Worthing man who pioneered Icelandic language in computing and information technology, long before Google, is knighted

In a career spanning more than 50 years, Örn S. Kaldalóns has been recognised for his pioneering work in the support and promotion of the Icelandic language in computing and information technology.

He received the Knight's Cross of the Icelandic Falcon Award in January and was subsequently knighted by the President of Iceland, Guðni Th. Jóhannesson.

Örn, who volunteers at the St Barnabas House charity shop in Manor Parade, has been living in Durrington with his wife Kamilla for 17 years. They met in Worthing in 1974 when Örn was visiting a friend one weekend and were married a year later. The couple lived in Iceland for 30 years, where she became an Icelandic citizen and changed her name from Suzanne Mary Depledge to Kamilla Suzanne Kaldalóns.

A systems engineer for IBM Iceland, Örn took the initiative to combine two incomplete Icelandic code pages into one, ensuring they covered the common character set in Western Europe.

He was working in Torolab, IBM's laboratory in Toronto, from 1982 to 1983 and his job was to provide information on the Icelandic language, explaining there are 36 characters in the Icelandic alphabet, how they are sorted and how accented characters are entered via dead key on the keyboard.

Örn explained: "This resulted in a new code page CECP 871 (Country Extended Code Page 871), compatible with the rest of W-Europe. Consequently, IBM supported Icelandic as the 12th language of W-Europe. This was in the year 1982 during the cold war, when Europe was split in East and West.

"A code page determines the bit configuration of each character or byte in the character set. The word byte means by eight, since there are 8 bits in one byte = 256 combinations, or 2 to the power of 8.

"In 1988, IBM requested me to compile all conventions in use in Iceland, i.e. how to sort characters and names – in Iceland we sort by the Christian name, how we write addresses and post codes, telephone numbers, location on the globe, how we write date and time, local time, always on summer time and generally anything needed to know when writing operating systems for computers.

"I gathered the necessary information for IBM and co-founded a Professional IT Council in Icelandic Standards, where we welcomed representatives from Windows, Apple and other software manufacturers. This resulted in the Icelandic Standard IST-130, compiled by a committee I presided over. Google had not been formed back then and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates had understandably no idea about Icelandic conventions.

"I was IBM Iceland's translation manager and answered all National Language Support questions for IBM Iceland. We translated certain IBM operating systems and software from English into Icelandic. This is only part of over 50 years' career."

Daughter Sólveig Avina said she was so proud her dad had been recognised for his groundbreaking work getting Icelandic letters, words and language included in every international computer language and information technology.