The stories of the pioneering people behind IT

This expanding database contains more than 200 oral histories recorded by the Archives of IT team. They tell the extraordinary story of how the Tech industry has transformed our lives, in the words of the people who made and are making it happen.

You can filter interviews by subject area below or use the Search button at the top of the page. If you know who you are looking for, use our A-Z list here.

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Professor David Duce

Dr David Duce worked for the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory most of his working life, starting there in 1975 programming an ICL mainframe in Fortran. He implemented a structured Fortran with a colleague and has keep a keen interest in formal methods. He became deeply involved in the realm of graphics and with graphics standardisation. He is not a fan of AI preferring model-based computing where you can see why the system can to its conclusions. Latterly he worked at Oxford Brookes University.

Edwina Dunn OBE

Edwina Dunn OBE has spent her 40 years in the IT industry analysing great globs of data and turning it into useful business information to guide businesses. We call that today the analysis of big data. She started at the US CACI company which used census data to help customers such as banks and building societies. She left with her husband after nine years and they formed their own consultancy focusing on analysing customer data. Their big breakthrough was launching the Clubcard customer service for Tesco which catapulted Tesco to the front rank of UK grocery marketing. They sold the business to Tesco and formed another company. She is concerned about the ethics of using data and about the role of women in IT.

Sean Finnan

Sean Finnan, the son of a welder and a factory worker, joined the IT industry by answering an advert in the company where he was working as a cleaner.  He got into IT at a subsidiary of General Motors whose IT operations was taken over by EDS, the Dallas-based outsourcing company.  He rose after 12 years cycling through jobs in EDS which gave him a broad view of IT and its management.

EDS was taken over by Hewlett-Packard from which he left to join IBM.  This experience gives him an interesting view of the different cultures of IT companies.  He now supports companies trying to help them scale up.

Dr Steve Furber CBE

Steve Furber was working at Acorn Computers having helped develop the BBC Micro and was searching for the follow-on product. He found that the microprocessors then on the market had a deep design flaws: they were too complex. Acorn decided to design its own microprocessor using a novel approach. Furber led the small design team. They called it the Acorn Risc Machine (ARM), later changed to the Advanced Risc Machine and it is now found in over a billion mobile devices worldwide