Earnest Endeavours in Computer Science

In my childhood years, those being in the late 1960's and early to mid 1970's the name Ernie was, to me ,associated with three different things.

The first was the character created by the comedian Benny Hill and the subject of his popular chart topping song, "The fastest milkman in the west" which enthralled us all with the epic tale of milk wars and unrequited love on the doorstep amongst the full fat pintas.

The second Ernie was the small, cheek chappy who acted as the straight  man for Eric Morecambe in the regular saturday night TV schedule. Even as impressionable youngsters we did not think that anything was at all strange about two grown up, unrelated men sitting in a double bed in their pyjamas.

Both these Ernies entertained and amused us but in the trilogy of the same name only E.R.N.I.E could really change your life and destiny.

Comic talent and genuis aside for the former Ernies the latter was far more significant in the life and aspirations of the British public.

In that era if you wanted to have an opportunity to win a lot of money then the options were quite sparse. The football pools relied upon skill, judgement and outright luck to get the right predictions of score draws to be in for a chance of the prize fund. You could always resort to a bank or payroll heist but most public spirited citizens went in for the purchase of Premium Bonds.

You could say that they were a crude forerunner of the National Lottery and that could be true excepting that the Government backed bonds from National Savings and Investments which put you in a regular prize draw could also be cashed in and as when the need arose.

E.R.N.I.E was the slang and populist name for the computer, or Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment which was fired up to generate 2000 premium bond numbers every hour.

If you could be bothered to scour through the huge list of Premium Bond numbers that E.R.N.I.E spewed out with such automatic efficiency you could claim a rightful cash prize.

If it helped the British economy along the way then  it was not in any way gambling, rather a conscientious investment in the country.

Our Grandparents and Parents presented us with Premium Bonds on our birthdays and other auspicious anniversaries and we were thrilled to receive them although to tell the truth we did not really understand what they were all about.

I remember wanting to enter the Match of the Day Goal of the Month Competitions on the occasions that I was allowed to stay up that late not for the kudos of picking the same players as the independent panel but for the chance of winning the fantastical sum of £100 in Premium Bonds.

E.R.N.I.E was a mystical entity and I would often scribble down a characterisation of what I thought he/it looked like in reality.

There was, in my crude drawings a bit of a theme going on of a robot with a smiley face pattern composed of control dials and with a ticker-tape dispenser for his mouth from whence the lucky numbers would be produced.

Upon learning, much later on in my life that E.R.N.I.E was in fact a mass of whirring dials and about the size of a mobile van I was genuinely deflated and disappointed.

Turns out that the origins of the Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment were in the Colussus machines developed by the Code Breaker Operation at Bletchley Park and with the same influential team of boffins and clever- clogs working on it, many who remained anonymous and largely unappreciated in their time and for their exhausting contributions to computer science and defeating fascism.

The rapid progress in technology had made the first E.R.N.I.E obsolete by around 1972 and in 1988 the same random number generator was the size of a personal computer and not a large panel vehicle on wheels.

By 2004 the version known as E.R.N.I.E  4 was about five hundred times faster than its predecessors and with around one million prize numbers produced every hour.

What with the get rich quick expectations from the National Lottery draws, Scratchcards, impromptu giveaways by the likes of daytime television and the X-Factor the value of money has been cheapened more than ever before.

I personally would not bother to enter any competition draw where the top prize was less than, say, a million pounds.

Against this level of assumed entitlement the Premium Bond is but a paltry offering but to me it still has an allure, a fascination and mystery.

I wonder what E.R.N.I.E is doing right now, this very minute?