the wrong control card was inserted for Friday night’s processing and

we only accrued one day’s interest points. If we’d been a day later discovering it (fortunately one of

the account supervisors was brave enough to question what he’d seen), great grandfather would

not have been found!

Those who may remember CCWs (Channel Command Words) may also remember that we had

trouble one day. CCWs told the computer which tracks on a cylinder it should access to read or

write. It turned out that there was a bug in the CCW handling of overflows and one of the

programs crashed. Yours truly spent rather a long time tracking down the bug and in the end I

seem to recall actually changing a bit by accessing the CPU itself. I think that’s when John Harrison

was patiently waiting for us to be ready for the Monday morning. Talk about brinkmanship!

Were you there when the IBM engineer read in a pack of cards and the Computer played Bach for

us? And all IBM engineers wore waistcoats! And there was the new recruit who became a proud

specialist in writing RPG Programs! Was it nominees? That of course was Dick.

One of the challenges we had was how to handle input when a transaction had been keyed

incorrectly and then the correct one keyed later. Answer: read the paper tape backwards! I think it

was Tony who wrote that input program. I have to say that I was always grateful for being able to

get in close to the heart of the processing. One level up from machine code. It was very useful

years later to be able to show my staff that I did understand a bit what was going on inside the

machine! (Pun not intended!)

In the early days, we managed to reprogram the system so that when a program check occurred,

the dump came out as a monkey’s face instead of whole load of hexadecimal!

I can still picture playing golf with Sid and Bruce (who was the fourth? Tony………?) at Cuddington. I

went round in 157. I improved after the first hole, where I took 12. I think I lost three balls! My

standard is still about the same, but Madeleine plays off about 27!

That’s probably enough.

Back to Wordsworth and ‘I wandered lonely as a Cloud’!

From Sid Ings

Great to hear everyone's recollections of the early days of ANZ's entry into the world of computing

in the late sixties. I can still visualize the layout of that first computer room where all that hardware

and software could handle only a minute fraction of our phones today. How the world has

changed! Tony Pycroft wrote certainly the most difficult program - paper tape input of daily

transactions. Yes, lots of the originals in the photo, who all contributed to the accounts system

design, testing, and implementation.

The most difficult program I wrote was the main transaction update CAU03. Of course a few years

after the CA system was up and running, we had to program the decimalization conversion - much

easier (not much more than what to do with leftovers after rounding up!) than Y2K almost 30 years

later. Did we have a backup site of our own in those days? My feeling is that we had an

arrangement with IBM to use one of their systems from our mag tape backup and program discs.

At some stage before relocating to NY in 1982 (can't remember which year), I did spend 6 months

away from London split between HK and Melbourne.

Regarding my time in HK and Melbourne, I have to assume that was to continue support of the

system you guys had set up. Regarding my question on backup, Dick mentioned that one of the

first arrangements was with Standard Chartered and Barclays DCO. He also added that during the

Heath Govt. electricity strike in 1974 he made an arrangement with La Cellophane in Paris and

we flew the disks out nightly for overnight processing and flew them back the following

morning. Tony Richards was our operator in Paris. He later became an FX Trader. Colin Haddow

reluctantly did the courier work (he did not like flying!).

Dick further added (and I quote):

"Re the Paris episode, when I initially made the arrangements in Paris I went to a little pub off the

Champs-Elysees and had a chat with a young and attractive barmaid there. I arranged for Tony

Richards to meet her the following day. When he went to see her he introduced himself and said

“My Dad sent me! “

As I've said before, I don't have any really vivid recollections of London IT, having worked in NY for

almost 30 years - and 50 years at ANZ in total. I could probably write more about my time in New

York, both inside and outside of the office. After all, I must have loved it for 37 years before I

returned in April last year!

LONDON IT HISTORY (With some assistance from Sid Ings ......Chris Watkins, who eventually became IBM...

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