My father, Bob Hamilton, who has died aged 94, was a computer software designer in the industry’s early years, working in the US on the Saturn 4B rocket programme which led to Saturn 5, the launch rocket for the 1969 moon landing.
Bob was born in London. His mother, Edith, died when he was seven; he and his older sister, Margot, were brought up by his father, James, who worked for a legal firm, and, at times, by various aunts and uncles.
Growing up during the second world war, Bob spent his teenage years in air-raid shelters and left school at 16, working as a tax office clerk while waiting for the inevitable conscription call. He signed up in June 1945, and would have been one of the last groups to be sent to Burma. A protracted training period in the UK avoided this, however, and instead he went to India in April 1946, followed by Iraq and Egypt, before returning home in April 1948.
A visit to the Festival of Britain in 1951 changed Bob’s life. In the Dome of Discovery he saw a Ferranti computer on display – built solely to demonstrate a game called Nim and requiring six cabinets full of electronics – and, as he later said, “I was hooked”. Having already applied to do evening courses at the University of London, he immediately switched to pure maths, applied maths and physics, and by 1956 had graduated, with the highest percentage of firsts across all the university’s colleges.
Two years later, he boarded a flight to Canada to pursue a career in programming. After living in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, Bob moved to the US in 1962, heading to California, where in June 1964 he began work on a new project for Nasa: the Saturn 4B rocket.
In true sardonic style, Bob described his feelings about the project at the time as being “an appalling waste of money” but admitted that, back in the UK a few years later, he was one of the fascinated millions who stayed up to watch the moon landing – an event which he must have felt incredibly proud to have been a part of, though he was always far too self-deprecating to admit it.
In 1965, Bob accepted a job offer at the British computing company ICT (later taken over by ICL) – “I sat in Richmond Park on a Friday afternoon, watching polo. The sun shone. This was swinging London” – and remained in the industry until his retirement in the early 1990s.
He was an active sportsman, skiing, water-skiing, squash and tennis being his preferred activities. He played tennis several times a week into his 90s and was a member and treasurer of his local club for more than 20 years. Bob’s wit, intelligence, kindness and energy for life were unwavering.
He is survived by his wife, Patricia (nee Mandelik), whom he met while on a skiing holiday in 1968 and married the following year, and me.