Computer Science History: 1970s

In 1972 the department launched the first 'advanced' master's degree programme in a UK University. The MSc was in Computing Software and System Design, funded through the Science Research Council.

In 1974 the IBM 360/67 was joined by a more powerful IBM 370/168. This was in partnership with Durham and Newcastle Polytechnic. Initially, the 168 also provided services to Glasgow and Edinburgh universities.

Other hardware developments included the reliability project, which acquired several DEC PDP11 mini-computers. This established a still-continuing 40-year sequence of research projects. The area is now termed System Dependability, and contains Fault Tolerance, Computer Security, Safety-Critical Systems and related topics.

In 1977 the project was awarded the British Computer Society's Technical Achievement Award for its development of Recovery Blocks and the associated Recovery Cache.

The early experience of time-sharing systems created a high demand for remote access to computing facilities. This drove initiatives in networking, most notably the campus-wide NUNET network.

By 1988 the network supported almost 1,200 remote connections at Newcastle and Durham together. It had connections to the two (by then Amdahl) mainframes at the two universities, and to national and international services.

This work was first directed by Denis Russell. He later became Deputy Director of the Computing Service. He was influential in the development of a TCP/IP-based national academic network.

Professor Page, the Laboratory's first Director, became acting Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1979. He went on to become the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Reading in 1981.