Dear SIGCIS

The death was announced last week of Professor Simon Lavington, one of the earliest and most prolific of British computer historians. 

Originally trained as an electrical engineer, Simon Lavington was a graduate student in the University of Manchester's emerging Department of Computer Science under Tom Kilburn in the 1960s. His historical research, mostly in the internal machine-history tradition, developed alongside an academic career in computer science and systems design at Manchester and the University of Essex, and expanded after his official retirement in 2002. 

His first book, the short illustrated study A History of Manchester Computers (1975; 2nd ed., 1998), was followed by Early British Computers (1980), a technical survey of the hardware industry's development; The Pegasus Story (2000), a machine history; and two detailed studies of British manufacturers, Moving Targets: Elliott-Automation and the Dawn of the Computer Age (2011) and Early Computing in Britain: Ferranti Ltd and Government Funding (2019). He also edited the multi-authored work Alan Turing and his Contemporaries (2012, with Chris Burton, Martin Campbell-Kelly and Roger Johnson). 

His published articles include a description of the high-speed text analysis machine Oedipus, developed secretly for the intelligence service GCHQ in the 1950s and loosely descended from the Bletchley Park Colossus project (Annals, 2006: doi.org/10.1109/MAHC.2006.34) and a short biography of Dina Vaughan/St Johnston, whose company Vaughan Programming Services was a defining influence on the concept of the independent software house (Computer Journal, 2009: doi.org/10.1093/comjnl/bxn019). 

He was also the digital archivist for the Computer Conservation Society, where he co-ordinated the Our Computer Heritage project. In 2024 he was awarded an honorary fellowship of the National Museum of Computing, and he remained active in research and commemorative activities to the end of his life. His papers are held at the University of Manchester Library. 

Best wishes
James