British Computer Society

In 1955, Lord Halsbury, the Managing Director of the National Research Development Corporation , opened a summer school at the then Northampton College of Advanced Technology on the application of electronic digital computers and calculaters to accountancy and management. The success of this initiative led Lord Halsbury to arrange for one of the earliest Ferranti Pegasus computers to be installed on permanent loan to the College in 1957, and it also played an important part in the formation of the London Computer Group and the British Computer Society (BCS) in the same year. L T G Clarke, the Senior Lecturer in the Mathematics Department of the College was also a founder member of the BCS and was instrumental in organising the growth of this computing function in the College. The College's Governing Body was keen to support the BCS by granting it free use of rooms at the College for meetings. Clarke later became Manager of the City University Computer Unit in 1967, and also Chairman of the BCS Library Committee. The BCS library was housed in the Skinners' Library of City University from 1967 until financial circumstances dictated that the Library could no longer undertake to manage the BCS holdings. In 1977, therefore, the BCS moved its library to the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London.