Roger graham, BORN 1939
a career in computer services
Roger Graham was born in Harrow, North London. His father was a director of HJ Heinz in the UK, but died of an illness when Roger was 4, leaving him to grow up with his housewife mother and older brother. He believes the absence of a father in his early years prevented him from being enthusiastic about sport, his main interests being books, and hobby work, making small aeroplanes and models. Starting his career in the IT industry at IBM he rose to become account manager for Ford UK. He left IBM after four-and-a-half years to join BIS in 1969, then a small software start-up. He helped develop and sell one of the most important software packages for banking: MIDAS, which handled currancy transactions when they were deregulated. Graham rose to chairman and chief executive of BIS and after leaving in the early 1990s he acted as a non-executive adviser to more than 24 companies in 22 years. In 2015 he became the founder and first trustee of Archives of IT.
This life story was reproduced in 2024, with their kind permission, from the Archives of IT website at archivesit.org.uk.