Computer pioneer
Born August 29 1942 ; Died November 21 2011
Gordon Alan Foulger, who has died aged 69, was a pioneer in the computer world. He was secretary of the Glasgow branch of the British Computer Society 2002/4 and previously a committee member for four years meeting regularly at the University of Strathclyde.
He entered the computer world after reading general science at Queen Mary College, University of London, in 1963 and went on to write programs for Premium Bonds, Giro, and (seconded from International Computers) for the first telephone billing system for the General Post Office.
In 1972 he went to live in Bracknell, Berkshire, working for EMI Records before, in 1978, he became Database Specialist for Honeywell Control Systems, also in Bracknell, and worked globally for the company.
In 1994 he was moved from England to Motherwell and became a database consultant, installing and maintaining Oracle databases and supporting 40 databases Europe-wide.
Due to improved communications he did more teleconferences and less foreign travel. His career spanned 43 years until he retired in 2006. In his retirement he began to give lectures on the early computers and on LEO III.
He was born at Crayford in Kent. At the time his father was serving in the RAF during the war. At the age of two he was evacuated with his mother to Wrexham in North Wales and eventually returned to England with a Welsh accent.
He was educated at Dartford Grammar School, Kent, which was where Mick Jagger joined him a year later.
For many years he was the organist at Northumberland Heath Baptist church, Erith, Kent, where he met his wife Kay. Later he was the organist at Bracknell Baptist Church.
He was a keen railway enthusiast and a caravanner, attending Bible Weeks with his family and other church members in England.
Later, when he came to live in Scotland, he would join up with the Clan Gathering Bible Weeks (known as Christians Linked Across The Nation) held at St Andrews with his wife.
He married Kay Sparkes in 1969 and is survived by his wife Kay and two sons, Kevin and Duncan.
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