Ben Poole

Hursley bloggers?

James Governor asks, where are the Hursley voices? in his latest post to the Mainframe weblog. It’s a good question! I have had the good fortune to visit IBM’s Innovation Centre at Hursley on two occasions now, and hope to go there again. It’s a lovely part of England, Hursley, right near the beautiful city of Winchester. I can think of far worse places to work too: the Hursley campus is lovely. Consider the centre’s history:

Both the Winchester hard drive (geddit?) and MQ Series (hmmm... what fun that can be) were developed there!

So, come on then, where are the chaps and chappettes of Hursley? We want to hear from you!Posted at 10:28 PM CET on 29 Nov 2005  |  Categories:   |   (6 comments)

Comments

1. I visited Hursley a couple of months ago and I fully agree it's a really nice campus - Nice fish too :O)
   on 30 Nov 2005 by Ben Rose (#)
2. According to my memory, and Wikipedia backs me up on this, the developers called the Winchester the "30-30" because of its two 30MB spindles, leading project lead Kenneth Haughton to name it after the Winchester 30-30 rifle. Is this what you meant?
   on 30 Nov 2005 by Bob (#)
3. Interesting! It would appear that this Winchester / Hursley thing is a common myth. This adds even more confusion... Scroll down to "Why Was it Called the Winchester Drive?":
   
   http://www.littletechshoppe.com/ns1625/winchest.html
   on 30 Nov 2005 by Ben Poole (#)
4. Ben,
   
   I'm not sure of the origins of the name for the Winchester drive, but, from my old days in the main-frame busniess, I'm sure that VM (S/370 main-frame OS - not WMware for the PC) was developed at Hursley!
   on 30 Nov 2005 by Roy Holder (#)
5. The Wikipedia entry has the same Winchester rifle story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk as the link you provided.
   
   I hadn't heard the Winchester, England or Winchester House stories before, just the Winchester rifle reference. I've been to the Winchester Mystery House near San Jose mentioned in the "Why Was it Called the Winchester Drive?" article. It's a weird place.
   on 01 Dec 2005 by Bob (#)
6. I visited the IBM labs at Hursley Park several times while working for Sanders Associates from 1980 to 1983. There was an early hard disk drive on display in one of the hallways and the engineers there mentioned that the "Winchester Drive" was invented there and named after the nearby city. Although we usually stayed at the little inn outside Romsey I did once stay at the hotel in Winchester. It was right next to Winchester Cathedral made famous in the 1966 hit song of the same name by The New Vaudeville Band.
   on 26 Nov 2006 by John Wasser (#)

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