Category Archives: Computers and Office Management

Visidex rotating card files

Back before the days of electronic devices for keeping track of business contacts, rotating card file devices such as Rollodex and these Visidex were popular.

These three Visidex card files from W. G. Goetz and Sons were slavaged from somewhere by Melbourne based documentray photographer Warren Kirk and donated to W. G. Goetz History.  Thanks Warren!

The date is unknown, but as the phone numbers have only 7 digits, they probably date up to the mid 1990s, when the 8th digit was introduced, but many card entries appear to be much older.

Below: Label on one directory featuring phone numbers for W. G. Goetz, Goetz Manufacturing, Eastern Metallurgical Founders (Dandenong), Goetz own phone number (Spotswood) and the direct number for the General Manager (those numbers have an older 391 Spotswood prefix).

Similar label on another of the Visidex files

The three Visidex files contain hundreds of contact names, addresses and phone numbers, many from large comapnies such as BHP, CIG Gasses, Containers Limited, Gadsen, Edgell, Nestlé, GMH and many others.

These examples are from RVB Products (see the RVB entry regarding their involvement with Goetz) and Ansett Technologies.

Computers at Goetz

In 1986, W. G. Goetz & Sons had a newly introduced Digital Equipment Corporation PDP11 computer system with three or four terminals connected to it, mainly used for basic orders and customer management – the sort of things that can nowadays be done in an Excel Spreadsheet!

Fresh from a Mathematics and Computing degree from what was then the Footscray Institute Of Technology, Ian Jones came to work in IT at Geotz in 1986. The work environment in the office section was one where everyone was known as ‘Mr.’, all the men wore ties and there was a nine day fortnight. The office telephone switchboard was of the style that featured patch leads, plugs and sockets – anyone wanting to call would have to contact the receptionist to get an outside line.

Part of Ian’s IT job at Goetz was to program a wirecutting machine and look after the company’s DEC PDP11.

Ian has kindly provided this typed sheet of duties for the operation and maintenance of the Goetz system.

Click image for larger view

The DEC PDP11/34A was a version of the PDP11/34, featuring an upgraded CPU, required to support the optional floating point unit and/or optional high speed memory cache.

Cover from the 1981 edition of the PDP11 processor handbook (not from Goetz, but they probably had one). The handbook wasn’t exactly ‘light reading’, and weighed in at  502 pages!

An example of a typical DEC PDP11/34

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