EMAS: the first and last user - Joanne Lamb                   Jun 1, 1992

    I joined the Computer Science department as a postgraduate student
    in the late 1960s.  As I sought for a topic for my PhD, it was
    suggested that I might be interested in writing an interactive
    language to run under EMAP (the Edinburgh Multi-Access Project).
    This was a project set up jointly between the department and English
    Electric (soon to merge with ICT to become ICL), to implement a
    multi-access system on their new 4-75 machine.

    Accordingly I started on my research, though somewhat slowed down by
    the fact that I was simulating an interactive environment by sending
    batch jobs down the line to Newcastle.  In view of this difficulty,
    I was invited to try my luck as the first user as soon as possible.

    The system was not very robust at that time and I have a vivid
    recollection of sitting in a rather dingy room in 10 Buccleuch
    Place, pounding an old fashioned teletype (upper case only) and
    logging off every few minutes, as there was no other way of
    protecting your files if the system should crash (which it
    frequently did).

    Computer Science must have moved to JCMB about that time, because my
    next recollection is of bussing up to KB every night for almost a
    year.  The system was in much better shape and a general service was
    offered - at lunch time and in the evenings.  The tools I was using
    then, IMP and EDIT, are still in use today - just.  Eventually I
    handed my thesis in at Christmas 1972.  In January 1973 EMAS went
    live with a full scale service!

    After working in England, I returned to Edinburgh in 1976.  EMAS was
    much as I remembered it, and I had come to appreciate its user
    friendliness after struggling with JCL and other horrors.  Over the
    years, both EMAS and IMP were improved, with new concepts being
    added as techniques advanced.  One of my first jobs on returning
    here was to write a questionnaire design package which is still in
    use.

    Twenty one years after I became the first user of EMAS, I am likely
    to be one of its last: we have a questionnaire to design by the end
    of June.  The questionnaire design program is now about the only use
    we make of EMAS, however, as most of the packages we use are more
    easily implemented on a commercial operating system such as VMS or
    Unix.

    I will always remember EMAS with affection.  I think that in the
    early days we did not appreciate in Edinburgh just how lucky we
    were.

    Times change, however, and we are now in the world of micros,
    windows and colour graphics.  Soon we will be grappling with high
    speed networks and fileservers.  Life in computing is never dull!