[SIGCIS-Members] Garry Tee (1932-2024)

[Brian Randell]

Hi Brian:

Thank you for passing on the sad news of Garry Tee’s passing, and the link to the excellent 1992 Profile.

I started to try, for this email, to summarize some of my memories of Garry, which I felt were sufficiently long ago that they wouldn’t be backed up by anything in my email archive. But I did a check nevertheless, and found that I had contributed to a Liber Amicorum that had been prepared for him in 2018 on the occasion of his retirement. Unfortunately, this “Friendship Book” doesn’t seem to be available online anywhere, though I do have my own PDF copy (38 pages, 1 Mb) of what might be a near to final draft of the book (which I see includes a rather nice brief contribution from you). It would be good if the final version of the book could be made available, and somebody could produce a complete listing of Garry’s publications. (I see Google Scholar lists 87.)

I’m afraid I cannot do better in commenting now on Garry's passing than by providing the text of my contribution to this 2018 book:

“I first got to know Garry Tee when we were both employed at English Electric, at Whetstone — a large laboratory outside Leicester, that during the latter years of World War 2 had been used by Frank Whittle for his pioneering work on jet engines. I arrived at Whetstone, to join English Electric’s Atomic Power Division (APD) in 1957. Garry I now find arrived a year or so later to join the other main department there, the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory (MEL). APD and MEL shared the use of first one later two DEUCE computers. DEUCE was a commercialization by English Electric of the National Physical Laboratory’s Pilot ACE computer, whose origins lay in Alan Turing’s 1946 plans for the ACE computer. I had been hired by IBM to work on developing nuclear reactor codes, but soon — with a colleague Mike Kelly, a fellow Imperial College graduate — was much more concerned with developing programming aids. Garry Tee was a mathematician, working for MEL, and so was a prominent user of the DEUCE computers. I don’t think we ever worked together, but I retain some very clear mental pictures of Garry at Whetstone, not least for the extremely large striped woollen scarf that he seemed to wear on all occasions and in all situations.
I left English Electric in 1964, when I joined IBM at their T.J. Watson Research Center in New York State. As far as I can recall our paths next crossed after I had returned to the UK, in 1969, to join Newcastle University, and had become actively interested in the history of computing. (This was after I had accidentally stumbled across the work of a little-known Irish successor to Babbage, Percy Ludgate.)
Garry and I corresponded extensively for a number of years on the subject of the history of computers, and I was the grateful recipient of a series of accounts of his ransacking Australia and New Zealand for Babbage memorabilia, and of his interactions with a number of Charles Babbage’s descendants there who he had managed to trace. His energy and dogged determination to leave no stone unturned greatly impressed me then — and still does. I used to receive regular thick envelopes containing sets of reprints of his latest papers on various aspects of the history of computing and of mathematics, which in total covered a much broader field than my field of interest, which was limited to the origins of digital computers from Babbage onwards — so it was his very successful Babbage endeavours that most fascinated me. However, like Garry, I regarded the early automatic totalisators, huge electromechanical devices used at racecourses for managing betting, as fascinating precursors of the computer, so was also particularly fascinated by his researches into their (Australasian) history. (The automatic totalisator was in fact invented by George Julius in the early 1900s in Australia — the first successful installation was in Auckland in 1913.)
However, my clearest memory is of one particular letter from Garry, in which he told me, out of the blue, that he was about to have an operation for the removal of a brain tumour, and asked me to be his literary executor, should things not go well. I of course agreed, very worriedly, but was delighted that my services were not called upon, and that Garry soon was again as active as ever, as evidenced by a resumption of the flow of reprints.
I have not had much correspondence with Garry in recent years, so was very pleased to learn of the plans for a Liber Amicorum – and am delighted to have been invited to contribute to it. My very best wishes to him."

Cheers

Brian Randell

—

School of Computing, Newcastle University, 1 Science Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5TG
EMAIL = Brian.Randell at ncl.ac.uk<mailto:Brian.Randell at ncl.ac.uk>   PHONE = +44 191 208 7923
URL =  https://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/staff/profile/brianrandell.html

On 20/02/2024, 04:12, "Members" members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org<mailto:members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> wrote:

Garry was, among many things, a DEUCE programmer and New Zealand's first historian of computing. He was also a real gentleman, who I am honoured to have known.

Brian Carpenter

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: [cs-retired-and-honorary] Garry Tee (1932-2024)
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2024 23:26:24 +0000

It is with much sadness that I pass on the news that Garry Tee died yesterday. I will pass on details of the funeral when the family has provided them.

Garry was a member of the university staff in mathematics and computer science for many years, and was a familiar sight on campus well into his retirement. For those who didn't know Garry, here is a profile from 1992:

https://nzmathsoc.org.nz/downloads/profiles/NZMSprofile54_Garry_Tee.pdf

Kind regards | Ngā mihi

Steven


Professor Steven Galbraith
Department of Mathematics
Te Whare Pūtaiao | Faculty of Science
Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of Auckland

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