Writing together: Clarence ‘Skip’ Ellis – CS4FN Podcast | Teaching London Computing: A RESOURCE HUB from CAS LONDON & CS4FN

This is an audio version (read by Jo Brodie) of an article (written by Paul Curzon) about Clarence ‘Skip’ Ellis, which was originally published on the CS4FN website. A snippet of the article is below.

Writing together: Clarence ‘Skip’ Ellis
by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London

Back in 1956, Clarence Ellis started his career at the very bottom of the computer industry. He was given a job, at the age of 15, as a “computer operator” … because he was the only applicant. He was also told that under no circumstances should he touch the computer! Its lucky for all of us he got the job, though! He went on to develop ideas that have made computers easier for everyone to use. Working at a computer was once a lonely endeavour: one person, on one computer, doing one job. Clarence Ellis changed that. He pioneered ways for people to use computers together effectively.

The graveyard shift
The company Clarence first worked for had a new computer. Just like all computers back then, it was the size of a room. He worked the graveyard shift and his duties were more those of a nightwatchman than a computer operator. It could have been a dead-end job, but it gave him lots of spare time and, more importantly, access to all the computer’s manuals … so he read them … over and over again. He didn’t need to touch the computer to learn how to use it!

Saving the day
His studying paid dividends. Only a few months after he started, the company had a potential disaster on its hands. They ran out of punch cards. Back then punch cards were used to store both data. They used patterns of holes and non-holes as a way to store numbers as binary in a away a computer could read them. Without punchcards the computer could not work!

It had to though, because the payroll program had to run before the night was out. If it didn’t then no-one would be paid that month. Because he had studied the manuals in detail, and more so than anyone else, Clarence was the only person who could work out how to reuse old punch cards…

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