software engineering
Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development.
A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...
company now specialising in text and multimedia
information systems
An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems are composed by four components: task, people ...
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
, and founded in 1970.
Under the chairmanship of John Lansdown, following collaborative research work at the
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It o ...
, System Simulation carried out pioneering computer animation work, applying computer graphics techniques in TV and film creating many advertising sequences, the flight deck instrumentation readouts on the Nostromo spaceship for Ridley Scott's
Alien
Alien primarily refers to:
* Alien (law), a person in a country who is not a national of that country
** Enemy alien, the above in times of war
* Extraterrestrial life, life which does not originate from Earth
** Specifically, intelligent extrater ...
, and the animation of
Martin Lambie-Nairn
Martin John Lambie-Nairn (5 August 1945 – 25 December 2020) was an English designer. He was the founder of his branding agency Lambie-Nairn and was the creative director of branding agency ML-N. He is recognised for having redefined television ...
's original
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...
logo.
More recently System Simulation has specialised in
museum
A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...
information system
An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems are composed by four components: task, people ...
s, commercial and archival image library systems, information management and delivery for publishers, news services and professional and commercial organisations. MuseumIndex+, the museum information management system, supports collections management, digital archives and interactive public access. Clients include the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...
SCRAN
Scran is a Scottish online resource for educational use by the public, schools, further education and higher education. It presents nearly 490,000 (still and moving) images and sounds contributed by museums, galleries, archives and the media. ...
(Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network) and Culture24. They develop content management systems, and CD-ROM/ Web products and services for the publishing sector and for information service providers.
The company provides technical support for the online services of Culture24, the UK's leading virtual museum resource.
The company has often hosted meetings of the
Computer Arts Society The Computer Arts Society (CAS) was founded in 1968, in order to encourage the creative use of computers in the arts.
Foundation
The three founder members of the Society – Alan Sutcliffe, George Mallen, and John Lansdown – had been involved ...
.
Awards won by company and their clients
* British Computer Society IT Award Winner 1994: PLATO-UK with Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital Trust and
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,10 ...
* British Computer Society IT Award Medallist 1995: ROCKnROM with
Michael Wadleigh
Michael Wadleigh, (born September 24, 1942, in Akron, Ohio), is an American film director and cinematographer renowned for his groundbreaking documentary of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, ''Woodstock''.
Biography
A native of Akron, Ohio, Wadleig ...
and
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.BT/
New Statesman
The ''New Statesman'' is a British Political magazine, political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney Webb, Sidney and Beatrice ...
- Best education website 2001: The 24 Hour Museum http://www.culture24.org.uk/
*
American Association of Museums
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
Silver Muse Award 2001 - Excellence in the use of media and technology for collections database and research resource: SCRAN http://www.scran.ac.uk
*
Institute of Information Scientists
The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, since 2017 branded CILIP: The library and information association (pronounced ), is a professional body for librarians, information specialists and knowledge managers in the U ...
Jason Farradine Award 2001 - an outstanding piece of work in the information field: SCRAN http://www.scran.ac.uk
*
National Library for the Blind
The National Library for the Blind (NLB) was a public library in the United Kingdom, founded 1882, which aimed to ensure that people with sight problems have the same access to library services as sighted people. NLB was taken over by the Royal Na ...
Visionary Design Award 2002: The British Museum COMPASS website for accessibility to the visually impaired. www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/compass
* IVCA Biz Net Award Winner - Best public information website 2002: The 24 Hour Museum (since rebranded as "Culture24") http://www.culture24.org.uk/home
*
BECTA
Becta, originally known as the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, was a non-departmental public body (popularly known as a Quango) funded by the Department for Education and its predecessor departments, in the United Kingd ...
/
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
UK Education Website Awards 2002 - shortlisted :SCRAN http://www.scran.ac.uk
* Museums and the Web, Culture 24 Best of the Web Winner in the category "long-lived" April 2010
* Europeana Foundation, Hack4Europe, Casual Curator winner in the category "Social Inclusion" June 2011 Casual Curator , ''Hack4Europe!'', retrieved 30 Aug 2012