Among the technological award winners was ICL’s Corporate Systems Division, West Gorton Manchester, commended for the Series 39 SX mainframe, which packs four times as much power into the same space as the Series 39 machines. Also honoured was the Optical Research Division of British Telecommunications Plc’s BT Laboratories in Martlesham Heath, near Ipswich in Suffolk, for developing metal organic phase epitaxy, an advanced production technique for fabricating optoelectronic semiconductor devices. Oxford Applied Research Ltd of Witney, Oxfordshire, was commended for its reactive atom-radical source which is used to produce thin film devices such as high temperature superconductors and also thin film Gallium Nitride for semiconductors.
SoftPC
High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire-based Insignia Solutions Ltd was recognised for developing its widely-used SoftPC program that emulates the MS-DOS environment used on the IBM personal computer on incompatible Apple Computer Inc Macintoshes, and workstations from the likes of Sun Microsystems Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co and Digital Equipment Corp; and S&S International Ltd, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, gained an award for its Dr Solomon’s Anti-Virus Toolkit, which employs fuzzy logic to combat the most complex computer viruses. Ashford, Middlesex-based NextBase Ltd was rewarded for its nifty multi-lingual, computerised route planning system that runs on IBM personal computers; Solid State Logic Ltd, based in Begbroke, Oxfordshire received its pat on the back for its swift and compact digital audio post production system for video and film; the Integrated Display Systems division of Smiths Industries Aerospace & Defence Systems in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire gained an award for its multi-purpose colour display for high performance aircraft; and Swindon, Wiltshire-based Raychem Limited Corporate Technology Europe came good with its heat shrinkable, fabric, composite technology for sealing and protecting splice joints in telecommunications networks.
