Time Sharing

Everyone forgets about the concept of time-sharing. Nowadays the name tends to be associated with dodgy flats and even dodgier salesmen on the various Costas and islands!

But in the late sixties and early seventies, time-sharing computer bureaux, offered a quality dial-up service, so that companies and individuals could run programs on a pay-per-run basis. For many it was their first introduction to any real computing and for others it gave them a chance to run complicated and expensive software economically.

Time Sharing - The Company

In 1972, I became a programmer and consultant with the company called Time Sharing Ltd. or TSL, that had been formed by Richard Evans, a man with many years of computing experience at ICL, with the backing of an American company called, Delos Computer Services. One of the first jobs had been to improve their simulation programs, but perhaps more significantly, I programmed a large system for Lloyds Bank, which ran on TSL's, PDP-10's.

Pert7 - A New Concept in PERT Programs

TSL had been active in running PERT programs for many years and they asked me to design and write a new product to be called Pert7. The program was highly-interactive, user-friendly, reliable, fast and very successful.

When TSL was taken over by ADP in 1974, I sold my share in the program and they then changed the name to APECS.

This experience and the people involved were to lead directly to Artemis. All of the other three partners in Metier, Richard Evans, Robin Lodge and Roy Brown had worked for TSL.