Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)

@Symptoms - All NI cards were delivered from the benefit offices to Longbenton where they were sorted and delivered to the 100 NI sections. The number of NI Stamps, or Credits, for each year, on a workers NI card were entered clerically onto each workers NI Record Sheet by the Clerical Officers (CO's) in the 100 NI sections on the Longbenton site. So the NI clerical records for 1948 to 1970 were added to the first NI Recording System = ICL 1906A mainframes by 'Punch Card' operators.The Punch Card sections recieved the clerical record sheets and typed the data from the Record Sheets into the Punch Card machine and a Punch Card was output. All the Punch Cards were 'Batched' and sent to the Mainframe where to cards were fed into a Punch Card Reader that read the data and and the data was written to Magnetic Tapes (MTs) and the MTs were read into various data validation programs and then written to the relevant persons NI record that was held on MTs = either 2 or 3 reels of 6260bps, 2400 foot of MT for each NI section. And the NI Main File (MF) was created. Following that massive exercise the yearly NI contributions paid were delivered to the National Insurance Recording System (NIRS) on every type of media that an employer used = MTs (9 Track or 7 Track) - computer Discs (Amstrad - ICL - IBM etc. etc) or paper. There was an Input Program that read all formats of MTs. Anything that wasn't sent in on MT's was converted by the Punch Card Sections to MTs. The Input program that read all the records coming into the system was named FORTAP = FOReign TAPe and it passed the converted data onto a set of additional input programs that would sort all the records into NI order to be passed forward to be added to the MF records held on the 2 to 3 hundred MT reels.

No problem HPW - my mistake -jumped into me fading memory after I had closed down and I meant to correct it the next day - but I forgot.. I've updated the info below so it now has MPNI - DHSS - DSS - DWP and HMRC.

1. Which household appliance was patented by Cecil Booth in 1901? Answer = Vacuum cleaner 2. In bookmaker’s slang what odds are denoted by ‘double carpet’ Answer = 33/1 3. Who did Bjorn Borg defeat in 1976 to win his first Wimbledon singles title? Answer = Ilie Năstase 4. What is the more common name of the chemical Ethylene Glycol? Answer = (CH2OH)2 - antifreeze 5. In what year were dog licences abolished in Britain? Answer = 1987 6. On a Monopoly board, which property clockwise is situated after the Water Works? Answer = Regent Street = UK Marven Gardens = Canada Sturplan = Sweden 7. In which part of the British Isles would you find bailiwicks? Answer = Channel Islands 8. In which war was the battle of Gettysburg? Answer = American Civil War Lasting three days in 1863, from July 1-3, Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil, with up to 10,000 Union and Confederate troops dead and another 30,000 wounded. But surprisingly, this tremendous battle was a purely unplanned accident that grew out of a desperate need for soldiers' shoes! 9. By what name is the plant Lonicera better known? Answer = Honeysuckle 10. Which Archbishop of Canterbury seized the devil’s nose in a pair of red-hot tongs? Answer = Dunstan Dunstan immediately seized the devil's nose with his redhot tongs, causing the devil to leap the eight miles to cool his proboscis in the Tunbridge spring, thus lending the water its celebrated chalybeate qualities. 11. What is the longest river in Scotland? Answer = Tay 12. What is the medical name for Rabies? Answer = before I jumped into the cold water at Humford Baths I had Hydrophobia. I’ll bet you didn’t know …. In 1877 a wealthy widow promised Russian composer Tchaikovsky a generous annual allowance – on condition that they never met. Answer = I didn’t. Does that mean that Tchaikovsky and Władysław Pachulski invented Texting?

Unfortunately not @Odin Dunne If you know what part of Bedlington ie, Top End or Bedlington Station/Sleekburn your relatives lived there narrowing what school they might have attended, or if they worked at one of the pits in Bedlington we might be able to give you info or photos about the area.

Thank you Vic - the cool air in the computer halls was heaven to me☺️. We moved from Cramlington =North facing living room to Seghill = South facing living room. At Cramlington the wife was always turning the heat up and now at Seghill she basks in the sun streaming in through the South facing window and I hide in my little cool room in the middle of the bungalow.

@Jammy A short history on the ‘Ministry’ at Longbenton where the National Insurance clerical records and subsequent electronic data base on everyone in the UK that was working or retired. The National Insurance Act started in 1911 and War pensions were paid from 1916.The department was expanded by the Labour government in 1948 to cover many more benefits. The system has been subjected to numerous amendments in succeeding years. Initially, it was a contributory form of insurance against illness and unemployment, and eventually provided retirement pensions and other benefits. In 1953 the Pensions system and National Insurance (NI) systems combined to form the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (MPNI) and they took over the site at Longbenton = one full group containing the 100 sections of all the clerical record sheets = an NI record sheet with full ID + address + NI contributions paid And another group containing the 52 sections and all the clerical record sheets for everyone receiving a state retirement pension. So at that point in time the MPNI had a clerical record of all the workers and pensioners. The MPNI change its name in 1963 to The Department of Social Services = DSS as most people of our age new it by when we started work. The first generation of computer systems was started in October 1961 (think it was the 4th of October) and the Graduated Pension(GP) scheme was introduced. Initially it would mean more money into the pension fund and when people retired an addition to their pension = for every £7.50 a worker paid in Graduated Pension they would get an extra 6 pence per week on top of their pension. My first wage in 1965 was about £4.10 so it took a number of years to contribute £7.50 to get a tanner in retirement. But what the start of the GP scheme did in 1961was introduce the first NI computer system on the Longbenton site. It didn’t contain full NI records but it was the start and in preparation for the next generation of computer systems to be introduced in 1970 (ICL 1906A computers with 256Killobytes (NOT GIG or MEGA TERRA etc .etc. bytes). The State Pensions (SP) scheme started its own computer system, on the Longbenton site, and in them days they did not talk to each other electronically. Updates to the records from one system to another was by writing the updates to magnetic tape and passing the tape to the other system so they could read the tape and process the updates. By 1970, 2nd Generation systems, all the info on all the NI clerical records = all active and records of those deceased (don’t know how many million it was) had been typed into a machine that added the data onto magnetic tapes. As there were 100 NI sections (00 to 99 = the last two digits of everyone’s NI number) there were what would now be called 100 separate databases containing an address for every household in the UK that had a worker paying, or had paid NI. The same applied to the clerical pension records but they had 52 sections = 1 for every week of the year as you pension number was based on the week of the year you were born (Jan 1st to 7th pension number ended in 01 – born Dec 25th to 31st pension number ended in 52). Following that all benefit systems, eg Family Allowance (FA), had their own computer systems and databases (tape) with address records + benefit data and data updates between the systems was buy sending a magnetic tape from one system to whatever other system needed an update to its records. The 1980s saw the 3rd generation of computer systems (ICL 2980s) but the transfer of data between systems was still via magnetic tape. In 1990 things started to move faster and the new systems, 4th generation, could update each other electronically. By then everyone in the UK had a record on one of the systems so every address in the UK was on one or more of the systems. Since then the new generations were not 10 years apart; all magnetic tape records were now on discs (terrabytes in size), and all systems were updating each other electronically. So every system new about every other system and when letters had to be sent out each system could do their bit to keep the whole of the UK informed and not duplicate anything.