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A Glint on the Horizon

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Part of the book series: History of Computing ((HC))

Abstract

John Coales was 40 years old when he arrived for his first day as Director of Elliott’s Borehamwood Research Laboratory in October 1946.

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References

  1. MacFarlane SA (2003) John Flavell Coales, CBE. Biogr Mem Fell Roy Soc Lond 49:119–131

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  4. In 1928 John Coales was a co-founder of the group of English Country Dancers called the Cambridge Round. After the War, Coales hosted groups of ex-Cambridge dancers at Oakwood, his large house at Radlett, beginning in August in 1947 and subsequently at various times through to 1952. See http://www.srcf.ucam.org/round/history/coales for a history of the Cambridge University Morris Dancing group

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  53. Correspondence with the Ministry of Defence and associated government departments, in a confidential file labelled From Commander H Pasley-Tyler’s Lewisham files, 1950 – 1956, formerly kept in the Strong Room at Borehamwood

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  54. Letter from J F Coales to S L H Clarke dated 10 Feb 1995, containing copies of papers written by JF Coales between Nov 1947 and 24 Feb 1948. The papers include the 16-page document entitled Proposals for setting up the Research Laboratories of Elliott Brothers (London) Limited, Borehamwood as a separate company, written in January 1948

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  60. JF Coales (1994) Transcript of an interview by William Asprey of the Center for the History of Electrical Engineering, 21 Mar 1994. A copy of this is in the Archives of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London, catalogue number SC168/1/6/2/4

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  61. Laurence Clarke (2009) E-mail to Simon Lavington dated 14 Oct 2009

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  62. The following sources have been used to obtain figures for the company’s pre-tax profits: (a) A three-quarters page advertisement in The Times newspaper for Monday 11 May 1953, which gives a brief history of the company together with detailed financial detail for the years 1943–1952. (b) London Stock Exchange Yearbook for 1954 onwards (available at the Guildhall Library). Elliott’s shares were first quoted on the London Stock Exchange in 1953, so the Yearbook gives financial information for Elliott Brothers (London) Ltd. from 1953 onwards. (c) Additional financial information may be gleaned from the surviving Elliott-Automation Annual Reports. Those for the years 1958 to 1966 have thus far come to light

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Lavington, S. (2011). A Glint on the Horizon. In: Moving Targets. History of Computing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-933-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-933-6_2

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