The Management of a Large Commercial Computer Bureau

Lewis, Joyce

doi:10.1093/comjnl/7.4.255

The Computer Journal

1965

DOI: 10.1093/comjnl/7.4.255

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The Management of a Large Commercial Computer Bureau

Joyce Lewis¹

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1969

2012

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“…Good examples are the IEEE Journal Annals of the History of Computing in the US and the Computer Journal in the UK both of which have carried a number of papers related to LEO over the years (Anderson 2004, Aris 2000, Caminer 1958, Caminer 1997, Caminer 2003, Delve and Anderson 2001, Lewis 1963, Lewis 1964). Important papers reviewing the achievements of the LEO team and their importance in the history of computing were contributed by senior American Scholars (Baskerville 2003, Mason 2004).…”

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Remembering LEO

Land

2012

IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology

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Abstract.It is now more than 60 years since the world's first business use of a computer, the valuation of bakery output, was rolled-out on the LEO I computer at Cadby Hall in London, the headquarters of the food production and catering company J. Lyons and Company. LEO I had been designed and built as a computer to be used for business data processing by a team of engineers recruited by Lyons, with a basic design following the design of the Cambridge University EDSAC. The story of the Lyons initiative has been recorded and explanations of how a company in the food business came to build a computer has been told in books and articles in the last decades (-see Appendix 1 for a comprehensive bibliography of material relating to LEO). This chapter remembers the contribution made by LEO. Keywords: Business computers, J. Lyons and Company, LEO.The late David Caminer passionately wanted the world to be reminded of the LEO heritage. He had been instrumental in setting up and managing the LEO programming and systems function (Aris 2000, Ferry 2012. He felt that J. Lyons and the LEO team had played an important role in what is now taken for granted -the use of computers in society for a wide range of activities other than mathematical calculations. And he was concerned because it seemed to him that the part played by LEO had been written out of the histories of computing then being published -the 1980s and later, and that as a result there was only a very limited memory of the LEO legacy. A good example is that the 875 page Concise Encyclopaedia of Computer Science (Reilly 2004), intended as a reference book for students, devotes half a sentence to LEO in Appendix III on page 832. The UK's Professor Martin Campbell-Kelly, one of the world's leading computer historians, in his History of the Software Industry (Campbell-Kelly, 2003) makes no mention of LEO and little of British software despite the pioneering achievements of LEO and other British companies, concentrating largely on American initiatives. He writes, (page 10), "... I probably have a better knowledge of the British software industry than of the American. However, I felt unable to incorporate much material on the British software industry because it would have appeared disproportionate, would have appeared chauvinistic". Such modesty can lead to the making of myths.It was David Caminer who, supported by a small group of old enthusiastic LEO hands, was determined to ensure that the legacy of LEO would be written into computer history. Independently Peter Bird, the ex-head of Systems Development at Remembering LEO 23 J. Lyons & Company Limited, had long thought it was important for the LEO story to be part of computer history, and over a number of years, working very much on his own, had compiled a history of the LEO project, which apart from the historical narrative included much technical and personal detail. To publish the book he even set up his own publishing company, and in 1994 published 'LEO: The First Business Computer' (Bird 1994).It was in his later...

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Remembering LEO

Land

2012

IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology

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Formen der gemeinsamen Computerbenutzung

Heinrich

1969

Gemeinsame Computerbenutzung in Der Industrie

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The Management of a Large Commercial Computer Bureau

Cited by 2 publications

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Remembering LEO

Remembering LEO

Formen der gemeinsamen Computerbenutzung

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