Stephanie Shirley: Software Pioneer

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2015

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

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 8,000 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.

(Photo: Stephanie Shirley. BBC copyright)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Thank you for downloading from the BBC.
0:03.0	The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use,
0:07.0	go to BBCworldservice.com slash podcasts.
0:11.0	I'm Jim Markelkelelli and in Discovery from the BBC I'm talking to Dame Stephanie Shirley about
0:18.8	her life scientific.
0:21.2	On the eve of World War II, aged just five, Vera Bhutel boarded a kinder transport and headed across Europe to start a new life in England.
0:30.0	She was taken in by a couple in the West Midlands and 12 years later changed her name to Stephanie Brooke after the poet Rupert Brooke and became a British citizen. As a teenager she moved school several times in search of a suitable math
0:45.5	teacher and ended up commuting to a boy's grammar school for lessons. Rather than go
0:51.3	to university she got a job at the post office in Dallas Hill.
0:54.0	The research station at Dallas Hill has since earned its place in the history books.
0:58.0	The Enigma Code-Cacking computer Colossus was built there before it was moved to Bletchley Park and
1:05.0	post-war computers were being built from scratch for civilian uses
1:10.0	but in 1962 Stephanie Shirley having worked for a private company, CDL, you decided to go it alone.
1:18.0	Starting with just six pounds and access to a shared telephone line,
1:22.0	you built a software company worth at its peak half a
1:25.4	billion pounds and employing 8,500 people.
1:29.4	Dame Stephanie Shirley, welcome to the Life Scientific.
1:31.8	Lovely to be here.
1:34.0	What I find so striking about your life, Stephanie,
1:36.4	is that in the 60s, when you set up your company
1:39.2	freelance programmers, presumably you really
1:41.9	didn't know whether or not there would be a market for
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.