1961-68

My career began with IBM Canada in Don Mills in 1961. During the seven years with them my career spanned a variety of positions from computer programmer to systems analyst. This was during a period of tremendous growth in the computer industry as all major corporations were moving into the computer era. Personal computers did not even exist during this time and only large companies could afford a computer.

My first computer was the IBM 1401. The processor is the unit in the center of the picture and had an amazing 4K of memory. Yes that's 4K not 4MB. Most data was read from punched cards although later a tape drive came into use.

The next computer was quite a lot larger. The 1410 model had 80K of memory which took a lot of space as seen by the processor unit at the top left of the picture. Our system had a minimum of 4 tape drives. No disk drives were yet in use on our systems in the mid-1960s.

My last job at IBM was to install a system for engineering support for a new line of computers called System/360. It could vary in size from a small system to one quite large.

1968-1998

In May of 1968 I made a career change to become Professor of Information Systems at Humber College of Applied Arts and Technology (now called Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. During the 30 years at Humber I taught many programming courses in a wide variety of computer languages but also numerous courses in personal computing. One of my favourite courses in recent years was PC Database which taught the principles of relational database development and implementation.

During these years I also wrote over 50 computer books for several publishers including Reston Publishing Company, Reston VA (since joined with PH Inc.) Prentice Hall Canada (now Pearson Canada), Scarborough, ON, Prentice Hall Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ, and Wm C. Brown Publishing Co., Dubuque, IA. I had the opportunity to work with many fine editors at these publishers over the years who made the experience very rewarding.

1998-current

In 1998 I retired from Humber College after 30 years in a richly rewarding career. My time is now spent developing web sites, going to the fitness center, pursuing ham radio activities, photography, traveling to Florida, reading and listening to jazz and classical music.

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