Re: Mail?
Remember that finance did not embrace e-mail and in some cases may still not have embraced e-mail to the extent of others, rather it relied on such as telex and, other internal protocols essentially based on telegrams. Telegrams have a long and cherished, (by some) history. Both telexes and telegrams were often machine generated. I remember experimenting with generating telexes via a small desk top type computer back in the 1970s.
The English Electric Leo was running a business back in the 1950s and while many businesses struggled with 'computerisation' in the late 50s and 60s, (footnote many still have those same old problems) a lot of stuff was 'computerised' with even the banks using them by the mid 1960s. The fact that records go back 40 years is a bit of a surprise, since that only goes back to about 1976. So two comments, did they prune out the other 20 odd years through house keeping or was it simply lost through bad retention policies?
It makes the 6 ~ 10 year retention policies of many banks look really lame. Mind you, life insurance does have more distant retention horizons.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
