A Visitors Book was placed in the PERQ Demonstration Room. Not everybody signed it but it did give some indication of the people who came to see the early PERQ early on.
The first visitors were two ICL Directors, Arnold Jewitt and Colin Hayley. The next day, ICL's share price had dropped from 196p in September 1980 to 40p. Sir Keith Joseph announced a £200M loan to ICL when the end of year figures showed a loss of £100M.
Malcolm Sabin of the CAD Centre visited. He was one of the developers of GINO-F and also responsible for one of the early hidden line algorithms. He attended the Seillac Workshop where first news of the PERQ came from Bob Sproull of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Owen Mills was the Science Board representative on the Interactive Computing Facilities Committee and also chaired the Science Board's Computing Committee. He became an early PERQ user porting Science Board DEC10 scientific databases to the PERQ.
Alistair MacFarlane, the Chairman of ICFC visted with Colin McGreavy, who later chaired the Single User System Steering Group that advised SERC on the Common Base Project. Bill Trowbridge was responsible for the ICF Electromagnetic SIG and mounted magnet design software on the PERQ. Two more ICL Directors visited: Peter Aylett and Doug Cormish. Ed Fredkin of Three Rivers came on his way to ICL having hired a plane and piloted it from Boston. After the demonstration, he changed the power supply on the first machine to 50 cycles.
A demonstration planned for April to Chris Wilson, ICL Managing Director never took place. The ICL management team was replaced in May 1981 with Robb Wilmot and Peter Bonfield arriving from Texas Instruments.
Elizabeth and Jim Hailstone visited. Jim was working at RAL on the ICF and Elizabeth was an early Harwell programmer when you still used plug boards to program. Brian Davies ran the Computing Department at Daresbury Laboratory and later became SERC's Director of Computing. Tommy Thomas from the Edinburgh Regional Computing Centre was an early visitor to Three Rivers and later his group mounted the optimising FORTRAN compiler on the PERQ under PNX. Robin Lingard and McKennzie-Washington of the Dept of Industry were interested in the joint agreement between ICL and Three Rivers.
Peter Hall, a retired ICL Director, was soon to become President of the British Computer Society. Professor Murrell was an early Science Board user who became quite critical of the Common Base Project.
Valerie Bowell and Professor Colley from Birmingham University visited. Nuclear Physics were not a big user of the PERQ. CERN decided to use Apollo workstations. Robin Lingard visited again!
John Houghton was in charge of Space Science activities at RAL and was interested in how it could be used in that area. Carlo Vandoni was involved in computer graphics at CERN.
Tom Sancha and Dick Newell from Cambridge Interactive Systems visited. Dick and Martin Newell were previously at the CAD Centre. Martin's teapot became famous in computer graphics. Dick Grimsdale, Roger Needham, Mike Rogers and Ian Wand were all involved in the Distributed Computing Systems Specially Promoted Programme. Roger had been involved in the development of the Cambridge Ring. Ian Wand was involved with the implementation of the York box on the PERQ. Mike Rogers was chair of the Computer Science Committee and an early champion of a coordinated programme on Single User Systems.
Charlie Portman had unpacked the first PERQ and repaired it so not sure why he needed a demonstration!
On 16 July, a complete reorganisation of ICL senior management took place. Ninian Eadie became Director of Product Marketing and Chris French became Director of Distributed Systems Development and eventually responsible for PERQ activities.
Bill Poduska, founder of Prime Computers, Apollo and later Stellar visited. David Howell was responsible for Apollo UK. Gordon Bull and Hatfield Poly were interested in the User Interface possibilities of the PERQ.
Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, FRS, Cambridge visited. Robb Wilmot, the new Managing Director of ICL visited. He had visited Three Rivers in Pittsburgh the previous day and visited RAL on the way back from the USA to discuss switching from PERQ to Apollo. Ninian Eadie also visited RAL on Monday 24 August to discuss a change to Apollo. Friday the 28 August was the day when the agreement between ICL and Three Rivers was finally signed. Lawford Russell of CAP was the first visitor after the ICL/Three Rivers/SERC agreement. Lawford wrote one of the first Algol compilers (for the English Electric KDF9) with Brian Randell. Harry Whitfield of Newcastle was involved in the Distributed Computing Systems Programme.
A further 62 people had demonstrations of the PERQ in the Autumn of 1981. The Memorandum of Understanding between SERC and ICL was launched on 23 September and university visitors were interested in seeing the capability of the PERQ.
There were a set of visits by various SERC Committees early in 1982. Brian Rosen of Three Rivers came as did Kenneth Baker and Keith Joseph from the government. Philip Hughes, Managing Director of Logica, and Sir Peter Bonfield, later to become Managing Director of ICL and then BT.
By the end of 1982, SERC had ordered 101 PERQs with 97 delivered by ICL. The need to concentrate demonstrations at RAL no longer existed and visitors to the PERQ Demonstration Room died down.
