I was born in Birmingham on the 30th September 1935 and when we were bombed in November 1940 I moved with my parents to Stroud in Gloucestershire where we stayed some time with my mother’s uncle George in Rodborough before we were allocated a house in Cashes Green.
I started school in Birmingham and then at Rodborough Primary School before the move to St Matthew’s C of E School in Cainscross. I moved on to Marling School in Stroud and then to the University of Southampton to study Mathematics with Aeronautics. At Marling I became a member of the Engineering Society and organised a special train and played chess for the school team playing in adult leagues.
When I was 15 I sat the entrace examination for the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth; but when I went for interviews and medical it was found I had tuberculosis so I spent the next two and a half years in hospital. I was one of the first beneficiaries of streptomycin and made a full recovery. I returned to the 6th form at Marling when I was 18 and did two more years.
While I was at University I had summer jobs at Rotol in Gloucester and the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough. Then we always did a stint as postmen during the Christmas period. I was most grateful for the opportunities that the University offered, especially the chance to learn to use their Ferranti Pegasus computer and I also played chess for the University in local leagues and at the British University Championships.
My first real job was with Short Brothers and Harland in Belfast using an English Electric Deuce – the commercial version of Turing’s computer design. While I was there we saw SS Canberra launched from just below our office window at the Harland and Wolff shipyard. This was a time of real peace in Northern Ireland in sharp contrast to the troubles that would follow in a few years time..
One of the reasons I went to Belfast was I was following the old adage ‘Go west young man’ the next step was to cross the Atlantic and settle in Canada in 1961. I got a job with Ferranti-Packard in Toronto working with an incredible bunch of guys whose inventiveness would have made us a fortune had Ferranti not had a ‘first in first out policy’. So all our inventions were sold to other companies – Eagle Signals bought our traffic light detectors, others bought our public display systems and our airline reservation system was never followed up.
One big success however was the development of the FP6000 computer which went on to form the basis of the ICL 1900 series. My first major job there was to design a new cheque sorting system for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York which the vice president claimed saved the US Treasury $1.6M a day in interest charges.
Another big job I had was to work for Riley’s Datashare in Calgary and design for them a system of digitizing old paper oil well logs. This brought me into contact with the oil industry and its top brass as Rileys were engaged by a consortium of all the major US oil companies and I spent many happy hours with some of the top technicians in the oil exploration business including a totally blind from birth professor at MIT who was the world’s leading expert on colour processing in computers. I got several US patents out of this work but never even got the nominal $1 I was supposed to get for transferring ownership to others. Sadly none of the computers of the time had the power to do the job properly.
While I was in Canada I became a member of several of their standards committees working with the International Standards Organisation. I also started a chess club in Missisauga where I lived and was a member of the Trident Club which catered for 18-30 year olds.
During my time in North America I travelled all over but almost always on business so I rarely got to see the sights. I spent four days at a motel outside Disney’s in Annaheim without once being able to go inside. I was also very fortunate to be there just before the launch of Apollo 11 at Cape Kennedy. I also had secondments to Australia, Sweden and Dalkeith. among other places.
Shortly after this I transferred to International Computers of Canada as technical support manager and always seemed to get the job of taking the big wigs who were visiting on a day trip to Niagara Falls. – As well as seeing the Falls I always took them on the Niagara Frontier tour which visited mainly sites from the 1812 war when the USA invaded Canada and burned the city of York (now Toronto) for which the British burned the White House in retaliation. The tours were mostly arranged for Americans and the Canadian guides always used to rub it in.
It was while I was in Canada that I met my wife Ann at the Trident Club. She was a nurse at the cancer hospital there and we flew over to England to get married in Dudley with a special archbishop’s licence as we did not have time to call Banns etc. We had three children, Judith, Ian and Graham and just after Judith started school we moved back to England on the QE2 in October 1972. We came to live in Purley near Reading and I became a London commuter working for various ICL offices in Putney and Euston and being sent all over the world on assignment.
My main occupations with ICL in London was support of customers at a technical level and working with user groups such as the George III operating system group. I was given the opportunity to re-locate to Reading where I managed the technical support group for the ICL 2903 series. and later joined the Office Systems Group My next move was to the Slough office supporting the launch of new small computers before finishing up at Bracknell supporting our Customer Services Group. I was made redundant in 1982.
I next qualified as an OFSTED Lay Inspector and spent four years working with inspection teams at schools from Newcastle to Cornwall. At the same time I was a member of the Transport Users Consultative Committee for the West of England representing railway customers and working with railway companies on the design of new rolling stock and timetable changes. I chaired the Reading and District Posts and Telecommunications Advisory Committee working with BT and the GPO to represent customers’ interests.
Just after we moved to Purley I got involved with local government and was elected to Purley Parish Council in 1976 and am still a member. In 1979 I stood for the Purley ward on Newbury District Council and was instrumental in introducing the wheeled bin system to the whole of the District. We were the first council to go completely to the wheelie-bin system and part of the deal was the purchase of 50,000 new bins at £7-50 each which were supposed to last seven years from 1983 but most are still going strong today. Another of my major council activities was with transport and I led the introduction of the Handibus scheme for the majority of the district and Readibus for the greater Reading area. These services provide transport for the disabled.
After the abolition of Berkshire County Council we changed our name to West Berkshire Council but we lost political control for a while so I had to take back seat. I took a keen interest in education and was always very frustrated at the bureaucracy which always seemed to get the better of education..
I became Chairman of Council for the 2005-6 year which coincided with the 60th anniversary of the end of WW2 so I was both involved at a local level and invited to celebrations in London, Portsmouth and Bristol. I decided not to stand again in the 2006 elections since when I have been concerned mainly with local parish issues and local and military heritage. This resulted in my joining many different societies and I have been editor of two local journals.
My military connections brought me to a reception at Windsor Castle and a long chat with the Duke of Edinburgh as well as meetings with numerous generals and military attaches. I then spent several years working with a group dedicated to raising funds to build a memorial to Trooper Fred Potts VC which eventually resulted in a marvellous sculpture in Reading.