My friend Herbert Munk, who has died aged 94, was an electrical engineer who spent 40 years at GEC in Coventry, where his achievements in telecoms included working on the team that developed the UK’s first branch telephone exchange controlled by computer.
Herbert was born in Vienna to an Austrian mother, Elly (nee Loewenbein), and a Czech father, Hans. Soon after his birth the family escaped to Zagreb in Yugoslavia, then to British-ruled Kenya, where his father ultimately became a coffee farmer.
