THE ACCIDENTAL TECHIE

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

(I’ve been under the weather lately and not feeling clear-headed enough to write anything new, so here is a recycled piece from May 2020.)

When I began working at the Woods Hole, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Steamship Authority in December 1990, they didn’t have a single computer. The Authority is an independent state entity that controls and provides ferry service between Cape Cod and the two largest islands south of the cape. The accounting department was still using mechanical calculators and hand-written ledgers. Reservations and ticketing were all done on paper.

I had never been especially adept technically but had been using a Compaq computer in my consulting practice since 1986 so brought it with me, along with both a dot-matrix printer and a first-generation HP inkjet. That computer was the portable of the day: about the size and heft of a suitcase full of books. It had a nine-inch monochrome screen, white letters on black background with no graphics.

The operating system, Microsoft’s Disk Operating System (MS-DOS) used separate readers for floppy discs. One disc contained the program being used; the other was the storage disc for whatever I was writing. Speed and memory were considerably smaller than a Fitbit. It cost $1600. The inkjet printer cost $750 but lasted 16 year and worked better than any new HP printer now on the market.

When the other executives noticed how quickly I was cranking out letters, memos, and reports with no secretary, they started asking about that strange box on my desk. It wasn’t long before they had computers on their desks, although some served more for image than practical use.

In August 2000 Hurricane Bob blew through Cape Cod, leaving our headquarters in Woods Hole without power or telephone service for a week. Few people had cell phones then, and cell service was spotty, but the Verizon tower on Martha’s Vineyard was still working and I had a phone in my truck.

That first-generation phone was permanently wired into the truck, with an antenna on the roof and a large handset next to the shift lever on the floor. The phone itself was a box the size of a book, mounted on the cab wall behind the driver’s seat. That phone cost about $2100 installed, and $300/month for service, but paid for itself in a few months of consulting because I could bill one client for travel time while billing another for phone consultation.

I parked my truck in front of the terminal building, and employees stood in line for the chance to use it. For an entire work week, that was the Authority’s only telephone. Not long after, the General Manager and Engineering Manager had phones installed in their cars. For the next ten years until I retired, the Authority paid my cell phone bill.

By the time I retired in 2001, the Steamship Authority was fully computerized. They had an IT department and were making their own computers. Reservations were fully electronic, as was bookkeeping. The Reservations Bureau in Mashpee was connected to the Woods Hole terminal by fiberoptic cable. And everyone had a cell phone in their pocket.

And that is the story of how I became the accidental technical guru who instigated a major transition at one of the biggest businesses on Cape Cod.