The march of Technology

When I started working as a junior engineer, there was a corner or large space occupied by one of these cabinets. It proudly held the flashing, whirring and occasionally beeping computer servers that connected all the terminals in the engineering office.

My role was mainly looking at survey data returned from the guys who measured the thickness of pipes on offshore oil and gas installations. I input data from the surveys on a terminal shared by 4 people. That would be almost unthinkable now. Part of the role included interpreting the fast pencilled numbers written in cold and tricky locations, realising that some numbers were impossible typos, whilst others were the precious anomalies in thickness that we were looking for. My lead engineer was too busy talking about motorcycles and going out with his missus to spot some of the problems, so I did that too. Justifying that him taking the credit was better than all of us data lackeys getting flack.
My desk was near the server area, and I would watch the IT guy, who doubled as the CAD drawing guy for the piles of piping drawings, tie himself in knots when there was a technical issue. Poor chap, he was in the wrong job, isolated, stressed and over worked. I once saw him plunge his head (still attached to his shoulders) into a group of pot plants. Luckily, he made contact with green leafy stuff, not the prickily cacti surrounding it.
..... and now .... this once prized and now redundant cabinet is the cupoboard for cleaning materials. But it sure brought back memories!