Peter Cropper

Peter John Cropper was born in the village of Stacksteads, near Bacup in Rossendale, Lancashire in 1940, son of a shoemaker and housewife.  The family moved to Salford (now in Greater Manchester) in 1945 and became shopkeepers, running a corner shop.

Peter’s parents were supportive of education and he attended Salford Grammar school, from where he went on to the University of Manchester to study Mathematics.  However, his second year did not go well and he dropped out with the intention of returning after a year to take the exams and resume study.

To fill in time profitably he took a job at Associated Electrical Industries (AEI).

Peter joined AEI in Manchester in 1960 on a weekly salary of £14 12s 6d.

Through the 1950’s, a dozen computer companies, including notable names such as Ferranti and English Electric were developing machines, and most of them ended up converging to form ICL (International Computers Limited) in 1968.  AEI was on a different track: it enjoyed a brief foray into data processing, with some success, but did not join up with the other pioneers.  A brief history can be found in a memoir by Ron Foulkes for the Computer Conservation Society.

The AEI Computer Department was just beginning to get off the ground when Peter joined and it seemed to be more suited to his talents than the heavy engineering for which AEI was better known.  Peter recalls being interviewed on a Tuesday, as the selection process largely depended on solving the Sunday Times Conundrum from the previous weekend. A telegram that evening offered him the job if he could attend the third day of the week-long programming course the next morning.  Three months later Peter was delivering the training course and never got round to going back to university!

After training Peter’s main project was as a member of a small team developing the operating system for a mainframe (AEI 1010) and working with RAF Hendon Supply and Control personnel developing an application for worldwide spares control.

It was at AEI that Peter first met Hilary Trueman, later to become Hilary Cropper, after they married in September 1963.  They were to be married for 41 years, until her death and were both leading figures of the UK IT industry. Hilary became CEO of the company FI Group, originally founded by Dame Stephanie Shirley, and led it through rapid growth and transformation to Xansa plc.

Peter moved to English Electric Computers at Kidsgrove, Staffs in 1964. Hilary also joined EEC a year later. In Spring 1965 they were both sent on a 12 month secondment, with half a dozen other EEC personnel to RCA (Radio Corporation of America) at Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where RCA were developing a new range of mainframes based on the IBM 360 architecture. This was one of the first of many such developments and it was named the Spectra 70.

On return from USA Peter stayed in Kidsgrove working on several variants of mainframes, including KDF9 until 1968 when ICL (International Computers Limited) was created from the amalgamation of English Electric-Leo-Marconi and ICT (International Computers and Tabulators).

ICL then set out its strategy for developing the New Range of mainframes each of which would also need operating systems. They were labelled VME (Virtual Machine Environment) and allotted letters VME A; VME-B/  etc. etc

In June 1970 Peter was appointed to manage the teams developing VME-B. It was a two-centre operation with teams in Kidsgrove and Bracknell. At its peak around 200 people were working on the project and Peter became a favoured customer of British Airways commuting almost weekly between Kidsgrove and Bracknell.

The environment required a different methodology because of the scale and complexity of the task. So, a new methodology was developed CADES (Computer Aided Design and Evaluation System). In brief this system provided a control mechanism and a higher level of programming language (as opposed to machine code). It also, most importantly, imposed a high degree of modularity on the operating software which allowed for easier control over changes as the development progressed and evolved. Peter believes CADES was the reason VME-B became a lasting success for ICL mainframes.

VME-B was launched on the world in late 1974 and is widely considered to have been a world leader of its day.

 After working on and/or managing six operating developments it was time for change and in the spring of 1975 Peter, joined the CWS (Cooperative Wholesale Society), an ICL customer, providing in house computer services across the CWS and selling computer bureau services to the Retail Cooperative Societies.  Back to Manchester!

This was a change from developing complex software to understanding what businesses really needed/wanted to support their operations rather than what the technical folks thought they did but weren’t sure.  It was interesting and educational and management of a different kind to technical and project \management but it was not advancing Peter’s technical knowledge.

In 1980, telecomms was changing, and on a trajectory to join up with “computing” to create “information” technology.  Within 10 years, the telephone was transformed to be the foundation of the communications systems we all now take for granted.  The separate industries were merging into one and the 1990’s saw huge investment in the expansion of bandwidth to enable the burgeoning Internet.

In 1980 Peter joined ITT (International Telephone & Telegraph) to get into telecommunications and was based in Potter’s Bar but with a Line Manager in Brussels.  He managed ITT IDEC (International Data Engineering Centre); primarily an internal software house developing control software for telephone exchanges. In particular, for PABX’s (Private Branch exchanges).  IDEC was the first UK software house to achieve BS5750 Quality Accreditation.

STC (Standard Telephones & Cables) was owned by ITT but demerged from it in 1983. In 1984 STC bought ICL and Peter progressed to Managing Director of STC Technology Limited the STC/ICL research laboratories where fibre optics were developed.

Peter retired from IT in 1997 following a major reorganisation of Northern Telecom Information Systems.

In a marked change of direction in 1998 he attended a one year post graduate diploma course in Farm Management at the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester.  Having retrained, in 1999 Hilary and Peter moved to Somerset and bought a farm on the Dorset coast.

In early 2004 they endowed a charitable Foundation (The Dame Hilary Cropper Charitable Foundation) working in South Africa to help 18 to 25 year olds to be made work ready after completing their schooling but having difficulty finding employment.

Students undertook a one-year program run by the Pinotage Youth Development Academy (PYDA) which the Foundation had created in Stellenbosch.

Sadly, Hilary died of ovarian cancer in late 2004 but the Foundation continues in her memory.  PYDA remains operational and continues to be successful despite the 2020/2021 pandemic.

Hilary was one of the founding members of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists (the 100th Livery Company of the City of London https://www.wcit.org.uk/members/anon/new.html?destination=%2Findex.html ) and Peter one of the earliest joiners.  He was the WCIT millennium Master 1999-2000.  He took as his theme the challenge to raise £1M for the Charity Fund, enabling it to begin the work through which it has grown into the highly active and successful charity now is.