An Appreciation of Dina St Johnston (1930 ... - Computer Journal

The Computer Journal Advance Access published March 26, 2008 

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doi:10.1093/comjnl/bxn019 

An Appreciation of Dina St Johnston 

(1930–2007) Founder of the UK’s First 

Software House 

SIMON LAVINGTON * 

Lemon Tree Cottage, 46 High Street, Sproughton, Suffolk, IP8 3AH, UK 

*Corresponding author: lavis@essex.ac.uk 

In the 1950s there was no software industry. Dina St Johnston, who had learned to program whilst 

working for the computer manufacturer Elliott-Automation, founded Vaughan Programming Services 

in 1959. The company began to specialise in on-line systems for digital process control at a 

time when industrial automation was in its infancy. In due course the company developed its 

own platform-independent, timesharing, mini-operating system (MACE) and, in 1970, the 

Vaughan 4M microprocessor. Vaughan went on to become specialists in the supply of real time controllers 

for passenger railways. Dina St Johnston remained an active programmer until 1996. 

Keywords: Vaughan programming services; Elliott-automation; real-time process control 

1. EARLY DAYS 

Aldrina Nia Vaughan was born on 20th September 1930. 

Everyone except her father called her Dina. She left Selhurst 

Grammar School for Girls at 16 or 17—against the wishes 

of her father who wanted her to study for a university place. 

The compromise was that Dina took a job with the British 

Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association in London and 

studied part-time for four nights a week at Croydon Polytechnic. 

She passed the examinations for a place at Royal Holloway 

and Bedford College but after the war 90% of the 

places were reserved for ex-service people and the remaining 

10% usually went to men. Unable to get a place at Royal Holloway, 

Dina continued part-time study at Sir John Cass 

College and took an external London University degree in 

Mathematics. Dina stayed with British Non-Ferrous for a 

total of six years, two of them post-graduation, but found 

that her degree did not earn her any promotion or salary 

increase. Dina therefore answered an advertisement and 

joined the Borehamwood Laboratories of Elliott Brothers 

(London) Ltd. in 1953. 

In 1953, Borehamwood was emerging from its initial period 

of intensive work on Admiralty contracts that had resulted, 

amongst other things, in the Elliott 152—a real-time, on-line 

digital computer for radar-controlled gunnery. Dina joined 

the Theory Division at Borehamwood, where a smaller 

Elliott computer called Nicholas had been working since the 

Received 25 September 2007; revised 27 February 2008 

THE COMPUTER JOURNAL, 2008 

end of 1952 on an unrelated project to calculate missile trajectories. 

Dina was sent to attend the Cambridge Summer School 

on Programming in 1954. 

Dina’s programming skills soon drew her to the attention 

of the Computing Division at Borehamwood, run by 

Andrew St Johnston. The Computing Division, which at 

that time numbered 22 people, was frantically busy with 

four distinct design projects. In order of their starting-dates, 

these were: the 153 Direction Finding (DF) digital computer 

for the Admiralty; the huge TRIDAC analogue computer 

for the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough; the 

311 Rapid Analytical Machine (afterwards known as 

OEDIPUS) for GCHQ; and the 401 digital computer for 

NRDC. The technical information about early Elliott computers 

is scattered amongst many classified internal technical 

reports. References [1–5] give some of the more 

accessible descriptions. 

The Elliott 153 was delivered to Irton Moor, near Scarborough, 

in August 1954 and Dina became responsible for the 

program development. Irton Moor was set up in World War 

I as a Royal Navy Intercept station. During World War II, it 

had grown into the UK’s largest combined Intercept station 

and DF establishment. The Elliott 153 computer was specifically 

designed to run the Admiralty’s DF algorithms. The 

purpose of the 153’s software was to get the best ‘fix’ as 

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Page 2 of 10 SIMON LAVINGTON 

quickly as possible from a group of incoming D/F estimates, 

transmitted by teleprinter from several distant listening 

stations world-wide. 

Dina evidently made a good job of the classified 153 assignment. 

She returned to the Computing Division at Borehamwood 

and, amongst other tasks, was entrusted with writing 

the payroll program for Elliotts in 1956. In those days all salaries 

were very secret. Consequently, when Dina ran the 

payroll each month, everyone else was required to leave the 

computer room. Dina was also responsible for the initial applications 

software for the Elliott 405 computer that was delivered 

to Norwich City Council in 1956, the first 405 to go to 

an external customer and the first electronic computer to be 

used by a local authority [6]. 

Dina has been described by a former colleague as ‘a formidable 

lady’, in temperament more of an engineer than a mathematician. 

Another colleague has written: 

‘As a programmer, Dina was unique. Not only was she 

inventive and structured, but also she was very accurate. 

She wrote with a Parker 51 fountain pen with permanent 

black ink and if there ever was a mistake it had to be corrected 

with a razor blade. Whereas the rest of us tested 

programs to find the faults, she tested them to demonstrate 

that they worked. Expecting others to be as accurate 

did not make her a good teacher nor necessarily an 

easy co-operator’. 

Of her programming colleagues, Dina herself remembered 

that in the late 1950s ‘there was a shortage of hands-on 

processor-oriented people who were happy to go round a 

steel works in a hard hat’. 

2. DINA STRIKES OUT ALONE 

In the summer of 1958, Dina married Andrew St Johnston (this 

was his second marriage) and left the Borehamwood Laboratories 

at the end of that year to start her own company, 

Vaughan Programming Services (VPS). Writing ten years 

later, Dina described the context in which she founded the 

company and, matrimonial considerations aside, her motivations 

for striking out on her own. In a piece in a company brochure 

headed The Role of Software Houses, Dina said: 

‘Computers (in the early 1950s) were first applied to mathematical 

work and the user did his own programming 

entirely. Later a small library of common mathematical 

functions was organized or supplied by the manufacturer. 

The users were scientifically minded people, usually with 

considerable mathematical training. When computers 

started to be applied to business data processing and 

other non-mathematical fields, the users were seldom scientifically 

inclined and hence expected much more support 

from the computer manufacturers. Alternatively, the 


bigger user companies built up teams of their own covering 

business data processing and scientific applications’. 

‘As the number of users increased more and more, and 

smaller and smaller companies became computer users, 

both of these two methods of program provision began 

to feel the strain. The manufacturers had to devote 

more and more manpower and cost to application programming, 

all of which had to be recovered in the price 

of the equipment as the customer expected the programming 

support ‘free’. From the customer end, not only was 

there an increasing shortage of trained people, but it 

became doubtful whether teams below a certain size 

were really viable. This is an environment where experience 

is at a premium and must be spread, but job mobility 

is high with more loyalty given to the programming 

world at large that any particular user’s business’. 

The Press Conference that launched Norwich City Council’s 

Elliott 405 computer in 1956. Dina is in the foreground, 

watching A. J. Barnard (Norwich City Council), press a 

button. Standing immediately to Dina’s right is Leon Bagrit, 

the Managing Director of Elliotts. 

‘Room, and a demand, for the services of independent programming 

effort were created’. 

Commencing on the 9th of February 1959 ‘with a dining 

room table and some paper’ at her home, a converted pub 

called Five Horseshoes in Brickendon, Hertfordshire, VPS 

was considered to be the UK’s first example of what later 

became known as a software house, according to Pearce 

Wright in an article in Electronics Weekly of 2nd November 

1960. In a Press Release in February 1969 to mark VPS’s 

10th anniversary, the claim was qualified by Dina thus: ‘VPS 

was the first registered independent Software unit in the UK 

(February 1959), that was not a part of a computer manufacturer, 

not a part of a computer bureau, not a part of a users’ 

organization and not a part of a consultancy operation’. 

By 1962, Dina had moved VPS to offices in an 

end-of-terrace cottage overlooking the churchyard in 



Baldock Street, Ware, Hertfordshire. She employed her first 

experienced programmers, Gerald Everitt and Philip Tattersall, 

respectively in 1961 and 1962. Both Gerald and Philip 

had cut their teeth on the substantial Littlewoods Mail Order 

project that was based on an Elliott 405 computer. In February 

1962, the total VPS payroll, including Dina, was four people; a 

year later it had risen to nine. 

To start with, most of Vaughan’s contracts came via Elliott 

Automation. Vaughan was noted for its creative enthusiasm 

and ability to get involved at an engineering level with software 

for industrial process control applications. A list of all the major 

Vaughan projects from 1959–1988 is given in the Appendix. 

Dina’s first real challenge came in 1960, with a contract to 

write software for the UKAEA’s Calder Hall atomic station at 

Windscale (Sellafield). An Elliott computer was to provide a 

logging and alarm-scanning system for the prototype 

Magnox gas-cooled reactor, in what became the world’s first 

industrial scale nuclear power station (see: http://calderhall. 

co.uk/). The project involved connecting the computer to 

410 different monitoring and control points. Some of the 

alarm functions were based on rates of change, illustrating 

an early benefit of digital control. Besides being amongst the 

first few applications of the new Elliott 803 computer (or 

indeed any digital computer) to industrial on-line control, 

the system involved prototype Elliott 803 hardware marketed 

as the Panellit 609. In a letter dated 11th December 1959 to 

Panellit, a Division of the Elliott-Automation Group, Dina 

gives a quotation for £200 for ‘writing and testing the necessary 

computer programmes’, the programmes to be ready ‘by 

about the 20th February 1960’ to meet a UKAEA deadline 

of 31st March. In a subsequent letter dated 8th March 1960 

to Panellit, Dina wrote: ‘As became apparent during the 

limited running obtained with the previous programme, the 

complexity of the system is such that all effects of any 

manual intervention must be anticipated for the programme 

to be proved to be correct’. Dina then quotes a total of £210 

for the further work which had become necessary to rewrite 

the program to the new specification. Dina included in this 

figure her three days of consultancy work (at £10 per day) in 

the period 22nd to 26th February. Panellit later paid a retaining 

fee of £400 per annum for Dina’s continued services. 

To place such remunerations in context, in 1962 a fourbedroom 

terrace house in Manchester could be bought for 

£1200 and a four-door family saloon car typically cost about 

£700. (Specifically, the motoring extremes in 1962 were represented 

by an Austin Mini at £496 and a Rolls-Royce 

Silver Cloud II at £6272.) In its 10th anniversary Press 

Release in February 1969, Dina remarked that: ‘over 10 

years, Vaughan Programming has completed over 300 programs 

ranging from £120 to £20 000’. 

To return to technical matters: during the complex Calder 

Hall project, Dina designed Vaughan’s Master Control Executive 

(MACE), a robust timesharing mini-operating system 

with predictable and precise response times, which was to 

AN APPRECIATION OF DINA ST JOHNSTON Page 3 of 10 


perform satisfactorily well into the 1980s. MACE had seven 

principle sections: initial settings; main computational cycle; 

process modules; common subroutines; device routines; interrupt 

routines; a common database and interface storage area. 

The database, which included the parameters of the particular 

application (alarm limits, scaling factors, telemetry data, etc.) 

was seen as a particularly useful feature, making MACE 

systems adaptable, expandable and easily testable. Over the 

next 10 years, Vaughan proved the point by using MACE in 

over 20 different applications running on 8 different types of 

computer. Specific examples of MACE applications included 

steel works production control; engine test bed control; road 

traffic toll collection; warehouse crane and conveyer control; 

rubber plant blending and sequence control; many airport 

and railway signalling and control systems; a back-to-back 

fail-safe message-handling system at Fylingdales Moor 

Ballistic Missile Early Warning Station—(refer to the Appendix 

for dates). 

Work was now coming thick and fast to VPS. Gerald Everitt 

took charge of commercial data processing contracts and 

Dina St Johnston and Philip Tattersall looked after the 

quasi-scientific work. In 1962, the principal VPS project was 

the real-time control of the new hot-rolling steel mill for 

Richard Thomas and Baldwin at Llanwern, Newport, 

Monmouthshire. René Arnould, ex-BTM, was soon recruited 

not as a programmer but as what Dina called a ‘Spec 

Writer’. René became the VPS staff member resident on site 

at Newport, working on system requirements and software 

specifications for what had become a very difficult and complicated 

project. It involved two Elliott 803 computers: one 

for ingot/slab control and on-line information handling (the 

main VPS focus), the other for production control for 

steel plant, slabbing mill and hot strip mill. The hot mill automation, 

the most complex part of the process, was performed 

by an American GE 412 computer, whose add-time (40 microseconds) 

was over ten times faster than that of an Elliott 803. 

The whole project is believed to have been the first successful 

use, worldwide, of digital computers for complete control of a 

steel mill [7]. 

3. THE COMPANY GROWS 

An analysis of the first 30 years’ worth of major programming 

projects at Vaughan Systems (see the Appendix) reveals that 

applications running on Elliott computers accounted for 92% 

of Vaughan’s contracts during the first five years, dropping 

to 10% in 1980 and zero thereafter. Elliott-Automation 

merged with English Electric in 1967, most of the two 

merged companies then being taken over by GEC in 1968. 

The exception was the commercial data processing side of 

English Electric/Leo/Marconi/Elliott which went, along with 

ICT, to form ICL in 1968. For a further 20 years, Borehamwood 

continued the manufacture of small and medium 




computers under the GEC label, for applications such as 

telecommunications, control and defence. 

The list in the Appendix hints at the early dominance of 

Elliott computers for process control applications in the UK, 

followed from 1970 onwards by a variety of other hardware 

platforms which included the Ferranti Argus and many 

examples from the American manufacturer Digital Equipment 

Corporation (DEC). Vaughan then took the unusual step of 

designing and building its own computer, the 4M, as described 

below in Section 4. In the broadening market of process 

control applications, Vaughan was one of the first companies 

to design software for mechanical handling and warehousing 

systems, beginning in about 1970—see list of customers in 

the Appendix—and latterly (as in the Halfords case) using 

Automated Guided Vehicles. 

By 1963, VPS had moved to larger premises at Riverside 

House, Ware, and by 1966 VPS was employing 30 people, 

most of whom were programmers. A few of these programmers 

were young local people who were trained in-house, 

there being very few formal college programming courses in 

the UK at that time. Colleagues have remarked that Dina 

was exceptional in employing staff with many different backgrounds 

and abilities. ‘There were outstanding successes and 

also some outstanding failures. She was ahead of her time in 

believing that computing could be for everyone—even in the 

world of intricate machine code and assembly programming’. 

Much of the construction of the VPS offices at Riverside 

House was undertaken by Dina’s husband Andrew St Johnston, 

with the staff being roped in to move the heavy straw 

wall panels up to the second floor. Later a computer room 

was constructed in the same material to house a second-hand 

Elliott 803 acquired from Borehamwood. Many years later, 

after its retirement to a barn at the St Johnston’s house at 

Hedgegrove Farm, Andrew restored the 803 to working condition 

and installed it in the Computer Museum at Bletchley 

Park in 1994. Andrew left Elliott-Automation in March 1968 

to join VPS, latterly becoming the Managing Director. 

Rachel Monk, the wife of Geoffrey Monk, an ex- 

Borehamwood engineer who joined Vaughan in 1970, was 

an architect. Having been made redundant in the late 1970s, 

Rachel became involved with Vaughan and has the following 

memories. 

‘As the company expanded and started building its own 

hardware (see below) to supplement the software, we 

outgrew Riverside House and in October 1978 bought a 

nearly derelict Maltings (in Hoe Lane, Ware, Hertfordshire) 

which would provide the space required. This 

was a big undertaking for Vaughan, as until this time premises 

had been rented, and capital was required both for 

the original purchase and the refurbishment. I was not 

involved in the first phase of the rebuilding, but was 

entrusted with all subsequent work (ending in 1983 

with the equipping of a new Conference Room in The 


Maltings tower). The sensitive conversion of The Maltings 

drew praise from visitors when we moved in 

during the summer of 1979. I worked on both the electronic 

hardware and on the refurbishment of the building 

in a freelance capacity for several years before joining 

Vaughan in a permanent position in charge of the 

Design Office, a progression from the work I had done 

initially. I also became responsible for all the documentation 

which accompanied every system delivered’. 

The Maltings proved to have adequate capacity until 

mid-1992, when Vaughan found it necessary to rent additional 

space in the Mead Business Centre, Mead Lane, Hertford. The 

need for additional space then became less acute. In 1995, with 

a shrinking order book and consequential staff redundancies, 

the Mead Lane premises were relinquished. At that time 

British Rail were Vaughan’s principal customer, as discussed 

in Section 4 below, and contracts were put on hold in the 

mid-1990s whilst Railtrack was being restructured. By 1997, 

the company had expanded again and new units were leased 

in Merchant Drive, Hertford. 

There appears to be no surviving VPS records giving definitive 

personnel lists but the total number of employees at 

certain points, as deduced from other source documents, was 

as follows: in November 1984: 35 employees; in July 1989: 

55 employees; in July 1992: 99 employees (of whom 68 

were at The Maltings, Ware and 31 at Mead Lane, Hertford); 

in August 1998: 97 employees. This places Vaughan amongst 

the smaller rank of software houses. The fact that it survived 

until 1996 as an independent company is largely due to its 

growing expertise in the specialist field of rail and airport signalling, 

control and display systems, as discussed later. 

In about 1975 the company name was changed to Vaughan 

Systems and Programming, to reflect Vaughan’s growing 

hardware-related activities. In November 1977 a limited 

company, Vaughan Systems and Programming Ltd. (simplified 

to Vaughan Systems Ltd. in 1989) was formed. The objectives 

were stated to be:: ‘To carry on business as designers, specifiers, 

advisors on, experts in, manufacturers and suppliers of computer 

based systems software and hardware in the field of Control 

and Automation for industry, communications, government and 

defence, ...’ (there followed nine more general application 

areas but, significantly, Control and Automation was the key 

phrase). The share capital was £5000. There were just two 

Directors, Aldrina Nia St Johnston and Andrew St Johnston. 

A look at the lists given in the Appendix confirms the great 

variety of machines and operating systems with which 

Vaughan had to deal. Gerald Everitt remembers that 

‘we became very adept at establishing with clients 

genuine confidence in our expertise without their realizing 

that much was new to us. It was Vaughan’s policy 

to have fixed price contracts negotiated against a fixed 

specification even, at times, when a customer was not 

keen and would have preferred to contract for staff to 



work with their own staff for short or long periods. Sometimes 

extraordinary measures were taken to get a fixedprice 

contract in unsuitable situations. I don’t know 

why. Dina had an intense dislike of anything that could 

be called body shopping’. 

In the early 1970s Vaughan, along with the rest of the computer 

industry, had its first real recession. 15th February 1971, 

the date upon which decimal currency was introduced into 

the UK, is associated in the minds of many independent 

programmers with the start of a bleak period. The large manufacturing 

companies such as ICL began to write more of their 

commercial data-processing software in-house and specialist 

packages began to appear for scientific applications. Gerald 

Everitt remembers that in the early 1970s ‘there was perhaps 

a smug feeling in Vaughan that the downturn being experienced 

by the likes of CAP and SPL would pass us by 

because of our wider base. But it didn’t. It arrived later. It 

was a very worrying time for the staff but Dina and Andrew 

were confident that all would be well. VPS slimmed its 

operations and began to focus entirely on real-time, on-line 

contracts’. 

Financially, Vaughan had grown steadily until the 

mid-1970s. The first four years of trading, relying exclusively 

on Dina’s initiatives, revealed the following figures for annual 

turnover: 

Year ending: February 1960: annual turnover ¼£498; 

February 1961: annual turnover ¼£1881; 

February 1962: annual turnover ¼£3939; 

February 1963: annual turnover ¼£15 932. 

Detailed records for succeeding years appear not to have 

survived but some clues still exist. In correspondence with 

Vaughan’s bank manager in January 1969, the annual turnover 

was stated to be about £40 000. Reference [8] states that the 

turnover of Vaughan for 1978/1979 ‘increased by 60% over 

the previous year but Andrew St Johnston expects this to 

drop back to a steady 20% increase in succeeding years’. 

The order book in 1979 showed £500 000 worth of business. 

The impression is given that Vaughan had weathered the 

recession of the mid-1970s. 

4. RAIL AND AIRPORT SIGNALLING 

AND DISPLAY 

By the end of the 1970s, Vaughan had expanded into transport 

signalling and display systems, particularly those for 

the railways, a speciality for which the company became 

well known. Indeed, both Dina and Andrew became 

Fellows of the Institute of Railway Signal Engineers in 

1990 and Dina merited a full-page Obituary in the September 

2007 issue of IRSE News [9]. 

Vaughan’s work in the area of passenger information 

systems started in 1972 with the provision of display equipment 

and related software for Terminal 3 Departures at 



Heathrow for the British Airports Authority. This was followed 

by installations at Gatwick. This led to the company 

being approached in 1974 by British Railways (Southern 

Region) for the supply of real-time passenger information 

systems, most notably at London Bridge and Gatwick stations, 

driven from a Master Timetable System (MTS) at the region’s 

Operations Headquarters at Waterloo Station. By 1984, the 

MTS had expanded to the point where about 20 minicomputers 

were communicating, many by remote links using a 

message protocol develop by Southern Region. By 1990 a 

new MTS was covering the whole of the Southern Region, a 

network with some 5000 signals and 400 stations. 

Before describing the growth of railway applications, it is 

timely to mention Vaughan’s hardware design activities. It 

is certainly not unknown for software houses to become 

involved with hardware design—for example, Logica was 

involved in this activity for the Department of National 

Savings’ ERNIE Premium Bond system in the early 1980s. 

In the case of Vaughan, the need to design and manufacture 

in-house hardware stems from a project to provide an economic 

controller, known as the Telecommand Sub Master 

(TSM), for the Central Electricity Generating Board’s grid 

control network in 1977. This project, enthusiastically 

described in Vaughan’s 25th anniversary brochure, ‘led to 

the development of Vaughan’s 4M industrial microprocessor 

equipment—a range of standard modules specially designed 

for industrial use—that enable a one-off system to be configured 

economically without special engineering design’. 

The Vaughan 4M was designed by Geoff Monk, who had 

joined Vaughan from Borehamwood in 1970. Based on the 

16-bit Texas 9900 microprocessor chip-set, the 4M used lowdensity 

printed-circuit boards with plated-through holes, 

printed-circuit backplanes and standard 19-inch racking. The 

main crate had two highways, first a high-speed memory 

highway interconnecting the microprocessor, the memory, 

the Multiplexer controller and any other DMA devices such 

as a disc controller. The Multiplexer controller provided the 

bridge to the second, expandable, highway, into which 

Input/Output modules were plugged. The I/O modules were 

each optically isolated from the rest of the system. The CPU 

had a multi-level interrupt facility and hardware multiply 

and divide. The memory could be a mix of EPROM, static 

RAM and dynamic RAM. Backing memory was floppy 

discs or Winchester discs. A wide range of analogue and 

digital I/O modules was available. 

The Appendix shows that, after 1977, the Vaughan 4M 

found increasing use in real-time, on-line control and communications 

applications, especially those relating to British 

Railways. It was always used with Vaughan’s MACE 

system software. Mike Morley, who was in charge of 4M production, 

remembers that: 

‘Until 1987 all our printed-circuit board assembly was 

carried out by local subcontractors. When our main 




subcontractor closed we decided that we would take on 

staff of our own to carry out the majority of the assembly 

and only subcontract when we ran out of capacity. We 

employed a supervisor and two of her staff from our original 

subcontractor to form the nucleus of our assembly 

department. The new scheme meant that we had staff 

on hand to respond to changes in schedules (ie panics!)’. 

Vaughan’s first real-time Train Describers, at Wolverhampton 

and Chester, were supplied in 1977 (see Appendix). According 

to [9], this was ‘in all probability the first use of a microprocessor 

in a technical application on British Railways’. The job of 

a Train Describer is to track train movements within a Signal 

box area and display the positions of trains on the main signalling 

panel, or on VDU maps. Each section of the track, instrumented 

with circuits detecting presence or absence, is 

normally allowed to contain only one train. Each section is 

identified as a ‘berth’ and the Train Describer monitors the 

movement of a train along the track, ‘stepping’ it from one 

berth to another and taking into account the setting of points 

and signals. A Vaughan brochure, dated 1984, states that 

each Train Describer package was controlled by dual 4M computers, 

one in Control mode and the other in Standby, with 

automatic change-over should a failure be detected. This 

package could deal with up to 200 berths and 512 track circuits. 

Vaughan also went on to design and supply various signalling 

control systems. 

By 1990 Dina, in her updated CV, was able to state that 

‘The Company has established a leading position as suppliers 

to British Rail of computer systems for customer information, 

automatic train reporting, train describers, and time driven 

Multiplexer Systems’. 

Right up to the summer of 1996, Dina St Johnston continued 

to be the hands-on Director responsible for all software 

applications. Vaughan Systems Ltd was sold in July 1996 

to Harmon Industries, an American railway signalling 

company, and traded as Vaughan Harmon Systems. 

Andrew remained as Managing Director and Dina as the 

Software Director until they both retired in 1999. Harmon 

Industries in turn sold out to GE Transportation Ltd, part 

of the General Electric empire, in August 2000. The company’s 

premises remained at The Maltings, Ware, until 

June 2006, when GE Transportation moved to Welwyn 

Garden City. Andrew died in 2005, aged 82. Dina died 

after a fall at home at Hedgegrove Farm on the weekend 

of 30th June/1st July 2007. 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

It is a pleasure to acknowledge the help given in the writing of 

this article by several former Elliott and Vaughan employees, 

particularly Laurence Clarke, Gerald Everitt, Philip Tattersall, 

Rachel Monk, Richard Burwood and Mike Morley. The 

encouragement of Harriet St Johnston is also gratefully 

acknowledged. 

REFERENCES 


[1] Information about all the Elliott computers mentioned in this 

article will be found at the following Computer Conservation 

Society website: http://www.ourcomputerheritage.org/wp/ 

Specific information for the Elliott 152, 153, Nicholas and 

TRIDAC is spread across many classified Borehamwood 

Internal Reports. See also [2–5]. A book by the author 

covering the history of the Borehamwood Research 

Laboratories of Elliott Brothers (London) Ltd. is in preparation. 

[2] Clarke, S. L. H. (1975) The Elliott 400 Series and before. Radio 

Electron. Eng., 45, 415–421. This paper gives a general 

summary of the Elliott 152 and Elliott 401. 

[3] Lavington, S. H. (2006) In the footsteps of Colossus: a 

description of OEDIPUS. IEEE Ann. Hist. Comput., 28, 44–55. 

This describes the 311 (OEDIPUS) project, which has only 

recently been declassified. 

[4] Hersom, S. E. (2002) Nicholas, the forgotten Elliott project. 

Resurrection, Spring, 10–14. Resurrection is the Bulletin 

of the Computer Conservation Society. http://www. 

computerconservationsociety.org/resurrection.htm 

[5] Spearman, F. R., Gair, J. J., Hemingway, A. V. and Hynes, R. W. 

(1956) TRIDAC, a large analogue computing machine. Proc. 

IEEE, 103B, 375–395. 

[6] Barnard, A. J. (1958) The First year with a business computer. 

Comput. J., 1, 29–36. This describes the Elliott 405’s tasks at 

Norwich. 

[7] Massey, R. G. (1963) Computers in a new steelworks. Comput. J., 

5, 271–275. Gives background to the tasks carried out by Elliott 

803 computers at Richard Thomas and Baldwin’s steelworks. 

[8] Ryan, J. (1979) It Can Be Done. Scope Books, Newbury, 

Berkshire (1979, ISBN: 0 906619009). This book, describing 

23 small UK start-up companies, gives a snap-shot of the 

business strategy of Vaughan Systems and Programming in 1979. 

[9] Porter, C. (2007) Obituary: Dina St Johnston. IRSE News, Issue 

127, September, p. 32. 

APPENDIX 

Major Vaughan Projects, 1959–1988. 

Key: 

TSM- Telecommand SubMaster 

TD- Train Describer 

ATR- Automatic Train Reporting 

FIS- Flight Information System 

BAIR- British Airports Authority Information System. 

Arch- Denotes Elliott-Automation’s ‘Articulated Control 

Hierarchy’ range of industrial process 

control computers, based variously on the 

Elliott 800-series, 900-series and 4100-series 

computers. 



9. 


Approx 

date Application Customer Computer 

1959 British Rail Manpower Census NCR NCR Elliott 405. 

1960 Calder Hall Data logger Panellit (Elliott-Automation) Arch 609 (aka Elliott 

803) 

Stock Control System Elliott NCR Elliott 405 

1961 SBAC Show Demonstrations Elliott Elliott 803 

Moscow Exhibition Demonstration Panellit (Elliott-Automation) Arch 609 (aka Elliott 

803) 

502 Executive Utilities Elliott Elliott 502 

1962 PAYE & Pension Scheme AEI (Hotpoint) AEI 1010 

BBC Audience Research BBC Elliott 803 

Ingot & Slab Controller System for RTB, Spencer Wks Elliott Automation Elliott 803 

1963 Weekly Payroll & wage analysis Norwich City Council NCR Elliott 405 

Hoogovan Furnace Controller (Steel mill) Panellit(Elliott-Automation) Arch 1000 

BBC School Survey BBC Elliott 803 

Profit & loss Account McMullens of Hertford NCR 315 

1964 Early Warning Display System at RAF Fylingdales Elliott Auto Elliott 803 

Rent & Rate Arrears Norwich City Council NCR Elliott 405 

Planning Analysis Herts County Council NCR 315 

Bill of Quantities Library Herts County Council NCR 315 

Sexton Invoicing System & shoe stock control Sexton Son & Everard LEO III 

1965 Severn Bridge Toll Collection (Poss. 1963, not ’65) Elliott Auto Arch 1000 

Coalville & Loughborough Traffic Survey 

Birmingham University Traffic Survey 

Robert F Early Elliott 803 

C.O.I. Passenger Survey Central Office of Information LEO III 

Montecatini Data Logging System Elliott Auto Arch 1000 

Cobleys - Garment Processing Cobleys Ltd LEO III 

1966 Southampton Corp. Rates Application Southampton NCR 315 

SCOW Timing line Systems EPA Arch 102 

Planning, Costing & Purchasing N.W. Metropolitan Regional Hospital 

Board 

Data logger for Metronex (Poland) EPA Arch 102 

Spectrometer Analysis System for Mt. Goldsworthy 

(Australia) 

Elliott Auto Arch 1000 

Spectrometer Analysis System for Bolidens (Sweden) Elliott Auto Arch 9000 

Mental Health Analysis Herts County Council NCR 315 

Fortran Compiler Elliott Auto Elliott 920B (and 903) 

Sexton - Upper Leather System Sexton Son & Everard LEO II 

1967 Age/Sex Survey Register Doctors Practice NCR 315 

Structural Calculations (frameworks) Boulton & Paul IBM 360 

Sales ledger Analysis Associated Film Services 

Wine Society Invoicing Suite Wine Society LEO III 

Engine Test for Mobil 0il EPA Arch 9000 

Air Traffic Control Simulator Elliott Auto Elliott 503 

Complex Process Monitoring for Ludus (Rumania) EPA Arch 1000 

1968 Carter (Shoes) Free Stock John Carter & Sons LEO III 

On-line Advertising Copy (White Bears) Elliott Auto Arch 102 


Continued 




Continued 

Approx 


Mortgage loan Systems Winchester RDC NCR 315 

Costing System SlRA 4100 

M4 Motorway Control Elliott Traffic Arch 9000 

Phillips Atlas Index Garden City Press Elliott 903 

Cape Building Info. Handling Hutton & Rostron 4100 

Data Vetting Routines Drake & Scull LEO III 

Process Control of Pilot Plant Unilever Arch 105 

Sewer Table Typesetting Routine Garden City Press Elliott 903 

1969 Medical Scheme West Sussex County Council IBM 360 

CEGB Security Assessment Ferranti Argus 500 

Instalux Display System Elliott Auto Elliott 905 

RTB tinning line System Elliott Auto Arch 9000 

Rate Demand Suite West Sussex County Council IBM 360 

QE2 Stock Control Ferranti Argus 400 

Stores Ledger System East Surrey Water Company Elliott 803 

1970 Payroll Suite West Sussex County Council IBM 360 

N.E. Gas Board logger GEC/Elliott Arch 9000/105 

Water Rating System East Surrey Water Company Elliott 803 

Balakovskiy Rubber Plant Control Ferranti Argus 300 

Tide Tables Port of London Authority Elliott 803 

1971 Warehouse Control System Sprecher & Schuh Argus 500 

Hillside Monitoring, Almondsbury DOE Elliott 903 

Motorway Assistance (Lane Driver) DOE Elliott 903 

1972 Terminal 3 Departures BAA Honeywell 316 

Warehouse Control at Purfleet Van den Burgh & Jurgens Honeywell 316 

1973 Specification & Documentation BR/SR 

Severn Bridge Vehicle Survey GEC Arch 1000 

1974 Crane Control Jenkins Arcturus 

Gatwick FIS (Arrivals) BAA Arcturus 

Ice Cream Plant Control (ALSO) Unilever PDP 8 

Operating System Arcturus Arcturus 

Warehouse Control at Port Sunlight Lever Honeywell 316 

1975 BR/SR Master Timetable System BR/SR Digico 16V 

Motorway Control (Sheffield) DOE Elliott 903 

Flap Board Control BAA Argus 700 

1976 Gatwick FIS (Departures) BAA Arcturus 

Platform Indicator System BR/SR Digico 16V 

1977 Telecommand Submaster (TSM) Package CEGB Vaughan 4M 

Saltley Power Box Describer (TD) Extension BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

Motorway Data Routines Ferranti Argus 700 

Unitrition Monitoring System Unilever PDP 8 

1978 Flap Board Controllers BAA Vaughan 4M 

BAIR (Heathrow) Terminal FIS BAA Argus 700 

Warehouse control at Wigan BMOC PDP 11/34 

Warehouse Simulator BMOC Vaughan 4M 

Moisture Monitoring Unitrition Vaughan 4M 

1979 Piergate Controllers BAA Vaughan 4M 

BAIR (Heathrow) Terminal FIS BAA Argus 700 


Continued 



Continued 


Approx 


Mech Handling (Dagenham & Chepstow) - Spring Grove Vaughan 4M 

Post Design Services (Fylingdales) MOD Elliott 803 

1980 C-APT Test Equipment BRB Vaughan 4M 

TSM for Norton/Saltholme CEGB Vaughan 4M 

WT Finished Product Warehouse Brockhouse Finspa Digico 16E 

MTS Enhancement BR/SR Digico 16E 

Mailbay Conveyor Control (Hong Kong) Midland Dynamo Vaughan 4M 

Temporary TD (W Hampstead) BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

TSM for Uskmouth/Whitson CEGB Vaughan 4M 

Pipeline Alarm Monitoring Texaco Vaughan 4M 

WT Base Reel Warehouse Wiggins Teape Digico 16E 

Enhanced Motorway Signalling DoTP/TRRL Elliott 905 

1981 Conveyor Distribution System Alvey GA 16/220 

St Pancras Passenger Information Telesign for BR/LMR CA Alpha/LS1 

Wolverhampton TD BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

Northern Satellite FIS BAA Arcturus 

Eurolounge Controllers BAA Vaughan 4M 

8O3B Emulator (Fylingdales) MOD Vaughan 4M 

1982 Chester TD BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

Mechanical Handling (Hanworth) Spring Grove Vaughan 4M 

Warehouse Control at Port Sunlight Lever VAX/316 

Preston Passenger Information Krone for BR/LMR CA Alpha/LSI 

Mailbag Conveyor Control (Kuala Lumpur) Midland Dynamo Vaughan 4M 

Train Reporting System BR/SR Digico 16E 

1983 TSM for St. Johns Wood/City Road CEGB Vaughan 4M 

Manchester Piccadilly Sp Notice Board BR/LMR Cifer (Z80) 

Area Platform Indicator System (Brighton) BR/SR Digico 16E 

Hunts Cross TD BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

Dinorwig Telegraph Instructor CEGB Vaughan 4M 

ATR System at Crewe BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

Dot Matrix Special Notice System Datatime for BR/LMR Cifer (Z80) 

1984 TSM for Ham’s Hall/Nechells CEGB Vaughan 4M 

Liverpool Lime Street Passenger Info. System Krone for BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

Birmingham New Street Passenger Info. System Krone for BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

TSM VDU Demonstrator CEGB Vaughan 4M 

Special Notice Systems Datatime for BR/SR Cifer (Z80) 

Next Train Display Datatime for BR/SR Minstrel (Z80) 

Warehouse Back-up System Wiggins Teape Digico 16E 

1985 TSM for Heysham CEGB Vaughan 4M 

Small Train Describers for Ashbury and Guide Bridge BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

14 Station Passenger Information Systems BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

Distribution Warehouse Halfords PDP 11/44 

VDU TSM Warley CEGB Vaughan 4M 

Warehouse Plant Control Phase 1 Kelloggs PDP 11/73 

1986 APIS Processors - IBM PC Program & Data Loading 

(II) 

BR/SR IBM PC 

Front End Processor for small TDs BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

Stoke on Trent Character Generator BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 


Continued 




Continued 

Approx 


Hutton VDU TSM CEGB Vaughan 4M 

TRUST ATR TOPS Converter for Crewe BRB Vaughan 4M 

1987 Euston Station Character Generator Cartner for BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

Manchester Area Character Generators Cartner for BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

Cowlairs TD BR-ScotRail Vaughan 4M 

New Cross TSM CEGB Vaughan 4M 

St Pancras PIS BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

Kwangyang Steelworks Transportation System GEC General Signal DEC VAX; Vaughan 

4M 

Lackenby TSM CEGB Vaughan 4M 

VDU TSM System Generate Equipment CEGB Vaughan 4M 

17 Small TDs BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

Waterloo & London Bridge Indicators BR/SR Vaughan 4M 

Pohang AVI Converters GEC General Signal Vaughan 4M 

Gatwick Station Passenger Info. System Telesign for BR/SR Digico 16E 

Leicester Control Centre ML Engineering for BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

1988 5 VDU TSMs CEGB Vaughan 4M 

7 Replacement Magazine Small TDs BR/SA Vaughan 4M 

Reading Customer Information System BR/Western Vaughan 4M 

Willesden Suburban Train Describer GEC General Signal for BR/LMR Vaughan 4M 

Throughout there have been contracts for:- Continuing software field support 

Expansion of Original Systems 

Preparation of Specifications 

Consultancy Services. 

Amongst projects not mentioned in the main list are various pieces of systems software written for the Elliott-Automation Computing 

Division at Borehamwood. These included 

Sort Generator and System Software (Elliott 503) 

CRT Format Generator (Elliott 903) 

Fortran Compiler for Mobile Computer for Schools (Elliott 903 or 920B)—see the entry for 1966 in the main list 

Test and diagnostic Programs for NCR/Elliott 4100 

Implementation of Common Language Assembler, several models. 

Vaughan Systems Ltd., The Maltings, Hoe Lane, Ware, Herts, SG12 9LR England. 

Telefax: 0920-460702 Telex: 81516 Telephone: 0920-462282 

Transcribed in September 2007, from the original Vaughan document 89/7/VFP lent by Dina St Johnston on 7/6/07. Minor comments 

in italics have been added by the author.

An Appreciation of Dina St Johnston (1930 ... - Computer Journal

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