1. Michael John Aldrich was an English inventor, innovator and entrepreneur.
31 Facts About Michael Aldrich
1. 2.
Michael Aldrich retired as CEO in 2000 and became non-executive chairman.
3.
Michael Aldrich worked for Honeywell and Burroughs Corporation.
4.
Michael Aldrich has had a long, formal association with the University of Brighton in various capacities since 1982.
5.
Michael Aldrich was born on 22 August 1941 in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England.
6.
Michael Aldrich went to school at Clapham College in London and, in 1959, he won a scholarship to the University of Hull to study history.
7.
Michael Aldrich became engaged to Sandy Kay Hutchings, a student at Hull Art College, originally named Hull School of Art, in 1960, and they married in 1962, just prior to his graduation.
8.
Michael Aldrich spent 15 years with Honeywell and Burroughs in the UK in various sales and marketing roles, where he became known as an innovator, before joining the Board of Redifon in 1977.
9.
In 1979, Michael Aldrich invented online shopping by connecting a modified domestic TV to a real-time transaction processing computer via a domestic telephone line.
10.
Michael Aldrich's concept of information technology as a mass communications medium is a driver for the contemporary IT industry.
11.
Michael Aldrich had a particular schema for a wired community.
12.
Michael Aldrich campaigned successfully to change the law in the UK to permit new cable TV technology.
13.
Michael Aldrich articulated and broadcast the ubiquitous business and social potential of his mass communications medium concept of IT and created systems to realise that dream, sold and installed them, and created satisfied clients.
14.
Michael Aldrich's ideas were copied, plagiarised and patented in the 1990s without acknowledgement.
15.
Michael Aldrich was an innovator in other areas of computer and information technology including large-scale data capture, mixed media scanning, minicomputer networking, voice response and handprint processing.
16.
Michael Aldrich patented the world's first static signature recognition system in 1984.
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Michael Aldrich founded ROCC Computers in 1984 after a management buy-out of Rediffusion Computers.
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Michael Aldrich traded mainly in the UK and Eastern Europe.
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Michael Aldrich became a Fellow of the British Computer Society in 1984 and he was made a Chartered Fellow in 2004.
20.
Michael Aldrich is an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.
21.
Michael Aldrich was invited to address an invited audience including British Royalty on 23 March 1983 in Edinburgh, Scotland to mark the 25th Anniversary of the founding of the British Computer Society.
22.
Michael Aldrich became a Founder Member of the Company of Information Technologists which became a Chartered City Livery in 1992.
23.
Michael Aldrich is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.
24.
Michael Aldrich was a member of the team for the whole term of its existence.
25.
Michael Aldrich wrote a seminal paper on re-cabling the UK with local loop broadband cable and paying for it without government subsidy by distributing cable television alongside data and telephone services.
26.
Michael Aldrich became a member of the Council of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in 1988 and was elected chairman in 1989, a post he held for a decade.
27.
Michael Aldrich first became involved with the then Brighton Polytechnic in 1977 when he was sponsoring student employees for degrees in electronic engineering and computer science.
28.
Michael Aldrich retired from the Board of Governors in 1999.
29.
In 1992, Michael Aldrich became Founding Chairman of the university's Foundation a fundraising body.
30.
The Michael Aldrich family has been a longtime benefactor of the university.
31.
Michael Aldrich was a prolific writer of magazine articles, conference papers and speeches.