The networked society Archives

Keith Saunders

Keith started his tech career as an Apprentice at the Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell, getting his first job at DEC where he was and engineer in the Computer Special Systems department. His experience building service teams at DEC meant he moved on to computer company Alliant and telecommunications form Alcatel, heading up global services.

9 May 2025

Tom Povey

Tom joined DEC after a career in computing and standards work. He contributed to DEC’s all-in-one version 2 and DEC Forms, a layered product that became DEC’s fastest-selling product. He later co-founded a company to improve VT100 software.

6 May 2025

GSM pioneer, Mike Short, offers his top ten mobile phone attributes

Dr Mike Short CBE, has four decades of experience in electronics and telecommunications, holding senior…

6 May 2025

Dr. Mike Burrows

After studying for a PhD in electrical engineering, Mike was offered a job at DEC’s Systems Research Centre in Palo Alto. There he worked on the Alta Vista search engine, which became the most popular search engine in the 1990s. After DEC, Mike moved on to jobs at Microsoft and Google, where he developed a distributed lock server, still in use today

29 April 2025

Shaheed Haque

Shaheed joined DEC straight from university, and worked as an Engineer, contributing to the development of the 50-way sync connector and other innovative technologies, including inventing a graphic editor for state machines. His ground-breaking work on video servers saw Shaheed and his team move to Oracle where they worked on tech for companies who wanted to start using satellites to do shopping on televisions.

8 April 2025

Richard Briggs

Richard started off working with computers in Air Traffic Control, moving to DEC as an engineer. As his career progressed, he specialised in networks and moved over to telecoms, his work in ADSL laying the groundwork for future broadband infrastructure.

7 April 2025

Dr. Ian Severn

Ian started to use computers in research and development for firm Vickers. He next worked for Harwell on a search engine STATUS and Bemrose Information Services as a Systems Analyst on database publishing for motor companies. He joined DEC as publishing applications centre manager and after this job ended, set up his own business supporting ex-DEC customers.

24 March 2025

Dr. David Probert

David’s IT career began with BT on their scholarship scheme. Whilst working on BT’s privatisation, David was asked to manage a partnership with DEC in Reading working on optical fibres and video conferencing. A career in communications and the internet followed, providing the first international routers in Eastern Europe. After leaving DEC, he has worked in Georgia under the auspices of the United Nations.

18 March 2025