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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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Alastair Macdonald CB

Alastair Macdonald CB spent 32 years as a civil servant working on advice to ministers and executing policy for the IT industry. He was the civil servant in charge of the IT82 awareness campaign initiated by Lord Ken Baker. Macdonald was in charge of the privatisation of BT, a world first which started the liberalisation of the telecommunications industry. He was in charge of the Y2K efforts to avoid a catastrophe with the change of date at the start of this century. He took part in the decisions to widen the offering of mobile phone networks in the UK from two to four vendors.

Campbell McGarvie

Campbell McGarvie left school in 1962 with few paper qualifications despite having shown early academic promise. Taking a tedious job as a bank clerk he spent the next four years attending night school and missing out on much of the decade’s excitement. But his efforts paid off when he was hired by Burroughs now Unisys, leading to a long and successful career in the IT industry. In addition to many senior positions, he has held a number of non-exec directorships and is a past Master of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.

Ann Moffatt

Ann Moffatt found “sums” easy as a child at school in post war London and would have gone to Oxbridge had it not been a time when the boys in the family had first call on education.  Nevertheless, by reading every book she could find, she got a job in IT and went on to defy the male stereotype of the industry: combining a friendly manner with incisive expertise that commanded respect at the highest levels.

Ann was Dame Stephanie Shirley’s first lieutenant at Freelance Programmers before being headhunted to Australia, to sort out a mega-project gone wrong.  She is a Fellow of both the Australian Computer Society and the British Computer Society. In 2002, Ann was inducted into the Australian ICT Hall of Fame and in 2011, into the Pearcey Hall of Fame, for lifetime achievement in the ICT industries. The University of Southern Queensland awarded her an Honorary Doctorate, in May 2006 and Microsoft list her as one of 12 Australian Innovators.

David Morriss

David Morriss spent over 31 years in IBM starting at the bottom and becoming a board member of IBM UK. He saw it change from the dominant computer company with a unique culture and set of policies to one focused on IT services. He planned the change to a services company for its European, Middle East and African sector and then executed the plan in the UK. This turned IBM UK round from a loss-making operation to a profit generator. He applied the mantra that computers were there to solve problems in the private and public sectors, not there for the sake of the technology.

Julia Sutcliffe

Professor Julia Sutcliffe, was appointed Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Business and Trade in February 2023. Previously, she spent 26 years at BAE Systems where she focused on innovation, aerospace, defence and security. Here she talks about what has inspired and driven her career. This includes the great feats of engineering she saw as a child, the huge potential of the explosion in computer power, and the ability to collaborate with leading experts across many technologies.