John Pinkerton

John Maurice McClean Pinkerton (2 August 1919 – 22 December 1997) was a pioneering British computer designer. Along with David Caminer, he designed England's first business computer, the LEO computer, produced by J. Lyons and Co in 1951.

Personal life

John Pinkerton was educated at King Edward's School, Bath, and Clifton College, Bristol. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1937 to 1940, reading Natural Sciences, and graduating with first class honours. He joined the Air Ministry Research Establishment in Swanage, to work on radar, and went with it to Malvern where it was renamed the Telecommunications Research Establishment (where he met Maurice Wilkes). He returned to Cambridge as a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory.

In 1948 he married Helen McCorkindale. They had a son and a daughter.

Colleagues describe him It was known as FAST – standing for Football Analogy for System Throughput.

He remained with the company until his retirement in 1984, in a variety of product strategy roles. Maurice Wilkes wrote, "it is a sad fact that, although he remained active in ICL at a senior level, he never found a role that in any way matched his track record or gave full scope for his abilities."

He served for many years as president of ECMA, the European Computer Manufacturers' Association, helping to build it into an organisation respected for the quality and timeliness of its work.

Retirement

In retirement Pinkerton was one of the original court members (from 1988) of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists and "the mainspring of their Apprenticeship Scheme". He was also editor of a series of technical books.

He edited the ICL Technical Journal between 1990 and 1996. His predecessor, Jack Howlett, commented: "John took the task of editing the journal with great seriousness, energy, and enthusiasm, and spared no effort in ensuring that the papers for each issue... met his exacting standards for content, presentation, and written English. He was very good indeed at discussing the content and form of a possible paper with a potential author, and, with an experienced author... helping to sort out the essential ideas and put them in the right logical order." He also frequently intervened with the managers of potential authors to allocate time and recognition for this activity.

He also made contributions to documenting the history of computing, for example through the Science Museum's recorded interviews with UK pioneers.

Legacy

The Institution of Engineering and Technology holds an annual Pinkerton Lecture in their prestigious lecture series. Each year an Engineer of considerable repute is selected to make a computer related presentation. The inaugural lecture was given by Maurice Wilkes.