Stephanie Shirley on computer coding

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2015

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As a young woman, Stephanie Shirley worked at the Dollis Hill Research Station building computers from scratch: but she told young admirers that she worked for the Post Office, hoping they would think she sold stamps. In the early 60s she changed her name to Steve and started selling computer programmes to companies who had no idea what they were or what they could do, employing only mothers who worked from home writing code by hand with pen and pencil and then posted it to her. By the mid-80s her software company employed eight thousand people, still mainly women with children. She made an absolute fortune but these days Stephanie thinks less about making money and much more about how best to give it away. Producer: Anna Buckley.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Once you've wrapped up this podcast, how about trying a very British cult?
0:06.0	What happens if the person you trust with your future isn't what you think they are?
0:10.0	I did feel the whole time he was watching me Yeti. I saw a footprint and that really gave me gusmas.
0:16.4	Or people who knew me. Emme, I remember every secret, every lie. I'm the only one who knows the truth.
0:23.0	Discover more of our biggest podcast from 2003.
0:27.0	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:29.0	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific.
0:33.6	First broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
0:36.3	I'm Jumal Kiele and my mission is to interview the most fascinating and important
0:41.0	scientists alive today and to find out what makes them tick.
0:45.0	On the eve of World War II, aged just five, Vera Bhutel boarded a kind of
0:52.0	transport and headed across Europe to start a new life in England.
0:56.0	She was taken in by a couple in the West Midlands and 12 years later changed her name to Stephanie
1:01.2	Brooke after the poet Rupert Brooke and became a British citizen.
1:06.5	As a teenager she moved school several times in search of a suitable math teacher and ended up commuting to a boy's grammar school for lessons.
1:16.0	Rather than go to university she got a job at the post office in Dallas Hill.
1:20.0	The research station at Dallas Hill has since earned its place in the history books. The Enigma Code-Codding and post-war computers were being built from scratch for civilian uses
1:35.0	computers like Ernie designed to generate random numbers for the new premium bond scheme.
1:40.0	But in 1962 Stephanie Stephanie Shirley, having worked for a private company, CDL, you
1:47.1	decided to go it alone. Starting with just six pounds and access to a shared telephone line you built a software company worth at its
1:55.3	peak half a billion pounds and employing eight and a half thousand people.
2:00.6	Dame Stephanie Shirley welcome to the Life Scientific.
	...

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