Institution of Analysts and Programmers

The Institution of Analysts and Programmers was founded some 30 years ago by group of computer enthusiasts that met at Cambridge, and the present name was adopted in 1981. The Institution's first General Secretary was Mr. Robert Charles.

Since 1993 The Institution of Analysts and Programmers has been a Company Limited by Guarantee owned by its members. This means that does not have shareholders and cannot distribute profits. The Institution is governed by a Council of 15, elected from the body of the membership, and is bound by a written Constitution.

The membership includes business analysts, computer Systems analysts and programmers, as well as specialists in IT project management. A growing number are from a business analysis background including architects and strategists developing software systems.

Aims and Objects

The Institution's written Constitution sets out the aims and objects. These are to:
* assist men and women to advance in the profession of computer analyst and programmer, and to secure public recognition of their professional status
* facilitate the advancement and spreading of knowledge within the profession
* promote high standards of competence and conduct
* provide a means for measuring professional competence
* encourage members to develop their skills and progress their careers
* help members protect themselves against liabilities arising in the exercise of their profession
* assist members who are seeking employment
* provide opportunities for members to meet

Founder

Bob Charles BSc CEng FIMechE FRAeS FIAP

Born in 1923, Bob Charles graduated from the University of London in 1944, only to get called up immediately by the Royal Air Force. It was not until 1947, by this time a Flight Lieutenant, that he could return to civilian life. Charles took a job with Rotol (later to become defence contractor Dowty) as an aeronautical stressman. It was so cold that he travelled to work on ice skates.

Accurate stress calculation is particularly important in the aircraft industry. Each part needs to be kept as light as possible, but you don't want it to break. In those days, long before the PC or even the hand calculator, stressing was a tremendously labour intensive task, needing armies of very smart people with very sharp pencils. In 1959 Charles and a colleague, Tommy Turner, decided to set up as stress analysis consultants, forming Turner Charles Limited with a capital of £170. By 1970 TC was the leading European company in its field.

It is not difficult to see what motivated Charles to set up the Institution of Analysts and Programmers, and those who didn't know him might think this would be the crowning achievement of his career. But they would be failing to appreciate the prodigious talent and output of a man once described as "Bob Charles: engineer, entrepreneur, inventor, boxer, stallholder, RAF officer, labourer, chef, sea captain, racing driver...."

Like most of Charles' schemes, "Share Pools" was ahead of its time. A kind of poor man's version of the derivatives market, it merely served to upset the London Stock Exchange and Littlewoods Pools. Similarly his plan to make artificial limbs that worked better and cost less was stifled by vested interests, this time in the NHS.

Problems of a different kind thwarted his plan for a freight aircraft, larger than a jumbo jet that could carry a huge payload, yet take off at only 50 mph. It relied on a revolutionary airframe with wings at all four corners. Whether Boeing was worried is not recorded. Charles got as far as buying the factory, but flying the scale model proved beyond the capability of the unaided human brain. After a few expensive crashes the project was shelved. No doubt 30 years later there is software that could have solved the problem.

Charles worked too hard, bringing on the diabetes that eventually killed him at the relatively young age of 66. What money he made he mostly spent, pursuing his various schemes or helping his friends. He lost money when Rolls Royce went broke, but that didn't dampen his enthusiasm for their cars. Envious of the future-DG's ancient Shadow, he bought an even more splendid long wheelbase model, registered RC 9410. To most people a random number perhaps, but to a mathematician it was "all the squares". Charles often drove it wearing a chauffeur's cap. Apparently it made him invisible to the police.

External links

* http://www.iap.org.uk/