Bermuda computer pioneer Martin Cusack, who helped bring the Island into the digital age, has died at the age of 93.

Mr Cusack, who died last month, worked for electronics firm NCR in the 1950s and was responsible for the first electronic payments system for the Bermuda Government in 1951-52.

The then hi-tech system did away with pen-and-ink accounts ledgers and hand-written cheques, as well as civil servants being paid in cash.

Around 20 years later, Mr Cusack proposed and delivered the first mainframe computers to be used in Bermuda, with the first customers being the then-Bank of Bermuda and the Bank of Butterfield.

Both banks converted to computer-based accounts in 1970, on the same day Bermuda dropped sterling and converted to dollars.

Following the successful changeover at the banks, Belco, the former phone company Telco and other major local businesses also changed over to computers.

Mr Cusack retired in 1984 after more than 40 years with NCR, which eventually traded in Bermuda as the Bermuda Business Machines Company.

Irish-American Mr Cusack was made a life honorary member of the NCR awards organisation on retirement and regularly travelled to worldwide conventions.

Mr Cusack used his retirement to devote himself to his lifelong interest in history, writing and aircraft.

A friend said: “He was able to combine an interest in aeroplanes, journal keeping and amateur photographic skills to create a photo-journal of aircraft from the 1930s.”

Mr Cusack also met powered flight pioneer Orville Wright in Dayton, Ohio, on Mr Wright’s 73rd birthday.

And in 2002, he attended the 75th anniversary celebration of Charles Lindbergh’s first flight across the Atlantic at the invitation of Mr Lindbergh’s daughter Reeve.

He also wrote a book, Journal of a Voyage from Portland to Fremantle on board the Convict Ship Hougoumont, based on the experiences of an ancestor transported to Australia for writing anti-British letters to an Irish newspaper in the wake of the failed 1867 Fenian rising against British rule in Ireland.

Mr Cusack, who worked in Accra, Gold Coast, now Ghana, before coming to Bermuda, also wrote a memoir for his family based on the last days of colonialism in the country.

A friend said: “All who knew him will miss his discussions of history, his keen sense of humour, the stimulus of his expressing strong views on the absurdity of racial discrimination and the importance of striving to live as a sovereign individual in a world plagued by destructive economic policies.”

New Jersey-born Mr Cusack, who went to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, joined NCR in 1943 in Philadelphia and moved to Accra in 1948.

He is survived by wife Maureen, daughters Hilary Midon (William), Mary Cusack and Audrey Cusack, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Mr Cusack was buried at Calvary Cemetery, Devonshire, after a funeral Mass at St Michael’s Catholic Church in Paget.