Photo Displayed During Tonight's Backup

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So every night - around midnight Central time in the U.S. - the site goes offline for a few minutes while backups, maintenance, etc get done. No big deal, unless you happen to be in the middle of posting

While the site is unavailable it displays a photo, and the pictures are different every day. As best I can tell, these are selected from stock photos of data processing equipment from the 1950's through 1970's.

Is there any way to get details about the photo that was displayed just a few minutes ago, about 12:01 AM (CDT) on 3 May 2018? It was obviously a data center using main-frame computers, but they weren't IBM. I would guess mid to late 1960's. One guy in the background had a large mop of long hair. The real giveaway was the woman sitting at the operator's console. Her skirt seemed to be mid to upper thigh . . . if she was even wearing a skirt! Oh my, have business dress codes changed since then!

Dale
 
When I get to my office I finish important work after which I give a quick browsing to diyAudio (mainly Analogue Sources). The backup time (pictures) comes about the same time. I have collected some pictures and was going to post. Thanks for the thread :).
I am very much interested in the computers they are showing. I have marked the pictures with numbers. Would any kind soul give information about computers and what they were used for. Pardon for big size picture.
Thanks and regards.
 

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1 looks like 1950s

2 is 1960s?

3 is 1970s. The computer is a Control Data Cyber 7x - can't quite read the x - used for scientific calculation so mainly universities and research, plus meteorology

4 is 1970s or maybe early 80s. The printer is ICL, so probably the rest is ICL too - British mainframe.

5 is not a real computer, but a 1960s mock-up of what they thought the future will look like

There was a tradition in Britain in the 1970s and early 80s that computer programmers wore suits (except for engineering types like me) and computer mainframe operators looked scruffy and had long hair.
 
No. 4 is a 1900 series ICL, so an early to mid-1970s mainframe machine. I worked as a customer engineer (but in-house) at ICL starting in 1978 - by then the 2900 series was already in production and I did not get to work on the 1900 series. There was still a 1906 model in use upstairs in my tower block but it had its own team.

My University used a 1904S in 1975 but I did not get to see the inside of the suite.
 
. . . I am very much interested in the computers they are showing. I have marked the pictures with numbers. Would any kind soul give information about computers and what they were used for. . . .

No. 4 is a 1900 series ICL, so an early to mid-1970s mainframe machine. I worked as a customer engineer (but in-house) at ICL starting in 1978 - by then the 2900 series was already in production and I did not get to work on the 1900 series. . . . .
Photo Number 4! That's it!! The picture shown on the site last night!!! I wish we had a larger version of it.

So that's a mainframe machine from "ICL". Google tells me that ICL (International Computers Limited) was a British mainframe computer manufacturer of the late 1960's and 1970's.

If it was a U.S. setting I'd say the photo was very early 70's. That's the only period in my lifetime when a skirt as short as what's in that photo would have been tolerated in a U.S. business environment. Especially among the largest corporations, who were the ones using the large mainframe systems and were quite conservative and traditional at their cores.

(In 1973, during my summer college break, I had a summer job on an Installation Team for IBM's Field Service organization. I muscled a lot of System360 and System370 hardware into place, and crawled under a lot of raised floors to run cables between the frames and to peripherals. I saw the inside of quite a few large data centers - I think the largest had something like 150 of those free-standing disk drives. That's the summer I met my wife, so maybe my memory is a little hazy on the subject, but I don't recall seeing anything like the girl in that photo inside any of those data centers.)

Thanks to @Hiten for sharing the photo, and to @JensenHealey for identifying it.

Dale
 
Thanks DF96, Jensen and others. Nice to know we have experienced engineers and people in the forum.

British are known to document things well.* While browsing for vintage computers I came across British Pathe Films archives. Pathe Archives I searched electronics. Probably due to country restriction I can not see it. Manchester electronics exhibition looks interesting.

*I did a freelancing work of a Pictorial booklet for my hometown (Which is thousand year old) and the Historian who published the book while visiting London asked them if they would like to keep the book in Library. They gladly accepted it. Good to know book designed by me is in British Library.
Regards.
 
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I suspect that ladies' skirts in publicity photos from that era may be somewhat shorter than what would be common in a business setting. However, it might be helpful to distinguish between what a secretary might wear to please her boss (the 1970s was a long time ago, and attitudes were different then), and what a female engineer might wear to maintain a professional image. Skirts that short were certainly commonplace on the street back then.
 
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Video from the late 80's where I was working at the time (yes I am in the video). Computer was a Facom M180 II AD brief look in the computer room at the beginning, and then near the end (you can skip the middle bit) out into the print room and a some vision of the DASD's Dropbox - ClytechNorthSydney.mp4

If you go to this page and click on the B&W picture of the burrows mainframe, you will be able to click through a slide show. Note some are just staff photos, and none are publicity shots. I somehow managed to not be in any of the photos! ;) CLYTECH

Tony.
 
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So that's a mainframe machine from "ICL". Google tells me that ICL (International Computers Limited) was a British mainframe computer manufacturer of the late 1960's and 1970's.

ICL had an interesting early history. It started with EDSAC in 1949 then led to Lyons (who ran a chain of tea rooms) wanting to go digital and modifying EDSAC to make LEO (Lyons electronic office). Over time sales of LEO grew so big that it was spun out and via various mergers ended up as ICL. Which was then slowly and shurly stomped to death by IBM etc.

What is interesting is that most of the problems in business computing were actually solved in the 50s by the LEO team. They were decades ahead of their time.
 
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