Hugh McGregor Ross (31 August 1917 – 1 September 2014) was an early pioneer in the history of British

computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...

. He was employed by

Ferranti Ferranti or Ferranti International plc was a UK electrical engineering and equipment firm that operated for over a century from 1885 until it went bankrupt in 1993. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The firm was known ...

from the mid-1960s, where he worked on the

Pegasus Pegasus ( grc-gre, Πήγασος, Pḗgasos; la, Pegasus, Pegasos) is one of the best known creatures in Greek mythology. He is a winged divine stallion usually depicted as pure white in color. He was sired by Poseidon, in his role as hor ...

thermionic valve A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric potential difference has been applied. The type known as a ...

computer. He was involved in the standardization of

ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...

and

ISO 646 ISO/IEC 646 is a set of ISO/IEC standards, described as ''Information technology — ISO 7-bit coded character set for information interchange'' and developed in cooperation with ASCII at least since 1964. Since its first edition in ...

and worked closely with

Bob Bemer Robert William Bemer (February 8, 1920 – June 22, 2004) was a computer scientist best known for his work at IBM during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Early life and education Born in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, Bemer graduated from Cranb ...

. ASCII was first known in Europe as the Bemer–Ross Code. He was also one of the four main designers of

ISO 6937 T.51 / ISO/IEC 6937:2001, ''Information technology — Coded graphic character set for text communication — Latin alphabet'', is a multibyte extension of ASCII, or rather of ISO/IEC 646-IRV. It was developed in common with ITU-T (then CCITT) fo ...

, with Peter Fenwick, Bernard Marti and Loek Zeckendorf. He was one of the principal architects of the

Universal Character Set The Universal Coded Character Set (UCS, Unicode) is a standard set of characters defined by the international standard ISO/IEC 10646, ''Information technology — Universal Coded Character Set (UCS)'' (plus amendments to that standard), w ...

ISO/IEC 10646 ISO/IEC JTC 1, entitled "Information technology", is a joint technical committee (JTC) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Its purpose is to develop, maintain and pr ...

when it was first conceived. Hugh was an expert in the

Gospel of Thomas The Gospel of Thomas (also known as the Coptic Gospel of Thomas) is an extra-canonical sayings gospel. It was discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945 among a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library. Scholars speculate ...

and wrote several books about it. He was a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...

, and also wrote about

George Fox George Fox (July 1624 – 13 January 1691) was an English Dissenter, who was a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers or Friends. The son of a Leicestershire weaver, he lived in times of social upheaval and ...

. His working papers on the teachings of Fox are held at Yorkshire Quaker Heritage Project.Quaker Records
at ancestry.com

Books by Hugh McGregor Ross

* *''George Fox Speaks for Himself: Texts that reveal his personality—many hitherto unpublished''. York: William Sessions, 1991. *''Говорит сам Джордж Фокс: тексты, раскрывающие его личнотсь (многие публикуются впервые)''. Отобрано, отредактировано и представлено Хью Мак-Грегором Россом. Ленинград: .n. *''The Gospel of Thomas: newly presented to bring out the meaning, with introductions paraphrases and notes''. Colchester: The Millrind Press, 1997. . Second edition Element Books, . First edition York: Ebor Press, *''Jesus untouched by the Church: His Teachings in the Gospel of Thomas''. Calligraphy by John Blamires. York: William Sessions Limited, 1998.
''Thirty Essays on the Gospel of Thomas''
Cathair na Mart: Evertype, 2008. . 4th edition Watkins Publishing.
Fox: A Christian mystic''
Cathair na Mart: Evertype, 2008.

References

External links

The Gospel of Thomas collection
Hugh McGregor Ross' web site about translation and commentary on the Gospel of Thomas. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ross, Hugh Mcgregor 1917 births 2014 deaths English computer scientists English Quakers History of computing in the United Kingdom People involved with Unicode