Early life Douglas was born on 21 May 1921 in
London. At age eight, his family moved to
Cromwell Road, near what would become the London Air Terminal. A 74 bus ride for one old penny took me to Exhibition Road, from which I could go towards South Kensington station to my father's office (which is still there) and workshop (now demolished) down by what became the Lycée Français. Alternatively, I could turn north to the Science Museum – a trip I took often. In the winter of 1938–39, Douglas and his future wife Andrey Parker made a snowman in the grounds of the
Natural History Museum. Douglas and his wife would go on to have two children and at least two grandsons. During the
Blitz, in 1940–41, Douglas's
Home Guard Unit, 'C' Company of the
Chelsea and Kensington Battalion of the KRRC, had its headquarters in the basement of the
Royal School of Mines, just the other side of
Exhibition Road from the museums. He appeared to commission into the
Corps of Royal Engineers on 7 March 1943 as a
second lieutenant, but this was later corrected to show that he actually commissioned into the
Royal Corps of Signals.
Cambridge Douglas attended the
University of Cambridge in 1950. In 1952, while working towards earning his PhD, he wrote a
thesis which focused on
human-computer interactions and he needed an example to prove his theories. At that time, Cambridge was home to the second
stored-program computer, the
EDSAC or Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (the first being
Manchester University's "
Baby", which ran its first program on 21 June 1948). This gave Douglas the opportunity to prove his findings by programming the code for a simple game where a player can compete against the computer,
OXO.
Jobs Trinity College 1953–1957 1953: Elected as a Prize Fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge, Douglas spends a year at the
University of Illinois Computation laboratory as assistant Professor. 1955: Became Junior Bursar of Trinity College. The Junior Bursar is responsible for the administration of the College buildings: allocation of accommodation, building works, security, staff, and general maintenance
Leeds 1957: The Leeds
Pegasus computer was installed in autumn 1957 in the Eldon Chapel on Woodhouse Lane. Douglas set up the Computer Laboratory of the
University of Leeds, and it was there that he first became interested in the application of computers to business problems The Pegasus holds an especial place in my affection, it being the machine I installed as the central University machine in a disused chapel in Leeds in 1957 – it was known as Lucifer, for Leeds University Computing Installation (FERranti). Our au pair girl from Spain made a beautiful little devilish doll which decorated the machine – it has probably disappeared by now. In June 1960 the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals set up a Working Party to explore the creation of a national system for handling university admissions. Douglas was appointed a member of the Working Party to provide advice on the use of computers in this system. He had previously worked at Leeds with
Ronald Kay, who was to become
UCCA's general secretary, on "an early and primitive but successful attempt to introduce computer methods into student registration procedures".
CEIR 1960: Entered the commercial field as Technical Director of the UK subsidiary of C-E-I-R (now Scientific Control Systems).
Leasco 1968: Left CEIR to initiate the European software interests of Leasco Systems and Research Ltd. as chairman. Douglas died in sleep on 29 April 2010 from
pneumonia. ==Writings==