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Tedium the catalyst, technology the result

Peter Davidson, Information Age

14/02/2006 11:19:59

If Alan Coulter hadn't become so sick of grinding numbers through a FACIT machine at the old Postmaster General's Department (PMG), ICT progress in Australia may have been seriously delayed.

In fact, the tedium of repetitive calculation is seldom given the recognition it deserves in the development of computing in this country.

As a research psychologist at the PMG trying to get some efficiency and order into training programs for new technicians, results from batteries of psych profile tests had to be correlated.

This meant laboriously churning the arithmetic by hand, and what he really, really needed was a Monroe electric calculator to get faster results with less effort.

Not only that, but he could then identify suitable training candidates before they were snapped up by other employers trawling for scarce human resources in the early 50s.

It was a 400-pound solution - or nearly half the price of an FJ Holden - and the PMG had a better idea: a young engineer called John Bennett was conducting a series of courses for Public Service types to familiarise them with a new computing machine called SILLIAC at Sydney University.

Perhaps it might do the job; off you go to find out.

So Coulter made the journey from Melbourne to Sydney to join a number of others of his ilk to hear what Bennett, also from Brisbane, had to say.

It carried a certain resonance inasmuch as it was the grind of endless manual calculation that drove Bennett to join the team at Cambridge in 1947, and from there to Sydney.

Bennett had been doing the calculations while developing a 10-year distribution plan for the South Queensland Electricity Authority when he heard about the development of the ACE computer at the National Physics Laboratory in London.

His application to the nearby London University as a research student found its way to Maurice Wilkes at Cambridge's Mathematical Laboratory which spawned the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC), arguably the world's first programmable computer.

For Coulter, this collision with computing was to change his life. Having started as a junior postal officer in Brisbane in 1950, then as a clerk, he'd embarked on a personnel cadetship which, among other things, required a three-year course in psychology.

Through his cadetship, he was assigned to "organisations and methods" investigations having along the way completed an economics degree in Brisbane and moved to the PMG's head office in Melbourne, as a senior research officer (psychologist)

With Australia gathering economic pace in the years after the War, a buoyant market meant that jobs were there for the picking. The PMG wanted the right people and set tests to gauge aptitude in mathematics and sciences, ability to work in an increasingly technical environment and so on.

"The tests had been set by schoolteachers and marked by schoolteachers," he recalls. "The trouble was that marking took a month, by which time candidates were well ensconced in jobs elsewhere."

He proposed fundamental changes to the way courses were set and how they were evaluated.

It was also a time of broadcast licences, and those defaulting in paying the fee to listen to the wireless were tracked down wherever possible and fined. "The PMG wanted to make an example of these people, but it seemed to me better to know who these people were and where they lived, and to change tactics so as to record these details on the new punched card system.

"People in country areas particularly, would sooner pay than be known as a defaulter. So, the local postmaster would put the word out at the pub that we would be tracking users, a PMG van with an ADF loop on top would arrive in town, the loop would make a few turns and people would queue up at the post office to pay their five bob or whatever."

His work in industrial psychology was approached in the same lateral boots-and-all attitude that marked the broad array of interests and achievements that filled his working life, and continue still.

He was a member of a public service committee of psychologists concerned with the science's application right across the service, including selection procedures for recruiting computer programmers.

He became a member of the British Psychological Society, and later a foundation member of its Australian equivalent. He was recently honoured for 40 years' continuous membership of it..

Enter SILLIAC, career-maker It was during this phase that he got his two-month stint on SILLIAC in 1959, an immersion in computing from which, at 73, he has yet to emerge.

At Sydney Uni's School of Physics, "Harry Messel was working hard to get government and business involved with SILLIAC to exploit its capabilities, with John Bennett demonstrating how to do that."

The PMG fell into computing's thrall as Coulter and others there looked at how the new technology's potential could drive Australia's post and telegraph network, engendering in him an abiding interest in networking.

This would significantly influence the direction of Australia's communications technologies over the next four decades.

Meanwhile, others from the PMG to spent time with Bennett and SILLIAC to understand its process, particularly in programming - among them a young Nat Wheatley, recently appointed an ACS Fellow, and the subject of an article in the October/November issue of Information Age.

Like most public service organisations of any size, the department's progress was characterised by boards, committees, hearings and gatherings all kind, and Coulter served on many as he rose from programmer to assistant controller and eventually to Deputy Assistant Director General.

The talk at the time was of how ICT could be applied in other government departments and agencies, and what developers and vendors were doing internationally to enhance their offerings. Networking technologies were ramping exponentially and opportunities clamoured for attention.

But domestic considerations also exerted themselves: by now married and with four kids it was time in 1967 to return to Brisbane to buy the house where he still lives, and to find a job. It came at the Brisbane City Council which wanted him to see how computing could be integrated into its business.

If you do it, do it all It was a time for reconnection: he returned to the University of Queensland, in addition to his council duties, to help establish a post graduate diploma in information processing and to lecture part-time in the system design segment of the course.

And having been exiled in Victoria for about a decade, he sought out his peers in the fledgling IT industry, starting with membership in the Queensland branch of the ACS. Like pretty well everything else he did, his involvement was total.

He was founding editor of the branch's newsletter, and became branch chair in 1971-72, having been voted a Fellow in 1970. He became director of the ACS technical board, and in 1984, President of the ACS.

At about the same time, he became vice president and later president of the Royal Society of Queensland, and in his presidential address focused on the effects that greenhouse gases would have over the next century on sea levels and monsoonal weather patterns in Queensland.

Two decades later his forecasts are being borne out in fact.

The speech also typified his dedication to the advancement of science, and information technology in particular, as a professional participant while at the same time holding down a high pressured job.

Deciding that he needed to broaden his business knowledge he applied in August 1969 for a position as administration manager for major Brisbane stockbroker Corrie and Co.

"When I was asked about my share portfolio, Corrie was a bit taken aback that I didn't have one and wasn't interested in owning shares. After we spoke for a while he took me to the Brisbane Club for lunch where we were joined by some of his many acquaintances.

Later that afternoon he was asked back for some "further questions at 4pm", and was immediately introduced to the staff as "the new admin manager".

He describes his time there as one of he most interesting of his career, running the business and its research team, and completing his admission to the Australian Institute of Securities in 1972.

It also brought him to the attention of the Australian Stock Exchange whose chairman recognised the breadth of his expertise and asked his advice on securities transfer. Later, the ASX would seek it again on more ambitious plans.

But having been made general manager of the firm with its 300 staff at five branches, it all came to a sudden halt with the unexpected death of its principal. All that remained for Coulter was to wind the company back to 30 staff, and to look for another job.

UQ beckoned again, this time in a full-time capacity.

Leading in academic IT The university had developed a proud history in information technology with Prof Sydney Prentice establishing a General Electric GE-225 in the UQ Computer Centre in 1962. The GE225 ran until 1977 when it found its repose in the Queensland Museum.

Its postgrad diploma in automatic computing was the first in Queensland and among the first in Australia when offered in 1965. The diploma in information processing mentioned earlier was added in 1968.

The computer centre was predominantly a Digital site with its first PDP-KA10 delivered in 1968, a year before Prof Gordon Rose was appointed inaugural chair of the Department of Computer Science.

Alan Coulter became the centre's first full-time director in 1972, becoming a fixture in what was to be later named the Prentice Computer Centre, until retiring in 1995.

He presided over continual growth in the centre's operations, connecting the newly established Griffiths University in 1974 and what was later to become the Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre.

In 1977 his knowledge of share trading brought him back into the ASX's purview as a consultant while continuing his duties at UQ; there was a move afoot to merge the Melbourne and Sydney exchanges, raising all manner of rivalries and political issues among their members, and some significant technical hurdles as well.

But his recommendations were accepted and the two bourses eventually came together successfully. Soon afterwards, he was asked to consult to the (then) state exchanges in Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth

Membership of boards and committees in education continued to demand his contribution, as did various sections of the ACS, the AIIA, the national committee for scientific information within the Australian Academy of Science, the Board of Governors for the ICCC, SEARCC and many others.

In the midst of it all, he maintained close associations with number of hardware and software vendors, particularly Digital which had PDP-10 and -11, DEC 11/780 VAX and an 8550 systems firmly planted at the university at one time or another.

Regular visits to DEC headquarters in Maynard to confer with founder/boss Ken Olsen kept Coulter abreast of developments by the recognised leader in mid-range computing and networking and second only to IBM in size at the time.

Australian area manager for DEC, Max Burnet, recalls his dealings with Coulter:

"The very name still sends shivers up my spine; a formidable negotiator when we were selling him million-dollar DEC-10's, and a customer who knew what service level he wanted.

"On one famous occasion during contract negotiations we exchanged the documents on 8-inch floppy disks about four times in each direction. I am sure neither of us actually read the details but honour was seen to be done.

"We were late delivering a DEC-10 to him once on our chartered plane from Boston, which normally headed for Sydney, but was diverted to Brisbane on a dark and stormy night.

"Our ever helpful customs agent decided to truck the load to Sydney as was normal procedure. But the truck crashed into a soggy cane field and I had to ring Alan and tell him why his computer was (a) being driven away from Brisbane and (b) slightly muddy. He was not impressed.

"He also showed me the first Ethernet in Australia before I had even heard of it. A very formidable and wise man. . . ."

Ethernet comes to town For a decade, Coulter had represented Australia on the International Federation for Information Processing's (IFIP) TC6 committee which concerned itself with networking and communications.

There he communed with a number of international luminaries including Robert Metcalfe who had developed a way to switch packets around a local area network, while working on his PhD at Harvard.

He called it Ethernet.

Metcalfe convinced Digital, Intel and Xerox ("DIX") to collaborate to establish 10Mb/sec as the DIX standard, which was duly published as such in September, 1980. Metcalfe went on to found and run 3Com.

Coulter got Metcalfe to speak at a couple of Australian seminars, and during one offered him "the chance to go to Brisbane to see a kangaroo".

By 1982, UQ had upgraded its PDP KL1090 to dual processor and with it its DECNet packet switching systems; by the end of that year, 500 comms lines spread from the centre at up to 9600bps.

(Gateways to external networks were installed, providing access to other Australian universities, the CSIRO and to North America and Europe. This was SPEARNet, developed by a number of Australian Universities in conjunction with DEC - and chivvied into life by a typically determined Coulter. From it grew AARNet and the Internet in Australia.)

Metcalfe's Brisbane visit may not have delivered a 'roo, but Ethernet did take root on a LAN at UQ at the required 10Mbps, the first installation anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere. And the rest, as they say . . .

The old saw about "if you want something done, ask a busy man" seems to have followed him around: in 1987 as Brisbane started planning for its WorldExpo88 contribution to Australia's bicentennial year, Coulter was asked to design, manage, staff and organise the technology for a joint "Univations" pavilion.

It was to be the public's window into emerging technologies like e-mail, presented by UQ in partnership with James Cook and Griffiths Universities. It attracted more than 1.5 million people, drawn by audio-visual displays reflecting not only Queensland, but the creative technologies of one of the most advanced university networks in Australia.

It's a subject that in conversation he immediately warms to, dragging out plans, photo panels and press clippings to reinforce a sense of quiet personal triumph. Quite rightly - it was spectacular.

And so good at getting the show together was he that they sent him off to open a "downtown" development office for the university where he could oversee the raising of extra funding through sponsorship, bequests and philanthropy.

It's not a piece of his history that generates much enthusiasm in the telling; he raised a million dollars or more but did it under a strictly timed contract and was probably relieved to get back to his directorship of the Prentice Centre in 1991.

The centre went on under his guidance to fold audio-visual studies into its universe, lease a Cray Y-MP to replace an IBM 3081 to sustain its work in high-speed computing - and to establish SERT (Security Emergency Response Team) as a joint operation with Griffiths and QUT.

SERT became AusCERT with its being awarded security services for AARNet in 1993 and continues under the aegis of ITS with all Australasian universities, numerous government departments and commercial clients including banks, in its care.

There's much more to the ITS story, but for Coulter things changed in 1998 when cancer took his wife of 37 years, dancer Pamela Proud. She'd joined the Italian Opera in 1947 and went on to international acclaim with the National Ballet Company and the Borovansky.

He retired in 1995 aged 63, but still works there a day or two a week writing policy documents, and pursues an interest in disaster recovery and business continuity reflected in new procedures for UQ.

Otherwise it's a matter of regular fishing trips on Moreton Bay with mates (but deplores the lack of results through over-fishing) or further up the coast where pickings are better.

He lives alone in the cool calm of their heritage-listed, 1890s house in suburban Brisbane surrounded by the accumulations of a professional lifetime, the sculptures, pictures and mementos of their personal lives beyond academia, and the cheerful detritus left by eight grandchildren's visits.

It's a quietly relaxed place, lived in and warm to the touch.

He'll tell you why an authenticated disaster recovery plan should be required by statute in corporate governance, what's wrong with the ACS and why pervasive technology is making the true IT professional a dwindling breed - and discuss how the caramelised base of a tarte tatin should be properly done.

Retired? He looks as if he could drag on a maroon jumper and put the ball into the scrum for the Reds.