Obituary - Andrew St Johnston

One of the UK pioneers - obituary as reported in The Times yesterday: Andrew St Johnston, computer pioneer, was born on August 28, 1922. He died on April 3 2005, aged 82. Andrew St Johnston was one of Britain's computer pioneers. He led the team which developed Elliott Brothers' 400 series computer, a machine which introduced many features now taken for granted, such as modular architectures and removable magnetic storage. Andrew St Johnston took a degree in electrical engineering at the City and Guilds College in London, then part of Imperial College. After graduating in 1943 he joined the Navy and served as a radar officer, rising to the rank of lieutenant-commander. In 1949 he joined Elliott Brothers. A long-established British company which had diversified from scientific instruments into control systems, it was unusual among the early computer companies in that it made its own machines, instead of developing models of computers produced in universities. The 401, for which St Johnston was project leader, was run for the first time in public at the Physical Society on April 22, 1953. At the time Elliott computers were more popular than the early IBM models. St Johnston then worked on the more advanced, transistor-based, 803. His first marriage was dissolved and in 1958 he married Aldrina (Dina) Vaughan, a programmer at Elliott's who had worked on the Cambridge EDSAC. In 1959 she set up Vaughan Programming Services - it was Britain's first software house, offering programs and support for other companies' computers. St Johnston joined Vaughan in 1966 when it had established a reputation in control systems, warehouse automation and information display; it provided passenger information services for airports and railways. In 1996 it was sold to Harmon, a US company in the same field. St Johnston and Dina retired in 1999, after three years' running the renamed Vaughan-Harmon Systems on behalf of its new owner. In 1994 he and Dina donated an Elliott 803 to the Computer Museum at Bletchley Park. Having spent ten years in a barn, it was restored to working condition and remains on display.