A typical example of a direct
entry mini computer system which provides sales accounting and stock control
routines and with the facility for on-line enquiries is the BCL MOLECULAR
computer in the Publications Department of the Tate Gallery.
Art and Automation |
From DATA SYSTEMS Magazine (February 1977)
One of the most important activities of the Tate Gallery, representing an annual turnover of half a million pounds, is its sales of reproductions of its art collection. The problems of stock control and accounting became so great that the Gallery has now installed a small business system.
A typical example of a direct
entry mini computer system which provides sales accounting and stock control
routines and with the facility for on-line enquiries is the BCL MOLECULAR
computer in the Publications Department of the Tate Gallery.
The upsurge of public interest in art has resulted in an extensive business being built up in the sales of reproductions of the vast art collection administered by the Tate. The Publications Department generates an annual turnover of Ł500,000 from over 2,500 different products which are distributed throughout the UK and overseas.
To ensure effective stock control of their 2,500 different product lines and efficient sales accounting procedures they use a MOLECULAR minicomputer system supplied by Business Computers (Systems) Limited, which consists of a 12K words central processor, alpha numeric display keyboard, 200 lpm printer, visual display terminal and 5 million characters of disc storage and is basically designed to cater for a wide range of accounting functions, stock control and generation of sales and management reports.
The products marketed by the Tate fall into 12 main groups and range from framed reproductions, reference books and exhibition catalogues, to photographic slides and art post cards. More than one million of these post cards are supplied each year to the Tate’s 500 account customers, through the retail shop housed within the Gallery, and by mail order to overseas.
Supplies of stocks are held at two locations, a bulk warehouse in Cambridgeshire and in a large in-house stock room to meet day to day requirements. Customer account details, product information and stock levels, detailing separate levels for the two locations, are held on disc files.
Order data is input to the system through the keyboard or the VDU, although the latter in this instance is mainly used for customer account and stock interrogation. Under program control, the keyboard operator is guided through each step of invoicing procedure, thus reducing the possibility of errors.
Relevant customer details are entered, quantity of items required and the system completes the invoice line showing total value and VAT. Four price categories, cost, retail, trade and educational for each stock item are catered for within the system.
Stock is immediately updated on completion of each invoice line thus providing up to the minute stock accuracy to satisfy customer telephone enquiries. If, however, the invoice is cancelled for any reason, stocks are immediately returned to their correct levels. The flexibility of the system allows invoices to be printed as a simultaneous operation of keyboard input or, if the printer is being used for report production, spooled on disc for later processing. During invoice printout customer balances, master files by product group, customer sales by product group and profit by product group, are automatically updated.
On-line enquiries, such as stock levels and customer account details showing current balance and aged debt analysis over thirty, sixty and ninety days can be carried out without interrupting the progress of other work systems being processed by the installation.
Batch reports and cash posting are carried out daily. Cash posted to customer accounts is allocated to the relevant aged debt category and balances updated. A variety of reports are catered for to provide vital sales statistics.
Aged debt analysis reports for distribution to key departments are produced on a regular basis to ensure efficient cash flow.
The system which was operational within one week of installation uses standard BCL software, although modifications have been implemented in-house by Mr Mark Adams, computer controller at the Tate. These include refinements to ease the task of producing repetitive invoices which result from volume requests for catalogues during an exhibition of national appeal.
Previously a BCL Susie accounting machine was used but as work loads increased this was replaced by the Molecular system which is capable of expansion with the addition of peripherals and added processor capacity to meet future business expansion without changing hardware or software.
“We chose the system” said Mr Brian McGahan the department assistant Manager, “because of its ease of operation and capabilities for future expansion, should these be required by increased workloads. The direct entry and on-line enquiry facilities provided by the system are ideal for our operation and allow us to maintain stock at optimum levels and keep rigid control of our cash flow position which is vital in these days of high interest rates”.
The Tate Gallery installation was the final step before LOS.
An earlier installation for C Victor Ltd (in St. Albans) was the start but it certainly wasn’t LOS. Its foundation was the BCL Supervisor. This was a task scheduler sitting on top of the Mark I “firmware” (a collection of subroutines for arithmetic, data conversion and input/output) with a gap in between where you could put the application code. With the BCL Supervisor, we had to set out separate memory space for each task, and then write a separate version of every program for each task that might run it. We didn’t solve that problem with C Victor, rather it drew attention to the need to find a solution whilst we attended to other more pressing matters, such as typing in a program at the keyboard rather than flicking it in bit by bit through the control panel switch register, and setting up a file structure instead of working with the absolute sector numbers on the discs. C Victor's 300 bps 80-column by 8-line VDUs were certainly a novelty (what could that key marked Escape be for?), and Janet (their Supervisor) gained the admiration of her colleagues for continuing to work at hers during a thunderstorm.
Next came the Tate Gallery installation described above. This was the first place where we used offset addressing to run the same program code in any task partition. Mark Adams rewrote all the applications software to run under LOS as soon as it became available.
Philip Harris Ltd. (of Birmingham) took delivery of their Molecular around
the time Margaret Thatcher was establishing herself as Leader of the Opposition so it was promptly
named Maggie. Here indeed was an Iron Maiden, and painted blue. There were to be
six VDUs (four for the telesales office) and two printers (one for directly
printing invoices in the warehouse). After some weeks while we
developed the programs at Leicester and PH checked them out very thoroughly and
prepared themselves, LOS was born when PH opened for business, live on
Maggie on the first Monday of November in that year (1976).
Anne and myself were in attendance from BCL with Kath, Mr Ruston (PH's Managing Director) and other managers standing by behind the telesales girls as they began their calling rota. It was a revelation! No Molecular had ever had the opportunity to show but a fraction of what it could do until that morning. I went through to watch Maggie. Yes, her lights were flickering. Instructions were being fetched and executed, for a real purpose now. Interrupts were being taken from all quarters and dismissed methodically. Drive belts were staying on and propelling the disc cartridges at the proper speed and the head access mechanisms were wild with frenzied yet directed activity. Power supplies were pumping energy at the correct voltages into the circuits. Down in the warehouse the printer was disgorging real invoices, the shelves were being picked of goods and the delivery vans were rolling. How long could it last? To me, every extra second was another million or so crash possibilities negotiated. There are advantages, in this situation, in not being aware of what could go wrong. So my frequent calls to Kath to “take a security” were cast aside until things quietened down at lunchtime. I could relax a bit after we’d secured the mornings work.
As other companies were to discover in their turn, the whole atmosphere of the business was transformed the instant their Molecular went into action. It was there to help, not to intimidate. This atmosphere was subtle but tangible whenever I entered a building containing one of these systems. Mind you, a certain tool distributor did keep their entire stock of sledgehammers just outside the door to their Molecular - just in case.
A significant component missing from LOS on that first day was any means to deal with a paper wreck at the invoice printer. This was because I didn’t have a clue how the situation could be handled, until it happened. That occurred soon enough, and the document reprinting utility was soon operational.
By 1990 Maggie was bulging with the maximum 64K words of memory and the interfaces to serve 17 VDUs and 5 printers, and now backed up by a second Molecular (named Denis, after Mr Thatcher). Even though the processor still ran at the same speed as in 1976, no realistic UNIX alternative could yet match the performance of the machine code applications software. However, hardware breakdowns were a constant anxiety which Denis could only partially mitigate, so a reliable UNIX alternative was being sought. It became a close race as to which of the two Maggies would outlast the other in office. In the end, Maggie the Molecular had a narrowly longer run.
Though Maggie's electronic circuits remained 1970s technology, and her on-line storage capacity never rose above the original 13 megabytes, the emergence of microcomputers (followed by Personal Computers or PCs) in the 1980s provided her a lifeline to capabilities she could not hope to offer unaided. Plugging one of these into her in place of a "dumb" VDU enabled her to transfer data with the emerging networks, to download to high-capacity archival storage, and even gave her an accurate clock.