Name: John Yardley
Born: 16/10/49
Career:
1968-1981 National Physical Laboratory, Teddington
As a spotty 18 year old with 3 A level failures, joined NPL in 1968 as a Scientific Assistant. Years of messing around with electronics were rewarded with a job Pattern Recognition Group to learn computer programming! After much protest, transferred to the two-man Signature Verification project to develop hardware graphic input devices and sampling circuitry. On completion of hardware project, returned to software design in the hope of recognising signatures. Jointly submitted several papers and eventually a patent on Signature Verification by computer. Meanwhile studied for Ordinary National Certificate and Higher National Certificate at night school.
In 1972, awarded a government bursary to read for a degree in Computer Science at City University, London. Awarded a 2(i) in 1975 and returned to Speech Recognition Group at NPL to "head up" software development. In 1977, following a spell supervising an Advanced Computer Technology Project on Programmable Logic Arrays at Essex University, registered for a Ph.D at Essex. In 1981 received Ph.D for Speech Recognition work at NPL. Visited most of the the major UK and US research establishments on speech recognition.
Meanwhile became newsletter editor, then chairman of the Digital Specialist Interest Group (SIG) on Real-Time Operating Systems.
1981 on JPY Associates Ltd
AS Chairman of DECUS SIG, forged links with S&H Computer Systems of Nashville and left NPL in 1981 to form JPY Associates Ltd and distribute S&H products in Europe.
As founder of JPY Associates Ltd, built up the company primarily as networking and system software specialists. Extensive links with Apple Computer focused the company into Pre-Press Networking from around 1990.
Conceived the ideas of DataLock and ISDNShare.
Qualifications
PhD in Electrical Engineering (Speech Recognition)
BSc (Hons) in Computer Science
HNC in Electrical Engineering
Member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers
Chartered Electrical Engineer
Member of the British Computer Society
Interests
Playing (or trying to play) Alto Saxophone; Jazz, Music generally, Italy; pretending to speak Italian; Food; messing around with things; explosives; historical slang; making things out of wood; having a good laugh at someone elses expense; saying things to deliberately annoy my children and seeing how they react; telling people what is wrong with their lives; reading New Scientist; watching the Fast Show, Shooting Stars, Harry Enfield, NYPD; driving cars of around 320bhp; going down the pub; growing Marijuana and other vegetables.