Voices of Science

Geoffrey Tootill (1922-2017), electrical engineer and computer designer, spent World War Two working on airborne radar at the Telecommunications Research Establishment, Malvern. Postwar, he helped to develop the world’s first stored program computer, the Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine, better known as the ‘Manchester Baby’, which first ran in 1948. In 1949 he moved to Ferranti to work on thelogic design of the Ferranti Mark 1 Computer, the world’s first commercially produced computer. Thereafter he worked in an number of scientific civil service organisations, teaching computing and developing computing systems, including the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham, RAE Farnborough, the European Space Research Organisation and National Physical Laboratory, before retiring in 1982. In 1956 he was a founder member of the British Computer Society.