DEC Archives - Archives of IT

Keith Saunders

Keith started his tech career as an Apprentice at the Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell, getting his first job at DEC where he was and engineer in the Computer Special Systems department. His experience building service teams at DEC meant he moved on to computer company Alliant and telecommunications form Alcatel, heading up global services.

9 May 2025

Tom Povey

Tom joined DEC after a career in computing and standards work. He contributed to DEC’s all-in-one version 2 and DEC Forms, a layered product that became DEC’s fastest-selling product. He later co-founded a company to improve VT100 software.

6 May 2025

Dr. Peter Macfarlane

Peter McFarlane, has done pioneering work in automating electrocardiogram (ECG) analysis at the University of Glasgow, which started using DEC machines and Siemens software. He has contributed to major clinical studies and the widespread use of statins in heart disease prevention.

6 May 2025

Dr. Mike Burrows

After studying for a PhD in electrical engineering, Mike was offered a job at DEC’s Systems Research Centre in Palo Alto. There he worked on the Alta Vista search engine, which became the most popular search engine in the 1990s. After DEC, Mike moved on to jobs at Microsoft and Google, where he developed a distributed lock server, still in use today

29 April 2025

Trudy Norris-Grey

Trudy trained as an accountant, working for Vodafone predecessor Racal, and then DEC as a financial analyst. She worked her way up to become DEC’s first female board member. She moved on to Kodak and then became Vice President at Oracle. She became the first female leader of a major tech company in the UK in 2005 when she headed Sun Microsystems UK.

15 April 2025

Simone Hume

Simone started work at DEC as a temp, and taking advantage of their DigiTemps programme, got a permanent job in bid support and assisted consultants with proposals for Multi–Vendor Customer Services. She moved on to Base Sales, upselling additional services to existing customers, and then Field Sales around the time of the Compaq takeover. After DEC she moved to IBM as a Partner Account Manager for the public sector.

14 April 2025

Shaheed Haque

Shaheed joined DEC straight from university, and worked as an Engineer, contributing to the development of the 50-way sync connector and other innovative technologies, including inventing a graphic editor for state machines. His ground-breaking work on video servers saw Shaheed and his team move to Oracle where they worked on tech for companies who wanted to start using satellites to do shopping on televisions.

8 April 2025

Richard Briggs

Richard started off working with computers in Air Traffic Control, moving to DEC as an engineer. As his career progressed, he specialised in networks and moved over to telecoms, his work in ADSL laying the groundwork for future broadband infrastructure.

7 April 2025

Peter Campbell Burns

Peter worked as a computer programmer for University College London, in the Department of Physics and Astronomy’s high-profile experiments in collaboration with the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN). His knowledge of DEC machines and VAX/VMS (Virtual Memory Systems) meant he went on to become a Defence contractor.