The Pocket Sized Genius

This article by BOB SELBY, is taken from the journal SHELLMAN, and is reproduced by kind permission of the Managing Editor of that magazine, PATRICK LYNCH.

It is a strange world. Whilst much of the motor trade is brushing up its two- times table in preparation for t he £-a-gallon epoch, one site is employ ing self-serve equipment so sophistical that it takes the breath away . At t he press of a button, it can tell the operator more or less anything he or she may wish to know about t he station's petrol sales. Wh at ' s more, the key to the whole thing i s a computer no bigger than a sugar l ump, and by no means damnably expensive . Should you wish f or a c lue to the fu t ure, my advice would be to for get the probable forth coming ant i cs of mental arithmetic associated with h a lf-price posting, and t o concentrate on this marvel of mode rn s cience . It is, of course, a spin-off from the exploration of space, and i ts possib ilities are prodigious . According to David Andrews, who works for its manufac t urersBennett Beck, it is currently yielding only about ten per cent of its c apacity . "It can," he told me, "do almost anything except stand up and sing. We could make it sing, but the standing up bit would be harder". The pumps are neat, cleanlimbed, units that can be pre-set in terms of cash value. If a motorist wants, say £5's worth of petrol, he simply touches the £5 button. He will receive no more and certainly no less.

Pre-set pumps have been with us for some while and cannot be accounted news. The most impressive feature to anyone who is not versed in the technical byways of electronics, is the console . It is small, compact, and yet the amount of information it can divulge is quite fantastic. You ask the questions by pushing this or than button. Within micro-seconds. the answer is flashed on to a small TV screen. To make this apparent miracle even more impressive it has a memory.

For example. customer A may be using a certain pump - customer B may be on the other side of the island, waiting to use it. A finishes filling up his tank and replaces the hose; Breaches for it. Ther is no need for any delay. A's can be wiped off the face of the pump at once, and B can get on with the job. The equipment will remember A's purchase until he has come to the cash desk and paid for it.

But this is only part of the whole performance. It will obediently print out such information as the cumulative total of the station's throughput in terms of cash and gallons the number of sales (right back. 1f need be, to the beginning of the year). It will count the takings at the end of each shift ; record the cash sales and the credit sales; show the amount of petrol in stock according to grades - and flash a warning to the operator when it's time he or der ed more supplies . It can diagnose i t s own ailmen ts , and make the task of changing prices so easy the 20

hardest part is putting up a new poster on the pole sign. But they're working on that. The time is not far away when that, too, could be done by remote control.

According to Gordon Pattenden of Shell U.K. Oil, this data control system is the most impressive feature of the Bennett Beck 5000 series. The information is transmitted from pump to console at a speed approaching that of light. It is, furthermore, in code. There have been instances when electronic gadgetry has become confused by, for example, the noises of engines. In this case, there is no such trouble. Unless the signals are in the correct cipher, the computer refuses to take any notice of them. The business of micro-processing (that's what they call it) originated in the USA about three years ago. At present, 48 sites over there are equipped with it. The installation at Balham Hill i s the first in Europe, Indeed, in this form, it is the first in the world - for the American version does not concern itself with such things as pre-setting and blending. Such feats have, of course, been possible for much longer - but they would have required far larger computers. Said David Andrews, "The equivalent of the micro-computer in terms of transistors would be so big and heavy that I wouldn't be able to lift it. There'd have to be between eight and nine thousand of them. What's more, this one doesn't wear out". The new system was introduced at Balham Hill Self-Serve at the end of last November. So far, it has been subjected to snow, ice, and heavy rainfall; the price of the petrol has changed from time to time, and it hasn't flinched. John Keen, the site's manager, told me that "the teething troubles have been very, very small". Nor was the installation of it calculated to add wrinkles to his brow. It was carried out in two stages, and the whole operation took little more than a week. "It was," he said, "very rapid and trouble free". Console operator Maureen Jaxonelli was full of praise for it. She still has to make one calculation, since the site .offers its customers a choice between stamps and cash discount. Only about ten per opt for the former, but it has to be worked out at the cash point. As for Mr Keen, he still has to dip the tanks initially. Once this has been done, and the figures fed into the computer, the inventory is carried out automatically. The amounts sold are deducted from the stocks and, when fresh supplies are received, the quantities are added to the totals. Mind you, it seems unlikely that Mr Keen will have to dip his tanks for much longer. David Andrews and his colleagues are working on a means of cutting out the chore - just as they are studying ways of passing on information about the site's stocks of petrol to a computer at a Shell terminal. The fully automatic filling station is certainly not far away. for the time being, however, there are no complaints from Balham Hill SelfService. With only three people on duty at anyone time, they are selling petrol at the rate of over a million gallons a year. A situation in which so few are able to accomplish so much can't be wrong - and some of the credit certainly goes to that brilliant midget, the tough and encyclopedic micro- computer .