[SIGCIS-Members] Fwd: CCS - November 19th 2020 - The Origins of GENESYS, the General Engineering System

[Brian Randell]

Hi:

Here’s an announcement for the next Computer Conservation Society Zoom  lecture - which you’ll see is open to all.

Cheers

Brian Randell

Begin forwarded message:

From: "BCS Computer Conservation Society" <ccsmem at lists.bcs.org.uk<mailto:ccsmem at lists.bcs.org.uk>>
Subject: CCS - November 19th 2020 - The Origins of GENESYS, the General Engineering System
Date: 31 October 2020 at 22:38:06 GMT

Dear Fellow Members

The next meeting of the Computer Conservation Society for the 2020/21 season is on Thursday 19th November via Zoom. The lecture will begin at 2.30PM with the Zoom session opening at 2pm.

Our October meeting was attended by a record breaking 155 people. Our meetings are open to all free of charge so do pass on this invitation to others who may be interested in this meeting or other CCS activities.

The title of the meeting is The Origins of GENESYS, the General Engineering System. Our speaker will be Brian Shearing. GENESYS, the GENeral Engineering SYStem, was commissioned by the Ministry of Public Building and Works in 1968. It was a way of writing and using engineering software that worked, without change, across all major mainframes of the day, something that unfortunately could not be said for software written in the various dialects of FORTRAN available then. The ministry also commissioned the establishment of the GENESYS Centre which opened in 1972 and was charged with promoting, teaching, developing and expanding the applications that ran under the system. The speaker was chief programmer of the team that built the central system. The seminar is the first of two, the second being next season, and explores what the system was like, what its influences were and how it came to be commissioned. The story begins in 1965 in 21 Portland Place ...

Brian wrote his first program for a Ferranti Sirius computer in 1961, and he has never quite got over the excitement. His primary interests have always been compilers and operating systems, and he has written several of each. The compiler for GENTRAN, the programming language at the heart of GENESYS, was his first or as will become clear during the seminar, his first and second. His latest is for a novel concurrent programming language, still under development. As a software design consultant he has worked on trading systems, medical systems, and programs for highway design. He has lectured in Europe and the Americas, has had twelve papers published, and was on the Editorial Board of the John Wiley Journal, Software Practice and Experience for more than twenty years. He has given many talks to BCS branches, specialist groups and conferences, was Chairman of the Fortran Specialist Group for three years, has served on the Society's Technical Board, has represented it on BSI Programming Languages Committee IST/13, and was a member of the programme committee of the Advanced Programming Specialist Group for seven years.

Please pre-register for the event.  To do so, follow this linkhttp://www.computerconservationsociety.org/lectures/current/lecture.htm and click on the “Book” symbol. All registrants will be notified of the URL for the Zoom link in advance of the meeting.

The programme for the 2020/21 season will be found athttp://www.computerconservationsociety.org/lectures/current/lecture.htm

The National Museum of Computing have informed us of their new programme of online talks. These are free to TNMoC supporters and volunteers and £10.00 each otherwise.
To book to attend, follow the link www.tnmoc.org<http://www.tnmoc.org/> and go to Events

12 November - Dr Ted Coles - Talk on Tunny & Colossus
15 November -  Dr Andrew Herbert - Talk on EDSAC
30 November - Jerry McCarthy - Talk on the Polish Cryptomachine LACIDA
4 December - Peter Onion - Talk on Code 1960’s Back water
13 December - Peter Shiret - Talk on Mobile Network Evolution 1G -4G

Good wishes

Roger Johnson
CCS London Programme Secretary

Cheers

Brian Randell

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