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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A portrait photograph of a man with white hair wearing a suit jackets, shirt and tie. He is wearing glasses and smiling

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.

Paul Barry-Walsh

Paul Barry-Walsh is an IT entrepreneur and investor. After leaving IBM in 1986 Paul founded Safetynet; then in 1996 Netstore; and in 2001 he founded the Fredericks Foundation, which has become one of the UK’s leading micro finance organisations.

In 2005 alongside Paul & Peter Sedgwick, he founded Frank Investments. This business was established to provide long-term investment management services to a partnership of investors. Paul has made over private 30 investments since 2000 and typically invests between £250-£ 500k each year. 

Victor Basta

Victor Basta is a maestro of mergers and acquisitions in the IT sector. He says he is somebody who helps other people through deals rather than doling deals himself.

In 1986 he came across the IT industry through his activities in mergers and acquisitions working in New York for the General Motors Treasurer’s Office. Between September 1989 and November 2001 he worked at Broadview International an then became Managing Director of Magister, a boutique investment bank based in London and San Francisco. His first deal was selling LoveFilm to Amazon for around $350 million, now Amazon Prime Video.

Larry Benjamin

Larry Benjamin is a consultant ophthalmic surgeon with a passion to exploit IT for surgery and administration in health.

He says previous resistance to the use of IT among staff is largely overcome among younger people who are IT savvy. Data capture and analysis has, however, have a long way to go.

He has worked with Orbis, the international charity working to make eye care available everywhere. His father was Alan Benjamin OBE a leading member of the UK computer industry from the 1960s.

Dr Louise Bennett

Dr Louise Bennett is an IT Security Expert with more than 30 years’ experience in the industry. Her first experience of computing was modelling weather using London University’s Atlas computer.

She worked at the Ministry of Defence as an operations analyst and one of her first roles involved programming in BASIC and Fortran to develop a flying training programme for the RAF.

In the late 1980s she became R&D Director as well as IT Director and moved to Thorn Security where she led early work in biometrics with fingerprint, hand, iris and voice recognition and also worked at AEA Technology (the privatised Atomic Energy Establishment).

As the chair of the security forum at the British Computer Society, she has an excellent bird’s eye view of what’s going right, and wrong, with the nation’s security

Nicholas (Nic) Birtles

Nic Birtles left university after a boring year for more exciting work in the emerging IT industry.  He programmed a LEO machine; successor to the first business computer.  Like many who led the growth of the 20th century industry, he soon moved into sales and thence senior management with some of the iconic names of the early industry, including Burroughs in Canada and then ComShare, selling its computer power over telephone lines.

He was headhunted by Ingres, the innovative relational database competitor to Oracle.  He was in Silicon Valley for the dotcom boom and bust.  Since 2002, Nic has held a portfolio of non-executive roles with growth companies, most recently fundraising for an innovative aircraft design from Aeralis.  Nic is a Past Master of the City of London IT Livery Company (WCIT) , where he actively supports their charitable initiatives.