Toby Churchill recieves an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree

The team at Toby Churchill Ltd were delighted to hear about the award given to the company’s president, Toby Churchill on the 22nd June 2010.

Toby received from Bath University an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree at a private ceremony that was filmed and later shown on the 1st July at the University of Bath presentation ceremony.

Toby was a student at Bath in 1965.  As part of his degree he spent a two-month work placement in Paris and Clermond Ferrand in 1968. During the visit he swam in a lake and contracted viral encephalitis which resulted in him becoming paraplegic with a speech disability. He completed his degree from home and graduated in 1971. As communication aids at the time were few and far between Toby designed his own, the Lightwriter^®, a portable text-to-speech communication aid changing the lives of many people with speech loss. His inventions later earned him many awards.

Now, the company that Toby founded, translates and exports its product to 24 different countries.  Toby Churchill Ltd has supplied the Lightwriter^®, its flagship product, to over 100,000 people across the world; people who would otherwise not be able to communicate. It recently celebrated record results, with sales topping the £3 million mark for the first time in its 37 year history. The company currently employs 32 people at its factory in Over, Cambridgeshire.