My first brush with computers (I had just flunked first year Accounting
as an articled clerk) was at Ford Motor Company in Port Elizabeth, South
Africa on a Burroughs B3500.

It had 16K "core", a card reader and punch, and a 100MB head-per-track
disk the size of a pickup truck.

Input was through punched cards, and as an operator, one of my tasks was
to keep the room humidity just right by boiling a kettle. I learned life
skills which I have never forgotten (or used since) like "steaming"
boxes of cards along the take-up edge to assist the card reader.

All files were held on tapes (8 drives) and when I moved into
programming I learned how to write tape sorts, and multi file merges.

I have worked on a number of Burroughs systems since then, B900,
B1700/1800, A Series. But, alas, they vanished like dinosaurs.

If Burroughs hadn't been so absolutely terrible at marketing and
support, I may today have been wearing a little gold badge with "MCP
Forever" on it :)

Regards

Neil Harvey