John Frank Winterbottom (1928-2017)
John Winterbottom spent almost 10 years working for LEO through its various reconfigurations, incorporating English Electric and Marconi, until further consolidation of the industry led to the merger with ICT and formation of ICL. He joined LEO in 1960, working at Minerva Road as a Design Engineer under John Pinkerton. He was involved in a wide range of research and development projects and regularly attended meetings of ECMA and later IEE standards committees. Although John was an engineer by training and at heart, he was fascinated by the business opportunities that computing technology offered and the potential of improved interface design and speech recognition in facilitating interaction with machines.
Along with a number of colleagues, John left Minerva Road in 1969, shortly before the site was closed following the creation of ICL. He became General Manager (Engineering and Manufacture) with Farrington, an American data processing company which had a UK base in Havant, Hants at the time and whilst he enjoyed the many opportunities to spend time in the US that came with the job, they were short-lived as Farrington closed its UK operation in 1971.
John graduated from the University of Durham in 1952 with a BSc in Electrical Engineering and spent the following six years working in the motor industry, first with Joseph Lucas and then with the Motor Industry Research Association (MIRA) as a research engineer before his time at LEO. He also completed an MSc at Birmingham University during this time.
After almost ten years in the computing industry, John moved into Higher Education, joining Portsmouth Polytechnic as a Senior Lecturer in Management and progressing from there to become Head of the School of Management Studies in 1979 at a time when it was moving into a new premises, purpose built to provide a base for residential programmes as well as established management programmes. He was responsible for setting up and managing a series of bespoke programmes for the MoD, mainly concerned with Project Management and Defence Procurement, and another for the construction industry. During the 1970s he was also active as a consultant and served on the IEE S6 Committee which dealt with Engineering Management.
John retired from full-time work in 1987 but continued to share his experience and enthusiasm for engineering by teaching a management module to first year engineering students at Southampton University until he and his wife, Joy, retired to their final home in Swanage, Dorset in 2000. Even after their move he continued to maintain contact with professionals in both management and engineering through his involvement in various committees associated with his fellowships with the British Institute of Management and the IEE.
John and his family have many fond memories of his time at LEO, including occasional visits to Minerva Road, and became particularly good friends with Ernest Lenaerts and his wife Gladys. “Uncle Len”, as he was known to us, provided us with a supply of coloured paper tape to make into paper chains and delighted us all by somehow punching onto tape a repeating Happy Christmas message to us all one year. Joy Winterbottom, John’s widow, has recently written to the society to say that John looked back with great pleasure to his days with LEO; he had many lasting friendships with colleagues from those days and thoroughly enjoyed the early LEO reunions.
John died in January 1917 after a long period of illness. He is survived by his wife Joy, as well as their three children and their families.
Anne Moggridge, eldest daughter of John and Joy Winterbottom