Sir William Penney reported to the Committee the action and recommendations of the selection panel set up at the previous meeting. From a total of eleven applicants, three had been selected for interview, namely, Dr G Black, Mr W S Elliott and Dr J Howlett. Professor Kilburn had unfortunately had to go abroad at very short notice and had been unable to take part in the interview, but had sent his comments to the panel by letter. Sir William read the report of the panel concluding with the recommendation that Dr J Howlett should be appointed.
All the members of the Committee present added their comments, and the Committee endorsed the panel's recommendations.
Sir William Penney said that the panel's recommendation had been reported to Lord Bridges, who had authorised the Committee, if they endorsed it, to announce the appointment.
At this point the Secretary was asked to bring Dr Howlett in to the meeting, and the Chairman informed him of his appointment, and congratulated him on behalf of the Committee.
Two corrections were made to the minutes of the meeting on 7th July 1961.
The Secretary said that the paper set down the position on finance and on contract, for information.
Attention was drawn to the absence of any contingency for additional plant items, or for the under-estimation of building costs. It was agreed to deal with this after discussion of the building (see the following minute).
The Secretary was asked to find out whether a working stock of spares was included in the price (as was being done in the case of the London Atlas).
4.1 Dr Howlett said that discussions on the building had begun in April 1961. Since then a great deal of work had been put into the design of the computer block, in collaboration with Ferranti's and the AEA Southern Works Organisation, but the ideas for the office block were still only preliminary. The Southern Works Organisation's preliminary estimate for the buildings as shown on the drawings attached to the paper was £360,000, which might be broadly divided into
The figure of £150,000, which had been included in the financial provision (see paper NI/ACC/61/4) had been estimated on the basis of information obtained from Ferranti's in January 1961 about the size and power dissipation of the computer. Subsequently, the size, power and other requirements proved to have been underestimated.
4.2 Dealing first with the £50,000 for external services, the Chairman asked if Dr Pickavance and Dr Vick would consider whether any of this work could legitimately be charged to other headings, such as general site development.
4.3 The Chairman then asked the Committee to consider whether the cost of the buildings could be reduced. In discussion it was pointed out that both Ferranti's and the Southern Works Organisation would press for perhaps too high standards in such matters as the spacing out of plant, and temperature and humidity limits. Dr Howlett would have to hold them down to a reasonable level. it was agreed to seek help from Risley in this. In the office block, it was suggested that there should be a high proportion of quite small single offices, and the possibility of cheaper construction, for example by using prefabricated single storey buildings was also suggested. Dr Howlett was invited to re-consider the building plans on the lines indicated, and to circulate revised plans to the Committee for comment by correspondence.
4.4 The Chairman then turned to the question of finance. after discussion, the Committee nominated Dr Howlett, Dr Buckingham and Dr Marshall to examine what plant items could be left out if it should prove necessary to save (a) £100,000 (b) £150,000 or (c) £200,000 on the plant in order to pay for the necessary buildings, and what the effect on the project of cutting out these items would be. These three gentlemen were also asked to consider whether any item of plant additional to the present list ought to be included. It was agreed that the results should be reported to the Chairman, who would consider what action to take, and would refer to the Committee, perhaps by correspondence, as required.
4.5 Finally since an early start of building is required in order to be ready for installation of the computer, the Committee agreed that the designs for the computer block should be completed and put out to tender.
In the discussion of paper NI/SACC/61/6, Dr Howlett made it clear that the NIRNS Atlas would be able to accept programmes in any language for which a translation programme had been written, as well as FORTRAN with which the development work described in the paper was concerned. A great advantage of FORTRAN was the wide range of other computers on which it could be used.
Dr Howlett said that 8 to 10 man-years of work were involved in the development, but it should be finished in good time. Ferranti's had provided two people to help with it. One of them was particularly concerned with applying the same system to the Orion computer.
It was agreed that the detailed papers on this work would continue to be sent to the specialists concerned, rather than to the Committee.
Dr Marshall said that owing to the selection of Dr Howlett as Head of the Atlas Laboratory, the AERE computing group would be without a leader. The next two senior men happened to be both in the USA for about a year. He asked if Dr Howlett might be allowed to take some responsibility for the Group for the next 12 months.
The Chairman said that, in principle, this was a reasonable request, but he thought that the duties of the NIRNS post would quickly grow and, after a reasonable time, must come first. With the Committee's agreement, he proposed to invite Dr Vick, Dr Marshall, Dr Pickavance and Dr Howlett to consider the matter outside the meeting.
The Chairman said that while it might be necessary to call a meeting at short notice on the finance question, he hoped to avoid this. The Secretary was asked to try to arrange meetings in February and July 1962. Dr Howlett was asked to submit a paper on staffing, preferably to the February meeting.
