5     Tom Kilburn with Joe McCormick

Professor Tom Kilburn with Joe McCormick. Joe joined the University in 1933 at the age of 14, originally with the Physics Department, where one of his early tasks was to help dismantle the Meccano prototype of the Hartree Differential Analyser. In 1935 he transferred to Electro-technics. When the Baby was built he was Senior Technician in the Department, now called Electrical Engineering. When the new Department of Computer Science was created from the Computer Group of Electrical Engineering in 1964, Joe went with them as Chief Technician, later renamed Laboratory Superintendent. He retired in 1980, after 47 years, having seen the whole progression from Differential Analyser to PC!

Joe in fact did little direct work to help with building the Baby, which was mostly physically done by Tom and Geoff Tootill, but he did produce the blueprints for the diagrams in Tom's famous 1947 report.