People of Operations Group

Mr John Gill studies some notes to update himself on what has been going on since the last time he was in charge of the machine. A special thank you to John for helping me when life got difficult. It is much appreciated.

Danny Cumberbirch looks suspicious thinking I am going to ask him to do something interrupting his tea break.

Harry Medhurst is intriged by something in Quest. Looks interesting; must read this.

Oh dear. Should not have started to read this - not as easy as I thought it was going to be.

Wilf (mechanical workshop) studies a sheet of music. Going by the title it must have been a night shift. Wilf and I often discussed music and he explained the meaning of chord symbols to me. Thank you, Wilf, I have used that information ever since. Bless you.

I shared an office with Keith Bellinger; he is a nice person and we get on fine. Here he is smiling and that is how I remember him. Look happy; they will wonder what you have been doing. You are supposed to look serious, like it is important. Of course that is only when the 'top brass' are about, otherwise you can smile away and nobody will bother.

Ken --- (don't remember his surname yet) and Graham Hicks are looking at a teleprinter output. In the picture above Ken is writing some machine code. We had 'acquired' a computer: a six foot rack with DEC written on it. There was a one inch wide tape drive. To get it going you needed to operate some toggle switches in between pressing a button. In order to get it to do anything useful programmes had to be written in machine code.

The hand of Roy Church is poised on a switch. The person looking at the 'scope' I only met occasionally. You remember the Polaroid Camera? We got through a fair amount of that stuff taking pictures of 'scope' traces. The one on top of the scope looks like the 250 millisec beam spill, where the proton beam is going down the beam line to the copper targets.

A complete 'machine cycle' was about 3 seconds.

Everybody needs a hobby and the most familiar hobby in the Main Control Room is twiddling knobs and looking at scopes. Enquire as to what the twiddling is for might bring a long explanation delving into the further reaches of complex electronics, electrical engineering or particle physics and how some proton whizzing around a magnet ring can be effected by a 'turn of the screw', if you like. Or you are somewhat ignored, in which case you go and make the tea.

When you are being ignored always make the tea. If it does anything it gives an excuse to get out of the Control Room for a while. "Where's John gone?" "He's gone to make the tea." "Oh, good! I'll stick around and have one." You're not being ignored now. They are waiting for you to come back, tray in hand, with anticipation. Do you take sugar?

Are you supposed to be in here with that camera? Nobody takes pictures in here. We come here to work. Did Ron say you could do that? I'm not sure if I should report you to your superior officers advising them you have sneaked a camera into the Main Control Room and have you got a permit to say you can take photographs?

Maybe I'll not say anything as I hear you 'make waves' and irritate people by thinking for yourself, like bringing in a camera and taking photographs of people. You're in enough trouble already.

Should anybody wish to add or correct something please let me know.

Mr Chris Bonfield

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John Hardaker, Bampton, Oxfordshire, UK

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