AC Grayling to speak at celebration dinner for 50 years of Real Time Computing

You are cordially invited to dine with the Real Time Club on the occasion of our 50th anniversary to try and piece together how the tech world got to today and what the next 50 years may hold.

In 1967 an American entrepreneur with experience in the emerging field of ‘real time’ data processing arrived in the UK, intending to set up a software house, keen to plug into the local network of people who shared a common interest in the applications of this new technology, organised our first dinner.

The evening was a huge success. Held on the 27th June 1967 in the Bourbon Room of the Institute of Directors on Belgrave Square, attended by twelve leading entrepreneurs and academics in the fledgling British computing industry.

After dinner, each person described his interest in real time data processing and the group agreed to a subsequent meeting to discuss particular problems over a good meal.

For the next 50 years the RTC has held dinners graced with a glittering array of after dinner speakers from science, politics, law enforcement, technology and the media. Our speakers on the 27th of June will be Iann Barron CBE and Professor AC Grayling

In the spirit of that tradition we shall be enjoying a fine meal, some decent wine and interesting conversation at the Merchant Taylor's Hall on the 27th of June and if you wish to join us, you may sign up here...

Our first speaker this evening Iann Barron CBE will look back over the past 50 years of Real Time Computing and share a vision for the next 50 years. Iann was the very first speaker at the RTC and so it is fitting that he looks both forwards and back.

Over the evening ex-Chairs of the Real Time Club from the past 50 years will give a very brief overview of their time in the hot seat, spanning five decades of the Real Time Club

Our Closing Speaker: Prof A C Grayling, CBE

A. C. Grayling, is a philosopher and author. In 2011 he founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities, an independent undergraduate college in London. Until June 2011, he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, where he taught from 1991. He is also a supernumerary fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford.

Author of many books on Philosophy and featured on TV, Tony is an excellent speaker to bring the dinner to a close.

It is the tradition of the Real Time Club that guests may ask questions, “with all due respect” and a lively night is expected.

Real Time Club Dinners are held under the Chatham House Rule to encourage free and frank conversation.

JOIN US for what will be an entertaining, informative and exciting evening based around ‘Real Time Computing: 50 Years On and 50 Years Hence’. Ask difficult questions, hear a slice of history and a vision of the future you could only hear at the Real Time Club.

1978 saw the beginning of inMOS International PLC, the UK semiconductor company – where Iann and his team designed the Transputer, a device which should have revolutionised the world, but even now, no one understands the ideas behind it.

inMOS International PLC ‘would have been a great success if it were not for Mrs Thatcher’ was sold in 1984 to Thorn EMI when inMOS needed a public offering to provide the funding to capitalise on the products it had created and before it had a chance to thrive and grow. It could have been the UK’s first ￡bn company.

Iann has gone on to start Division PLC, the company which created and has exploited virtual reality and continues to suffer from a persistent problem: his ideas are too far ahead of the market.