Author Archives: Wade

Hengelo Gardens

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Photo taken by Eric Montague in 1980. Reproduced by kind permission of the Merton Historical Society. Image reference mhs-em-rav-31

This plaque was unveiled when the road was opened.

HENGELO
GARDENS

30th August 1952

This plaque was unveiled by the Burgomaster of Hengelo as a token of the friendship between the people of Mitcham and Hengelo in The Netherlands

The road was named after the town of Hengelo, in the Netherlands. In 1945 an Anglo-Netherlands Sports Scheme was started between Mitcham and Hengelo, see news article below.

2019 Open Street Map of Hengelo Gardens

In 1955, a square in Hengelo had been renamed Mitchamplein. It is now a car park.

It is not known when the plaque was removed.

News Articles about Hengelo and Mitcham

Norwood News – Friday 29 June 1945

Mitcham Adopts Hengelo

Anglo-Netherlands Sports Scheme

A representative body of Mitcham sportsmen held an inaugural meeting last week in the staff canteen of Messrs. Stewart and Gray, Paisley Works, Mitcham, in connection with the Anglo – Netherlands Sports Scheme. The Mayor of Mitcham (Ald. A H. Bailey), who presided, spoke of his great friendship for the Dutch people, and how pleased he felt with the idea of the Anglo-Netherlands Sports Scheme, and it gave him much pleasure to accept the presidency of the Mitcham section.

After an address by Mr. Yapp, who convened the meeting, it was unanimously agreed that Mitcham should adopt the scheme and link up with Hengelo, in Holland, Hengelo being on a par with Mitcham in size, population and industries. Everyone at the meeting felt that Mitcham was about to enter into an era of great sporting events, and that the happy associations made between the people and their brave Dutch Allies during the war would be continued and improved through the activities of this sports scheme.

The following officers and committee were unanimously elected: President, the Mayor of Mitcham ; chairman, Mr. A. R. Hillen; general hon. secretary, Mr. J. W. Yapp ; treasurer, Mr. J. Beverige ; Finance Committee, the chairman. general hon. secretary and treasurer, with Messrs. J. Forsyth and J. Simper ; General Purposes Committee, Messrs. S. Mackinnon, R. Murphy, W. Wilder, P. W. Collard, Thos. Sibley. A. Lacey, E. Willard. C. Smith, Thos. Bicknell, E. Chambers, C. Runcieman, W. Wilson, Flying Officer Judd, and the hon. secretary. The committee agreed to co-opt other local sportsmen. Anyone interested should write to the general secretary, Mr. J. W. Yapp, 60 Streatham-road, Mitcham, Surrey. Sportswomen are particularly invited.

West Sussex Gazette – Thursday 23 August 1945

The link-up of Mitcham with Hengelo, Holland, for sport and social purposes has been completed by the Netherlanders’ hearty acceptance and reciprocation of the scheme. For the present, transport is the difficulty, but it is hoped to send two Mitcham football teams over before the end of the year. At Hengelo there are plenty of football-minded enthusiasts, and two teams awaiting International contests between the goal-posts The local papers there are co-operating in forewarding this happy way of fraternisation

West Sussex Gazette – Thursday 30 September 1948

VISITORS FROM HOLLAND

Glorious week-end weather greatly enhanced the cheerfulness of the Mayor of Mitcham’s informal welcome to the Burgomaster of Hengelo, Holland, and his party of 60 sports players to spend a week in Mitcham.

It is the return visit of the Mitcham pilgrimage to Hengelo in 1946. On Saturday morning the sights of London were toured. including the Houses of Parliament. In the afternoon the visitors saw the first of Mitcham’s football and the last cricket match of the season on the elm-bordered Green now tinged wIth russet tints of autumn. The evening was filled with a gala at Mitcham Baths attended by several ex-Olympic competitors. Sunday brought another London tour and korfball.

The formal civic welcome to the guests (put up in Mitcham homes) was at the Town Hall on Monday evening. Thereafter a full programme till the young Netherlanders return next Saturday.

West Sussex Gazette – Thursday 09 December 1948

As others see us. A journalist who came to Mitcham with the friendship pilgrims from Hengelo, Holland, afterwards wrote in his home paper that Mitcham was “a simple factory town without many attractions”! The other Dutch reporter visitor discovered that our ” pubs ” close early, and that cafes, known in the Netherlands, do not exist here. Moreover, at our public-houses, “strangely enough,” he wrote, you have to stand, and the beer is bad; and, what is more, very expensive”!

ICL 2904 computer at Downs Surgical

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An ICL 2904 mini-mainframe was installed at Downs Surgical Ltd., Church Path, around 1978.

The company had previously used two Honeywell computers: a 716 and a 2020. Both were batch processing machines, with no interactive terminals. The ICL 2904 came with direct data entry terminals for fast entry of orders, and also Multi-Access terminals, for which an online Sales Order Processing system was written in COBOL. The ICL 2904 operating system including a terminal message routing system and a ‘riro’ file for ‘rolling-in and ‘rolling-out’ large Transaction Processing programs.

The main computer room. The three units on the left were EDS60 disc drives. A disc pack holding 60 megacharacters could be mounted on the drive. On top of the drive are the empty disc pack cases. At the far wall are two magnetic tape decks. Spools of tape were mounted on these decks for backup purposes.

The ICL 2904 computer was based on the ICL 1900 series of computers and used a six-bit character instead of the 8-bit byte used today. This meant that the character set did not have lower case letters. The EDS60 drive, ‘Exchangeable Disc System 60’, would hold up to 60 million of these six-bit characters. One of the drives had to be online when the computer was started as it contain the ‘boot’ system. The other two drives could be used for other programs. Typically during the day they would hold the indexed sequential orders file that was updated from the terminals using the Sales Order Processing system. In the evening other disc were put online to perform batch processing. Backups were taken to magnetic tapes.

The ICL 2904 computer as seen from the other side of the machine room. The operator sat at a video terminal or console in the centre. On his left was a teletype printer that printed a hardcopy of the displays on the console; also a slow card reader for input of batch processing jobs. In addition there was a FEDS 5 disc drive that had a fixed 5 megachacter disc, with an exchangeable 5 megacharacter disc on top. To the right of the operator’s console was the main system printer.

The operating system used disc based spooling of output from batch programs. This meant that as batch jobs finished their output was written to file for printing later. The operator controlled what printouts were then spooled from disc to the printer, as he might also have to change the stationery, e.g. invoices etc. In the event of a failure with the printer this spool file could be taken off site to another ICL 2904 customer to use their printer. Heron Suzuki in Beddington Lane was frequently used for this purpose.

Operator’s Console. Photo taken Sunday 4th February 1979.

Advert in Computer Weekly on 25th January 1979 for more computer staff to work with the ICL 2904.

An operator was recruited with ICL 1900 series experience to work on the 2904, and was paid £3,600 per year.

Operator job offer dated 8th Feb 1978