Professor Stephen Evans I was interviewed by John Pinkerton prior to my graduating from Keele University in 1966. I was offered by Dr Pinkerton, sponsorship to do a PhD in any subject in any University that I wished (it’s possible I still have that letter but can’t put my hand on it now).I didn’t want to do a PhD then, as I had had 3 years in the sixth from at school (I did my A levels at age 16), followed by going to Keele for 4 years and having a scholarship to go to Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania for a year, so I had already had 6 years in academia post my A levels- I wanted a job. I started work the week after graduating from Keele in the Research Division at Minerva Road. English Electric-Leo had just had “Marconi” added to the name and I worked for John Winterbottom on speech recognition and visual display design. With Ann Cropper I published a paper in 1968 on “Ergonomics of Computer Display DesignThis seems to have gone on being cited up to last year.
[https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=3718501728846242519&hl=en&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&as_ylo=2014]
I don’t know whether some reminisces of working at Minerva Road in the Research Division would be of interest- it was obviously post Leo, though I did learn CLEO and Intercode. I left EELM to go to CERN in 1968, and worked as a programmer there for Carlo Rubbia, subsequently a Nobel Laureate.
I changed the focus of my career several times and I am now semi-retired and paid to work 1 day per week at The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
I recall various people from 1966-68 in addition to Pinkerton and Winterbottom. Ernest Lenaerts was around Minerva Road then; I did meet you very briefly and various other luminaries of the time but I’m sure you won’t remember me. Ann Cropper and I were involved in the start of the British Computer Society “Display group”, and our paper was based on a talk I gave in one of the early meetings of that group.
