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Interview with Pete Lomas

“I think the real turning point in my life was a guy called Graham Beech who actually gave me the time and the access to my first computer then set me on a course that eventually caused me to design Raspberry Pi. I think the thing that really inspired me was when we could turn kids away from being consumers into being creators; how inspirational they are in what they think about what they want to create in an environment where they don’t think anything is impossible.”

“I find it quite amazing that a little project that we’d had at Cambridge University to build roughly 3,000 units then exploded onto the scene of makers and the community and now we’re touching on 30 million units.”

Pete Lomas and a colleague designed the Raspberry Pi educational computer to help turn young people from consumers into creators.  The original plan in 2008 called for 3,000 units: there are now close to 30 million of these small and inexpensive used to educate young people into how to design digital systems of all types.  Pete went further and turned Raspberry Pi into a charity with other industrialists and academics.   Raspberry Pi came out of a long career in electronic engineering which included teaching and research at Manchester University and commercial work developing digital systems for clients.  Today Pete took some time away from his hectic schedule to talk to Richard Sharpe about his life and career so far.

Early Life

Pete Lomas was born in 1955 in Salford, near Manchester.  His father was a foreman electrician for the building company, George Wimpey.  Pete’s mother was a housewife and looked after Pete and his older brother.

His parents encouraged him and his brother, he says: “I don’t ever remember them saying, ‘You can’t do that’ and that’s something I’ve tried to do with my child as well. … I’ve also brought forward that technically; perhaps nothing is impossible. We just need signs to figure out how it works and then engineering can actually make some use of it for the benefit of society.”

Pete says that his love of building things was inspired by his father, however, a trip to Manchester at the age of thirteen really set his future ambitions in motion. He explains: “In those days Manchester was the centre of electronics and computers with ICL and Ferranti, and all the offshoot material that they didn’t want ended up in junk shops on a road called Tib Street. I remember it quite fondly.  One day, after a visit, I came home with a great big piece of telephone exchange. The family were absolutely horrified, a) because it was large, and b) I had spent, probably too much money on it.  But I had an absolute plan with it. I took it to pieces, cleaned all the parts up, and then somehow, I managed to put that together to make a noughts and crosses machine. You could dial in with a normal telephone dial, it would make the move and then it would make its counter move.  I didn’t realise at the time, but I had just made a fixed-program computer.  This was well before really computers were in the curriculum.”

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