Hello, I was born overseas during the early 60s. I came to England when I was a few months old to the family home in Kent. I spent much of my childhood years digging holes in my dad’s garden and climbing trees. At school, I studied a mixture of pointless subjects. During this time with the support of several teachers a keen interest in computer science and computer programming grew. Although the school didn’t have its own computer, we used an acoustic coupler to connect a teleprinter to a timeshare system or to a nearby college offering BASIC. I took frequent visits to the college and learnt to program in SIR on their Elliott 903 computer.

I left school and worked for Marconi Elliott Automation as a Trainee Computer Programmer at their research and development base, FARL, in Chatham, Kent. This was a fun experience, and I had the opportunity to work with some very clever people. I made many new friends and extended my existing interest in ringing church bells, hiking and rock climbing. It was through bell ringing I met my wife, Donna, and we were married a year after we first met. We are still happily married and have two children. In 1984 I changed jobs and went to work for GEC Software in Covent Garden, London. With GEC Software I worked on the development of a range of configuration management, project management software and networking tools. It was during this period that I moved into general management and extended my skills and competence by attending management training at the GEC Management college in Dunchurch.

In the late 80’s GEC Software merged with GEC Marconi Software Systems and we took the opportunity to move to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Here I was the general business manager of a small software development group working on a diverse range of products and technology. We lived in a small village, near Chester-le-Street, until the late 90’s when I changed jobs again and moved to Lancashire to work for CSC.

Although I am now retired, I have kept a strong interest in the details of computing and when bell ringing and geocaching permit I still like to spend time learning new skills, programming languages, and playing with my various home PCs. My new hobby for 2018 is searching for Ordnance Survey benchmarks.

© 2016 – 2021 Ray Hutchings