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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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Sir Edmund Burton

Sir Edmund Burton is a retired general and an experienced and highly innovative senior executive with extensive experience within the UK defence and security community operating at both ministerial and board level.  He has been a staunch advocate of the importance of treating information as a key business asset and of protecting it accordingly.  Formerly executive chairman of the UK national Police IT Organisation leading a major business improvement programme, a knowledge adviser to the Cabinet Office, other government departments, private sector and academia on information assurance processes and the need for education and training.

Muffy Calder OBE

Muffy Calder is Vice Principal and Head of College of Science and Engineering at Glasgow University.  She is also a Professor of Formal Methods.  She is a member of the governing body of EPSRC, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research.  She is Chair of the DCMS Science Advisory Committee and a member of REF Main Panel B.She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the British Computer Society and, in 2011, she was awarded the OBE for services to computer science.

Professor Edwin Candy

Professor Edwin Candy cut his teeth helping build command and control radio systems in his native Australia.  He worked for the Australian subsidiary of Pye, the Cambridge UK-based electronics company.  He spent a year seconded to Digital Equipment Corporation in the USA where he learned about computer architectures.   By the 1980s he was a business manager at Philips which had taken over Pye.  He moved to the UK in 1987 and conceived and created the Universal Mobile Telephone System 3G specification with 25 partners.  This standard was the basis for 3G mobile communications incorporating Internet services.

Dr Stephen Castell

Dr Stephen Castell has worked in all four corners of the IT industry.  He was worked on the computing side and in telecommunications.   He has worked as a user implementing complex systems and as a vendor of information products and services.  He spent years advising UK venture capitalists on what were and what were not the best companies to invest in.  Finally he has spent decades as an expert witness in numerous legal disputes between vendors and users when the IT system supplied did not fit the expectations of the buyers.  This gives him a unique insight into the failures of IT.