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Well, here we are again, almost at the end of another year. It was on September 2nd 1957 when a letter was sent out announcing the inaugural meeting of the club, to be held on Wednesday 16th September at The Southampton Institute of Technology (Itec).
At the time there was a national group by the name of The 1512 Independent User Group. The national group had paid for an advertisement in the local paper to which nearly 50 people responded. The 1512 was the first personal computer of its type to be produced by Amstrad, subsequently superseded by the 1640. I still have a 1640 which, although I do not use it any more, can still do most of the jobs I have for a computer.
The meeting was very successful and so the club was formed as the local branch of The 1512 Independent User Group.
The national 1512 Independent User Group did not contribute or help in any way, other than to pay for the initial advert so, some time later, we split and the club was re-named The Southampton PC Users club.
The club had a membership of nearly 50, most of whom attended our meetings. We had quite a few teachers among our members and most of them had some knowledge of computers. I could always rely on someone to give a talk about something or other and there was always someone at hand to help, and so our knowledge grew.
We had one member, god bless him, who could spend the whole evening talking about a 5¼" disc. The member would illustrate his talk with drawings on the blackboard (no whiteboards in those days) and he could totally mesmerise most of us with the mathematics behind a 5¼" disc.
I have a copy of all the newsletters that I have sent out since the start of the club and I know that at least a couple of present day members also have a complete collection. Looking back on the early newsletters is most interesting. In those days I could nearly always rely on a member to give a talk, usually about a particular program that he or she was using. On the odd occasion when I was stuck for someone to give a talk or demonstration, I could always rely on someone from the Itec to step in. Later we had great co-operation from publishers of software. Some publishers even sent their representatives along with a latestcopy of their program for us to raffle. It was from those meetings that we accumulated enough cash to subsidise the meetings of today.
Looking back on early copies of the newsletter makes interesting and sometimes amusing reading. I note from a newsletter dated November 30th 1987 that the demonstration for our December meeting was to be given by David Dawson - Taylor and was of a program called Super Base. David is still a member to this day. He lives some way from Southampton so does not attend too often but I knew I could rely on David to talk about or demonstrate something should I ask him.
Other programs demonstrated in those early days were a communications program by Steve Cole from the Gosport Opus Bulletin Board, Q Dos by Paul Wilkinson, Tassword by Ron Holmes and many, many more.
There is not enough room to mention the numerous publishers that sent representatives but there was one in particular that I must mention and that was Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Tool Kit which was the most well known anti-virus software at the time. The March 1994 meeting was held in the conference room of the Southampton Itec as the attendance was over 100 and the talk was given by Dr. Solomon himself. Current members who attended the meeting were, Joan Pressey, Bryan Coleman, David Dawson - Taylor, Reg Featherstone, Nigel King, Peter Welch and myself.
What of the future? Bryan Coleman and I have been in discussion about the club's future and we have decided that we will carry on if enough people want the club to continue. Due to the low attendance at meetings we do lose money every month but we have enough cash in hand to keep going for sometime yet and we will review the situation at the end of each year.
As the end of the current year is now approaching we need to know how many members intend to renew for 2006. We can then decide for certain if we are going to continue to run the club for another year.
Will all members please let either Bryan or me know if they will be renewing their membership or not as soon as possible - preferably by next Thursday's meeting but by Wednesday 30th November at the very latest!
Subscriptions will remain the same.
Ken Miles
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This meeting notice/newsletter, was based on that produced by Ken Miles, and sent by snail mail, to members of the SPCUC a few days before each monthly meeting. Comments about the club's web pages, to the webmaster.
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