The ICT 1301 Resurrection Project.
Events

Past Events

*** The Public Open Day.***

*** July 8th 2012 ***

The machine all tidied up for the Public Open Day !

2012 Open Day Summary !

The open day at 06:30 am on the 8th of July 2012 started with a brilliant sun outlined against a clear blue sky, however about 500 feet below at ground level, beneath the dark billowing clouds that threatened to sink even lower. The wind and the rain lashed against my windscreen as they in partnership threatened removal of the windscreen wipers that battled to give me glimpses of a storm tossed M20 motorway.

When I had battled through to Charing and forked right on the road to Pluckley, the distant horizon had a glimmer of sun brightening against the rolling darkness above. And as I arrived at the farm the ground was wet but the sun was out and I established the little gazebo outside the computer room and retired back into the room to see if the machine was going to run for us on the day.

Fortunately the work put into this project over the last nine years has paid off and the machine was up and running its demonstration within five minutes, the video commentary edited up only the night before ran and it was then time for a nice cup-pa while I awaited the arrival of the public .

Considering this bad start to the day the public did arrive and it was nice to see faces from previous years and even faces from my own working past on this machine.

Further nice surprises unfolded when Andy arrived, and I think Andy found the day more than a little bit of fun as well, Nice to see you Andy !



So I said a big hello to Colin Willmott and his Wife who battled the weather to be there on the day and also to Ron Harding and his Wife for making the effort, we hope you enjoyed the day and the rest of the show. Sorry it was so wet but we are British and would we let a little thing like rain stop us ? well ok ' almost ' stop us !


The visitor numbers were down and although a precise count was not made we handed out about one hundred and thirty information sheets to visitors. And as a special treat for the children we distributed about fourty pieces of 8 track paper tape punched in clearwrite with information about the event.


Younger Visitors on the day !

Another item the children like is, to go to the Teletype and use the keyboard to punch a short piece of tape with their name on, we then offer to read the tape and the machine produces a long clearwrite paper tape with their name clearly visible. One little fellow liked this so much that he wanted to do it three times, we did say we only needed one piece of tape and we could produce the output three times but he wanted the ' FUN ' of punching the tape as well.

However by 16:30 it was time to mop us the palce and let the machine rest, all in all the machine did well, running for over eight and a half hours in quite warm conditions. But it got a lot of exposure and contact always follows from these events.

A big THANK YOU goes out to all our helpers on the day! including Stuart and Olwen for the pre show coverage and Andy on the day, and of course to the Owner Roger.