Joan and John Travis Papers

The collection primarily relates to Joan Travis and includes a biographical note and CVS of Joan Travis, documents and photos relating to various Ferranti/ICL reunions including the 1993 Tin Hut reunion, Joan’s autobiography, describes the set-up. Further background to this is given in NAHC/JTP/1. The Tin Hut team kept in touch over the years. Catalogue items NAHC/JTP/3-7 relate to a formal reunion which took place in April 1993. This spawned a series of Newsletters. Many personal anecdotes and unique technical memorabilia are recorded in the reunion record and in the Newsletters and in associated correspondence.

Joan Travis, nèe was born on 9 February 1933, the daughter of a farmer who farmed near Huddersfield, Yorkshire. She was educated at Penistone Grammar School. Despite her success at school, she was unable to attend university because she did not have a major county scholar ship. Instead, Joan attended Huddersfield Technical College (now University of Huddersfield) where she took the external University of London B.Sc. in 1952. She started work for Ferranti in April 1953 as a programmer. Joan initially worked on the Ferranti Mark I and then the Mark I* and was based in the "tin hut" section of their Moston factory. The staff included Dietrich Prinz, Mary Lee Woods and Conway Berners Lee, the latter two later married. The Tin Hut programmers were a unique mix of genders for the early 1950s, with a real sense that they were pioneering the practical application of production computers – using, in their case, the Ferranti Mark I machine which was situated about three miles away in a specially-constructed building at Manchester University.

Travis later worked on test programmes for the Mercury, Pegasus and Perseus computers. She later moved to Ferranti Lily Hill facility in Bracknell. She met John Travis there, who she later married in August 1960. She then worked at Ferranti's offices in Newman St London, before moving back to Lily Hill. After the birth of their children, Joan Travis continued to work on Ferranti program mauls a and later returned to what as now ICT (later ICL) at Bracknell to work on the 1900 programming. In 1967 the Travises' moved to ICT's facility in Stevenage, and Joan worked as a senior programmer in the research department. In 1984 she moved back to Bracknell where she Manchester University system programming language (MUSL) and an Alvey project on a human interface monitoring system. In 1989, both Joan and John were made redundant by ICL.

John Travis was born on 7 Feb. 1931 at Brentford. He attended Pinner County Secondary Schooland after finishing schooloing joined Elliott Brothers Ltd. Research Labs at Borehamwood, Herts. After nationals ervice, he joined Ferranti Ltd. working firstly in London and then at Lily Hill House, Bracknell, where he met Joan. He continued to work with Ferrantis until its computer operations became part of ICT in 1963, which became ICL in 1967. John Travis worked at ICL's Stevenage works, and in 1985 moved to ICL Bracknell, where he worked until 1989. He died in October 2022.

Follows original list arrangement by Simon Lavington.

The collection is open to any accredited reader.

The collection includes material which is subject to the Data Protection Act 2018. Under the Act 2018 (DPA), The University of Manchester Library (UML) holds the right to process personal data for archiving and research purposes. In accordance with the DPA, UML has made every attempt to ensure that all personal and sensitive personal data has been processed fairly, lawfully and accurately. Users of the archive are expected to comply with the Data Protection Act 2018, and will be required to sign a form acknowledging that they will abide by the requirements of the Act in any further processing of the material by themselves.

Open parts of this collection, and the catalogue descriptions, may contain personal data about living individuals.

Photocopies and photographic copies of material in the archive can be supplied for private study purposes only, depending on the condition of the documents.

A number of items within the archive remain within copyright under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988; it is the responsibility of users to obtain the copyright holder's permission for reproduction of copyright material for purposes other than research or private study.

Prior written permission must be obtained from the Library for publication or reproduction of any material within the archive. Please contact the Head of Special Collections, John Rylands Library, 150 Deansgate, Manchester, M3 3EH.

Several boxes of documents and artefacts were handed over to Simon Lavington by Kim Travis on 9th Dec. 2022. The boxes contained items relevant to his parents John and Joan Travis (neé Kaye) and their work for Ferranti Ltd. (later ICT, later ICL) between about 1953 and 1997. Simon Lavington transferred the papers to the University of Manchester Library in July 2023.

None expected

History of Computing Collection archives which relate to Ferranti computers and the development of the Ferranti Mark I, Pegasus and Atlas machines include the University of Manchester Department of Computer Science collections: NAHC/MUC and the MUC addl., Dietrich Prinz papers, the Eric Sunderland papers and the Ferranti Collection.

Simon Lavington, Early computing in Britain: Ferranti Ltd. and government funding, 1948 – 1958. Springer, 2019.