Conway Berners-Lee
Conway Berners-Lee | |
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Born | Conway Maurice Berners-Lee 19 September 1921 Birmingham, England |
Died | 1 February 2019[1] | (aged 97)
Alma mater | Trinity College, Cambridge |
Employer(s) | NPL ICI, Ferranti, ICT, ICL |
Spouse | |
Children | Tim Peter Helen Mike |
Parent(s) | Helen Lane Campbell Gray and Cecil Burford Berners-Lee |
Conway Maurice Berners-Lee (19 September 1921[2] – 1 February 2019) was an English mathematician and computer scientist who worked as a member of the team that developed the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercial stored program electronic computer.[3][4] He was born in Birmingham in 1921[5] and was the father of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, and Professor Mike Berners-Lee, researcher into climate change.
Early and personal life
Berners-Lee was son of Major Cecil Burford Berners-Lee (1884–1931), of the Royal Field Artillery,[6] and Helen Lane Campbell Gray (1895–1968). His mother was from Winnipeg, Manitoba, daughter of John Sidney Gray, M.D.[7][8]
Berners-Lee died on 1 February 2019 at the age of 97.[1][9]
Career
Early in
After the end of hostilities, Berners-Lee was posted to
Berners-Lee was
The following is an extract from Dominic Wilson's book Organizational Marketing.[14]
In Manchester, nearly half the programmers were women, Conway Berners-Lee, who married one of them, said 'Ferranti hired intelligent girls very cheaply but this gave them a big cultural problem because, prior to that, the company had only employed women as typists or factory hands'. 'Men got more than women', Mary Lee added. 'It was grossly unfair and there was a rebellion. The personnel officer was shocked we'd even discussed our wages.' She was on £400 a year. [Her starting salary was actually £450.] 'The Tin Hut [where the programmers worked] marriage rate was high', her husband said. 'The Robinsons … the Bennetts … the Clarkes … us.' [ ... ] Many of these pioneers had moved on to professorships, or
stock options and top executive jobs. They'd been the culmination of a measured progress from military radar work to academia to commerce, and the heroically named 'Pegasus’ computers had made Ferranti a lot of money.
In the 1950s it was not clear how computers could usefully be employed away from the field of mathematics.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/05/Mary_Lee_Woods_and_Conway_Berners-Lee_in_2013.jpg/220px-Mary_Lee_Woods_and_Conway_Berners-Lee_in_2013.jpg)
The business computing division of Ferranti was merged with International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) in 1963, and ICT was, in turn, merged with English Electric Leo Marconi (EELM) computers in 1968 to form International Computers Limited (ICL).
In 1960 Berners-Lee had evolved a technique for editing text—including hyphenation—for metal
In the late 1960s Berners-Lee led the Medical Development Team of ICT and then ICL. He was involved in some of the earliest developments in the applications of computers in medicine, and his
Berners-Lee spent the 1970s developing and using a
References
- ^ a b Gagne, Ken (27 December 2019). "Tech luminaries we lost in 2019". Computerworld. Retrieved 28 February 2021.
- ^ Reed Business Information (7 March 1957). New Scientist. Reed Business Information. pp. 43–.
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has generic name (help)[permanent dead link] - ^ a b Conway and Mary Lee Berners-Lee, interviewed by Thomas Lean, 2010–2011, An Oral History of British Science, British Library Sound & Moving Image reference C1379/23 Audio and Transcript (at British Library only but brief Content summary available online).
- electro-mechanical not electronic Dead medium: the Zuse Ziffernrechner; the V1, Z1, Z2, Z3 and Z4 program-controlled electromechanical digital computers; the death of Konrad Zuse, retrieved 5 June 2009
- ^ "Births", The Times, no. 42835, London, p. 1, 26 September 1921
- ^ The London Gazette, 6 October 1908, p. 7227
- ^ Winnipeg Free Press, 2 September 1920, p. 8
- ^ Reitwiesner, William Addams. "Ancestry of Tim Berners-Lee". www.wargs.com. Retrieved 28 February 2021.
- ^ News Bulletin from the Parish of SS Alban & Stephen
- ^ "Scientific pioneers honoured by The University of Manchester". Archived from the original on 22 October 2013. Retrieved 14 March 2014.
- ^ I am Tim Berners-Lee. I invented the WWW 25 years ago and I am concerned and excited about its future. AMA
- ^ ISSN 0958-7403, retrieved 5 June 2009
- ^ "Marriages", The Times, no. 52981, London, p. 1, 12 July 1954
- ISBN 978-1-86152-480-5
- ^ ISSN 0958-7403, retrieved 5 June 2009
- ^ Bemer, Bob, Getting to know a Berners-Lee, Computer History Vignettes, archived from the original on 16 December 2004, retrieved 5 June 2009
- S2CID 36059484
- ISBN 978-0-471-27601-2
- ISSN 0142-1557
- ^ Berners-Lee, C.M. (1976), "Four Years Experience with Performance Methodology for System Planning", Proceedings of Computer Performance Evaluation Session, EUROCOMP 1976 (published September 1976), pp. 165–187
- ^ Ferry, Georgina (23 January 2018). "Mary Lee Berners-Lee obituary". The Guardian.
External links
- The National Archives: The Ferranti Collection including:
- Linear Programming "Arrives". By Dr. D.G. Prinz & Mr C.M Berners-Lee of Ferranti Ltd. (Paper) 1996.10/6/12/28/10 1957
- The Use of Electronic Computers in the Chemical Industry. By C.M. Berners-Lee 1996.10/6/12/28/28 1959
- The Use of Computers for Optimal Planning. By C.M. Berners-Lee 1996.10/6/12/28/29 1959
- Photograph with colleagues (under Ferranti and ICL)
- An interview with Conway Berners-Lee Archived 9 May 2017 at the Wayback Machine from the British Library