1950s Archives - Page 2 of 2

Ewan Page

Ewan Page is a British academic and computer scientist, and among many other things a former President of the BCS and the former vice-chancellor of the University of Reading.

15 August 2019

Norman Sanders

Norman Sanders was very much involved in the early days of the computer industry, being rightly called a computer pioneer working alongside other great pioneers like Sir Maurice Wilkes and David Wheeler. Norman says that his working life consisted of helping to get the computer revolution going and he has published five books, numerous papers and articles alongside his work for employers such as Boeing, Metier and Sperry. He was also a technology adviser to Harold Wilson in the 1960s.

28 March 2019

Professor Frank Land

One of the pioneers of early commercial computing who worked on the Lyons Electronic Office (LEO) and became the first Professor of Informatics in the United Kingdom.

28 August 2018

Ernest Morris

In the mid-Seventies Ernest became the third President of the Computing Services Association, then known as CSA. Ernest was President of the BCS, the British Computer Society 1987-88. He is a past Chairman of the Computer Conservation Society and between 1993 and 1997 was Chairman of UKERNA, the body responsible for the academic and research network of JANET.

13 February 2018

Iann Barron

Iann Barron nurtured three generations of computer designers in the UK at Elliott Brothers, Computer Technology (CT) and InMos.

He designed a computer at Elliott’s for the RAF and left to form his own company, CT, in 1965, raising private capital to fund it, one of the first to do so in the world.

He was forced out of CT in 1975 and after a spell as a consultant joined the InMos venture of the National Enterprise Board designing the transputer microprocessor and advising Motorola, Texas Instruments and Fairchild and also telling Intel what was wrong with their microprocessors.

1 August 2017

Philip Hughes CBE

Philip Hughes CBE co-founded Logica. The systems development company pioneered the use of minicomputers in commercial and government applications. After leaving Logica, Philip became a full-time artist.

1 August 2017

Ken Barnes

Ken Barnes co-founded one of the first software companies in the UK: Systems Programming Limited (SPL) in 1963.

It started with three programmers and within two years was employing 150 people. It eventually became the largest software company in Europe.

In the early 1980s he was approached by the new Minister for Information Technology, Kenneth Baker, to run a year-long campaign promoting the uses of IT in the UK: IT82.

28 July 2017

Dame Stephanie Shirley

Dame Steve Shirley founded the software house F International initially only using women workers who worked from home. It was in 1962 and she had hit the glass ceiling again in her employment. She had £6 of capital. She was good at finding people who could become high achievers. Having been saved when a million children died in the holocaust she decided to make hers a life worth saving and likes to feel that she has made a difference. Her work gives purpose to her existence.

27 July 2017

Sir Peter Bonfield

Sir Peter Bonfield worked in the electronics component, computing and telecommunications sides of IT. He was invited in 1981 to become operations manager of ICL, the state-owned computer company rapidly running out of cash designing a new range of mainframes. In 1984 ICL was taken over by STC and Sir Peter became MD. In 1996 Sir Peter moved to BT and helped to lead it through a transformation from a utility company into a growth company

14 July 2017

John Pearce

John Pearce created the backbone of methods used by the successful Hoskyns Systems and became a key mover in the mid-1970s National Enterprise Board (NEB). He started in the IT sector by helping Joseph Lucas install its first computer and develop applications for it. He trained himself as a systems analyst before joining IBM in 1960 to help IBM introduce new concepts to existing customers