| Title: |
SAGE to ROC – how Cold War electronics influenced the development of today’s railways |
| Speaker: | Bob Gwynne |
| Date: | Thursday 18th March 2027 |
| Time: | 14:30 |
| Location: |
25 Copthall Ave, London EC2R 7BP and |
About the seminar
This presentation outlines how Britain’s railways were early adopters of electricity for control systems, punch card data processing and computers, a story hidden behind the negative press our national system has attracted for over 200 years.
About the speaker
I worked at the National Railway Museum for 26 years, latterly as Associate Curator. I became interested in the history of railways and computing when I came across the Model Railroad Club of MIT. At some stage I asked the question, ‘How did BR know how to procure this equipment back in the 1970s when the computer age was in its infancy (or perhaps young adolescence)’? That resulted in my paper to the Science Museum Journal ‘A Long Engagement – Railways, Data and the Information Age’' on which this presentation is based.
