Computer Weekly first hit people's desktops 35 years ago this week.
Mark Lewis looks back to how the world was when England was winning
at football but still losing the cricket test match series
The swinging sixties were in full flow when the launch issue of
Computer Weekly ran hot off the presses. But in some corners of the
world the peace and love mantra of the flower-power generation
could not be heard.
Even as hippies in London and San Francisco were weaving daisies
into their hair, in China Mao Tse-Tung launched the Cultural
Revolution, a 10-year political campaign aimed at rekindling
revolutionary Communist fervour. Brandishing their copies of Mao's
Little Red Book of quotations, students of the Communist Party -
the so-called Red Guards - pursued an ideological cleansing
campaign in which they renounced and attacked anyone suspected of
being an intellectual, or a member of the bourgeoisie. Thousands of
Chinese citizens were executed, and millions more were yoked into
manual labour in the decade that followed.
Meanwhile, the US government, under president Lyndon B Johnson, was
escalating its military presence in Vietnam. By the year's end,
American troop levels had reached 389,000, with more than 5,000
combat deaths and over 30,000 wounded. The war was a brutal and
dirty one, with many US casualties caused by sniper fire, booby
traps and mines. The Americans responded by sending B-52 bombers
over North Vietnam, and by launching the infamous Search and
Destroy policy on the ground.
"To know war," Johnson said in his State of the Union address
before Congress, in January 1966, "is to know that there is still
madness in this world".
There was bloodshed on the streets of London too, when Ronnie Kray,
brother of Reggie, shot George Cornell dead in the Blind Beggar pub
in Whitechapel in March.
Two years after his proclamations about the "white heat of
technology" Harold Wilson was prime minister of a Labour government
that included technology minister Tony Benn. If Benn was pleased to
witness the introduction of the first homegrown UK credit card -
The Barclaycard - in 1966, he was in the minority. The card was met
with "a tidal wave of indifference", according to a Barclays
executive.
Perhaps the UK public simply had other things on their minds. This
was, after all, the year in which Bobby Moore's England beat the
Germans 4-2 to lift the World Cup at Wembley.
Musically, 1966 was a vintage year. On the day of our first issue,
Jim Reeves' Distant Drums knocked the Small Faces' All or Nothing
off the top spot. Other number ones in the year included Frank
Sinatra's Strangers in the Night, Good Vibrations by the Beach
Boys, the Walker Brothers' The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore and
The Green, Green Grass of Home by Tom Jones.
The Beatles and the Rolling Stones also continued their dominance
of the music scene, with Yellow Submarine, Eleanor Rigby, Paperback
Writer and Paint it Black all topping the charts.
A Man for all Seasons won Best Picture at the 1966 Oscars, and its
star Paul Scofield won Best Actor. Other films released this year
included Georgy Girl, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Alfie and the
Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
On the small screen, viewers were subjected to the rants of Alf
Garnet in Till Death us do Part; while US audiences were introduced
to the delights of the Monkees and Star Trek. And in Computer
Weekly's first week the dynamic duo, Batman and Robin, thwarted
lute-playing electronics genius the Minstrel as he tried to
sabotage the computer systems at the Gotham City Stock Exchange.
"Batman heads off new corporate IT disaster" - now there's a
headline to conjure with.
Our finest hours
- The launch of Computer Weekly in September 1966 makes it the
world's first weekly computer publication
- In June 1972 we highlighted problems with the UK's air traffic
control systems, reporting plans for a £25m Mediator ATC system to
replace the outmoded system at West Drayton. Nearly three decades
later, our managing editor and executive editor were summoned to
give evidence on air traffic control problems to the Transport
Committee
- Computer Weekly has been in the vanguard of coverage of the IT
skills shortage. In 1984 we launched the CW Training Awards to
raise training standards
- Computer Weekly was the first computer title to alert UK users
to the Y2K problem. Our coverage began in the 1970s, but assumed a
more urgent tone in the late 1990s, when the scale of the problem
became apparent. In the run-up to the date change, members of our
editorial team briefed Tony Blair's Policy Unit
- Since 1997, Computer Weekly has been investigating the cause of
the RAF Chinook helicopter crash on the Mull of Kintyre in 1994.
The investigation has sought to prove that faulty software, rather
than pilot negligence, could have been to blame for the crash. The
Government and the Ministry of Defence blamed pilot error, even
though several hundred anomalies have been detected in the
safety-critical software used on the Chinook
- In 2000, Computer Weekly was named the Periodical Publishers
Association Business and Professional Magazine of the year. Judges
commended our "comprehensive and authoritative coverage"
- Computer Weekly is the only UK IT publication with its own user
group. The 500 Club is a knowledge-sharing forum for IT decision
makers at the FTSE top 500 companies
- Our "Stamp out Stiffing" campaign, aimed at stopping sharp
software licensing practices, has drawn support from a raft of UK
IT suppliers. This battle continues in the form of our coverage of
Microsoft's plans to overhaul its licensing
- Computer Weekly was instrumental in forming the E-Commerce Bill
in 1999
- Our publication is a record-breaker. Getting Wired is the
world's longest running Internet column; and Puzzler is in the
Guinness Book of Records as the longest-running magazine puzzle in
the world.