Job History 2

Landed in Chicago after finishing my master's degree in chemical engineering I found myself without a job. So job hunting again. Thank goodness Nicki is working in a hospital. I have to drive her to work and pick her up as we only have one car my camaro. I found a job but it is not engineering. Miller Builders build houses. They have a computer system doing business applications like operating data, banking, house building monitoring and such. But I have a background in computer programming and I need a job. Jim Ugrin was my boss and I worked with a guy named Mark Clark. Their computer is a IBM 1800 minicomputer. Feed with hollerith cards and using packed disc drives they do the payroll too and other accounting programs. I quit after I got another job but this one is more into engineering. 

I finally got a job at IGT a research institute doing research on coal gasification. This is sponsored by the US Government as energy is big business at that time. They called it a pilot plant but its bigger than a pilot plant. There are some 50 workers and 15 engineers. There is another pilot plant nearby with lesser personnel. I worked in the laboratory handling all computer work for the plant. We have a Hewlett-Packard minicomputer whose purpose is to gather process data from the plant. I do the computer programming of the system plus hardware. This is 1972 where the advent of computer and applications are just starting up. Our s2100 computer has something like 8K in memory, dual magnetic tapes, paper tape system, removable disc drives of 90 mbytes each. In the plant we have a Scanivalve system that gathers data and a teletype machine feed from cassette tapes. We have a modem hookup to a CDC mainframe where we process the data and produced reports. Programming is Fortran. It was kind of fun because I get to program several scientific and engineering applications. I did a material and energy balance program of the pilot plant, statistical analysis of plant data, instrumentation maintenance program. I quit to join a company

Guys I worked with at UOP. JR Penisten,
Ben Atwater, Pol, Paul Pon,
Don Mordhorst, Paul Chabbra,
Jack Sayles

called UOP, Universal Oil Products in their Process Control department. I was hoping that we will delve deeply into advanced process control and do innovative applications in that area. Although our group are equip and have the knowledge base to do so, our manager JR Penisten is an old engineer who does not know what process control is all about. All he knows is how to calculate yield in a cat cracker plant and this is not process control at all. We sat on our desk without any direction the six of us. UOP was bought by Signal Corp. and the layoff began. I was the last one hired so I was the first one to get layoff. I went back to IGT who took me in. After about two years I finally resigned from IGT because I found a new job in Texas.