RICHARD HOOPER, BORN 1939
A CAREER IN COMMUNICATIONS
Richard Hooper’s father was killed in the Second World War and Richard was sent to boarding school at the age of six. He says: “I had my sixth birthday at boarding school in Dorset and then I went to Sherborne. I decided that I was sick of being a child in school and went into the army and did National Service for two years, I was the 7th Royal Tank Regiment. In 1959, after National Service, Richard went to Worcester College, Oxford where he gained a first-class degree in German and Russian. After Oxford he joined the BBC, where he produced TV programmes for the Open Univerrsity. His passion for media technology was inspired when, as a Harkness scholar, he spent 21 months in the US looking at innovative educational technology projects. Richard took on his first senior role in the UK IT industry in 1973 as Director of the National Development Programme in Computer Assisted Learning. At BT during the early 1980s, he helped pioneer Prestel, the first version of the internet. He also ran Yellow Pages when it was a FTSE100 company, and oversaw start-ups such as Telecom Gold, the UK’s first public email service.
This life story was reproduced in 2024, with their kind permission, from the Archives of IT website at archivesit.org.uk.