Editor: John Davies
Previously Principium was edited by Keith Cooper. Today, the editor is John Davies.
John is a lifelong engineer and a Londoner of over 30 years standing with northern English origins and strong Scottish connections. He has been fascinated by space travel ever since he read the Dan Dare stories in the Eagle in the 50s.
He recalls contradicting his father who, despite being an engineer himself, thought that "rockets can't fly in space because there is nothing for them to push against". Once Sputnik One went up his dad became a bit of a space enthusiast too.
John was the first person in his family to go to university, studying Electronics at Liverpool University. He joined Hawker Siddeley Dynamics Space Projects Division in 1968 and worked on the latter stages of the most substantial launch vehicle ever built in UK, Bluestreak. He also worked on satellite projects including a design study for a large space telescope which acquired the name Hubble about 12 years later.
He was fascinated by digital technology and moved to Edinburgh University where he wrote some very early communications software. He took a year off to study Computer Science more formally at Manchester University, taking his M.Sc. back to Edinburgh before moving on to London University doing similar work.
He re-joined the commercial sector as a consultant and in technical sales support and was involved in the early stages of SMS messaging and in packet radio long before we all started using it, as GPRS, for our smartphones.
He has been involved in three start-up companies, one of which survives! His last full-time job was running the IT volunteering programme for the Information Technologists livery company of the City of London.
He's now retired but busier than ever with STEMnet work in London schools, the Initiative for Interstellar Studies, and helping the elderly residents of Hackney to get into computing and the Internet.
He's a long-established member of both the British Interplanetary Society and the British Computer Society. He was one of the leads for our World Science Fiction Convention 2014 participation.