The early training courses for operators were held in conjunction with the Departments of Supply and Social Services. Due to delays in computer availability the Bureau's first operators were placed in other IBM-user installations—Ford, Gas and Fuel, Mobil, and ICIANZ.

Operators returned from these installations to work on our own equipment when it was installed at the IBM premises. Later we were in a position to give on-the-job experience to operators for Social Services, Health and Veterans Affairs (then Repatriation) installations.

Programmer training was at first through courses organised by the Public Service Board. Later as tertiary institutions developed computer courses, the Board accredited selected colleges and universities as providing suitable graduates.

An early disaster

An even of note in those early days was a visit by the President of the World Meteorological Organization, and a meeting of the WMO Cabinet in the Operations Centre. A lot of effort had been put into a demonstration of the Analysis System. Five minutes before the demonstration it was cancelled because one computer was out of action.

When this embarrassing disaster was relayed to the meeting, the Russian delegate stated that 'of course operations must always take precedence over demonstrations, no matter for whom they are intended'.

It is interesting to note that the new computer will be about 10 times faster than the Facom and about 100 faster than the 360/65 (though such comparisons do not always have a clear meaning). Yet it will be considerably cheaper than either of its predecessors.

What lies ahead?

No one, of course, can speculate where the next 20 years of computing will take us. Another two orders of magnitude of power increase? Such a forecast 20 years ago would have been greeted with derision.

With the power of the new equipment and its software systems to exploit and support an increasingly wide range of advanced technology, it can only be said, rather lamely, that the future promises even greater advances in meteorology.

Bureau of Meteorology