“Magical Mystery Tour” is a song by the Beatles, the opening track and theme song for the album, double EP and TV film of the same name. Unlike the theme songs for their other film projects, it was not released as a single.
Magical Mystery Tour is an album by the English rock band the Beatles that was released as a double EP in the United Kingdom and an LP in the United States. Produced by George Martin, it includes the soundtrack to the 1967 film of the same name. The EP was issued in the UK on 8 December 1967 on the Parlophone label, while the Capitol Records LP release in the US occurred on 27 November and featured eleven tracks with the addition of songs from the band’s 1967 singles. The first release as an eleven-track LP in the UK did not occur until 1976.
Album: The Beatles – Magical Mystery Tour
Source: Jim’s Pawn Shop–Springfield, Mo
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Our new BASS (Benefits Administrative Support System) ran software called HPDeskManager. This gave users a personal electronic in tray, out tray, calendar, and file cabinet. Users had a basic word processor called HPWord. Employees could send and receive e-mail with other benefit department employees at headquarters.
The calendar allowed people to view the schedules of other headquarters Benefits employees. They could even use the system to reserve conference rooms. I encouraged employees to keep their calendar up-to-date on their computer. This way meetings could be scheduled online.
Taking BASS to the Field
SWBT had benefit offices in seven locations: St. Louis, Topeka, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. Headquarters employees communicated with these offices via landline phone or written document.
We designed a network of HP 3000 systems. Each benefit office received one. They dialed each other at pre-scheduled dial-up times, typically once an hour to exchange email between locations.
I went to each location with my co-worker Joel. We installed the mini computers and trained the employees. We taught an administrator at each location how to do backups. They would call Joel or me for help whenever they had a problem or question.
Employee Benefits was the first department within the company to have email communications between headquarters and field locations. Eventually we were able to communicate with other SWBT employees and of course the outside world.
Thanks for your wonderful ability to weave music and memories with wonder for the future. You always have been on the leading edge Brad sharing and implementing a view of the future yet to be seen by many, and I thank you for that. I agree with Brenda about learning on the job that at SWBT/SBC/ATT in my career (1971 to 2000) we were given so many great opportunities to learn and implement new things. I left SWBT traffic design in 1972 a year after I was hired. I moved from downtown St. Louis (with lots of resources for our use) to network administration in the Manchester Central Office where we administered line and number assignments and did the traffic studies. Yes-when you got a new phone someone physically had to select the telephone number and assign the physical central office equipment for the plant department to make the physical connection for the phone to work. In that job, we were dependent on data to give the designer to make future central office equipment additions. One of our employees would have to go to remote central dial offices (CDOs) beyond Chesterfield and take pictures of the traffic registers so we could analyze the data to add equipment to the central office as the central office areas had new residential and business development. We would have the film developed. The employee would then read the film and back at their desk use a comptometer to do the basic math with the register reading. (As an aside Chesterfield was at that time the Magical Mystery Tour. It was I think one of the first electronic switching systems in the St. Louis area, and we had all kinds of data available with much less effort. You could even do the new thing called three way calling.) I wanted to buy a calculator for our office to improve productivity and timeliness of our traffic studies, but I had to do a work time study to justify what I think at the time was a $150 purchase. Those calculations became another Magical Mystery Tour. Another “leap” was in 1983 when I went to help with the start up of Telecom. One of my employees was trying to describe to me what a PC was and how we need to have them. He brought his from home to show me their capabilities. And that too was another Magical Mystery Tour. How easy my 1972 traffic data analysis (no comptometer) and 1971 traffic designs (no more mylar stencil sheets for equipment additions) would have been with that PC.