I mentioned in my old blog that my first job was in a company called “Computime” which was a “Computer Bureau”.
The company was located at 20 Upper Mount Street in Dublin. I worked there for two years starting in June 1979.
The company was founded and run by Kevin Gallagher.
I joined the company as an “Operator”, meaning that I managed the computer and ran the various batch jobs which our customers required.
Later I became a Programmer. I intend to write about some of the projects I worked on over the coming days/weeks.
The company was staffed as follows:
- The management team (one or two people at various stages while I was there)
- The Receptionist
- The Programming team (one or two)
- The “Data Prep” team (one supervisor and six to eight data prep people)
- The “Operators” (two or three people)
The computer room was in the basement. The computers were delivered through the basement window. There was a door from the basement to a small outside space. If you were walking along Upper Mount Street while the printer was going, then you could hear the clatter from the street.
I learned a lot in Computime, and I made some great friends, some of whom are close friends to this day.
There is very, very little information about the company on the internet. The Companies Registration Office has records of when the company was registered (1969) and when it was finally dissolved (1995).
There is mention of the company and the founder here: https://techarchives.irish/minicomputer-systems-and-software-1969-82/robert-poynton/
I still have two letters from Computime which are on the company’s headed paper. The first is my job offer. The second is a written reference.
In an effort to have some kind of visual record of the company’s existence, here is the header from the first of these letters. Note that this document dates back to the time when Dublin phone numbers had 6 digits!
