Hursley Pubs
The Hursley site tends to have a few oddities, which differentiate it from other IBM locations. One of them is that we have a pub on the site (IBM sites are generally alcohol free). The Hursley Clubhouse also acts as the focal point for all the clubs and societies running in Hursley. It’s kind of like the corporate equivalent of a Student’s Union. They run a whole set of activities: football, sailing, flying, gaming, as well as some more esoteric ones, such as the model railway club. Visitors to the Clubhouse are often surprised to see a full model railway in operation. A lot of people, like me, use the Clubhouse more for its food and drink service. You’ll often see a few Hursley big wigs supping a pint on a late Summer Friday afternoon.
We’re also lucky that Hursley village, which is only a five minute walk from the IBM site, has two pubs of it’s own. The Kings Head and the one which I tend to go to more often, The Dolphin. The Dolphin is a very traditional, old English pub. It was built around 1540, reportedly from the remains of HMS Dolphin. We tend to go there when there’s a birthday, people join or leave and for any other special events. It’s nice to be able to walk there from our office and it tends to be packed with IBMers most lunch times. It is quite odd going somewhere that has been around for over 450 years when we spend all day working on stuff that hasn’t been released yet and probably only has a life expectancy of 5-10 years. It’d be interesting to know if any code we write today has a chance of still being run in 2460. Somehow, I doubt it.
Here’s Ian celebrating a birthday in The Dolphin this week.
- Darren Shaw (Emerging Technology Services, IBM Hursley)
October 21st, 2005 at 1:27 pm
I heard of disk drives named after the Dolphin and even after Winchester. Do you know if it’s true?
October 21st, 2005 at 3:29 pm
I’d always heard that the Winchester disk was named after the nearby city of Winchester. However, Wikipedia says
“In 1973, IBM introduced the 3340 ‘Winchester’ disk system (the 30MB + 30 millisecond access time led the project to be named after the Winchester 30-30 rifle)”
which I could also believe. Not sure about Dolphin, though it’s toothier cousin the Shark was certainly another famous storage product.
February 17th, 2006 at 10:06 am
I also heard the S/390 was named after the A3090 main road between Winchester and Romsey, but the A was switched for a more curly and organic ‘S’ by marketing, and the 0 was dropped by someone in accounting to save on the (then expensive) rub-through transfers used to create the badges on the front panels. Could be wrong though…
December 24th, 2006 at 8:34 am
Hello Darren
This is a nice write up:) I particularly enjoy reminding my American colleagues and customers that many pubs, like the one you describe, are twice as old as America, (just to get some perspective going!). Finally, given your refreshing write up on the drinking trends and behaviour’s of the IBM Hursley population, I feel MUCH less guilty now for sneaking in lto the Dolphin ast Friday to the lunchtime for a ‘quicky’. But having seen the place, I’m booking a meal with famly over the Christmas break. Hursley sounds like my kind of location - completely dry at Bedfont and an awkward drive on a Friday for a pie and pint! Happy Christmas.
May 20th, 2007 at 1:07 am
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