John Alvey
Scientist whose ‘Alvey directorate’ set out to make Britain a global player in computer technology
JOHN ALVEY, who has died aged 93, was a leading weapons scientist before becoming engineer-in-chief of British Telecom; he also secured state support for the UK computer industry at a time when it was losing ground to global competitors.
Alvey spent 30 years in Ministry of Defence research and procurement work, rising to be chief scientist for the RAF, before joining Post Office Telecommunications – shortly before it became BT – as senior director of technology in 1980.
In an era of rapid changes in technology, Alvey took charge of a £90 million annual R&D budget which doubled over the following years as BT’S Martlesham laboratories made advances in areas such as switching systems, optical fibres and video communications; he also played a key role in the difficult transition to new-generation “System X” exchanges across BT networks.
In 1983 he was promoted to BT’S main board as managing director of development and procurement, as well as “engineer-in-chief ”. His authoritative presence was important to the hi-tech corporate image that boosted the privatisation sale of BT shares in 1984.
Three years earlier, Alvey had been asked by Kenneth Baker, the minister for information technology, to chair a committee that would formulate a British response to Japan’s declared aim of developing “fifth generation” computers – using artificial intelligence, voice input and other features then largely still in the realm of science fiction.
The Japanese were admired and feared for their ability to harness their corporations and ministries in pursuit of national economic goals. Alvey’s brief was to design a comparable support structure for UK innovation in the IT field. His committee’s proposal of a £350 million R & D fund, £200million of it to be provided by government, ran contrary to Thatcherite prejudices against intervention in industry and was criticised in some quarters for vagueness in its objectives.
But it won Cabinet approval in April 1983, and although Alvey himself took no executive role, it was the “Alvey Directorate”, staffed by secondees from companies such as GEC alongside Whitehall scientists, that set out to back cutting-edge ideas. Eventually more than 400 individual projects won funding, but the recipients were predominantly established electronics companies rather than new ventures. Progress was slow and results were mixed, one report finding the scheme – eventually discontinued by Lord Young in 1988 – “bogged down in bureaucracy and bickering”.
Though supporters claimed Alvey’s brainchild helped wake industry and academia to the possibilities of artificial intelligence and advanced software engineering, it could not arrest the decline of the UK as a global IT player.
John Alvey was born in Surrey on June 19 1925, the only child of George Alvey, a post office clerk who died when John was a child, and his wife Hilda, née Pellatt. John was educated at Reed’s School, then at Watford; having left at 15, he was an office boy at the London Stock Exchange until he joined the Royal Navy in 1943 as a radio mechanic in the Fleet Air Arm. Post-war he took a First in Engineering at the Northampton Polytechnic in Clerkenwell.
He joined the Royal Naval Scientific Service in 1950, specialising in microwave valves at its Baldock laboratory. In the late 1950s he spent two years in the US, and in 1961 moved to the Admiralty Surface Weapons Establishment at Portsdown to work on radar systems.
Having completed the Senior Officers’ War Course at Greenwich, he became head of weapons projects in 1968 with responsibility for naval missile systems such as Sea Dart and Sea Wolf. The latter was built by the British Aircraft Corporation, whose missile business was run by (Sir) George Jefferson, later Alvey’s chairman at BT.
In 1972 Alvey joined the Mod’s procurement executive, involved with guided weapons, radars and communication equipment in military aircraft. In 1976 he became director of the Surface Weapons Establishment. His final defence appointment, in 1977, was as chief scientist to the Royal Air Force and a member of the Air Force Board, as well as deputy secretary of procurement. He was appointed CB in 1980.
After retiring from BT in 1986, he was chairman of Sira, which tested industrial equipment, and a director of LSI Logic, an American semiconductor and software company. He was also a vice president of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Sprightly in old age, he skied well into his 70s and maintained a devoted interest in his old school, Reed’s, at its post-war location in Cobham.
He married Celia Marson in 1955; she survives him with their three sons.
John Alvey, born June 19 1925, died January 19 2019