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    A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Tea Shops and the world’s first office computer (Text Only)
    Unavailable
    A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Tea Shops and the world’s first office computer (Text Only)
    Unavailable
    A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Tea Shops and the world’s first office computer (Text Only)
    Ebook282 pages3 hours

    A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Tea Shops and the world’s first office computer (Text Only)

    By Georgina Ferry

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The eccentric story of one of the most bizarre marriages in the history of British business: the invention of the world's first office computer and the Lyons Teashop.

    The Lyons teashops were one of the great British institutions, providing a cup of tea and a penny bun through the depression and the war, though to the 1970s. Yet Lyons also has a more surprising claim to history.

    In the 1930s John Simmons, a young maths graduate in charge of the clerks' offices, had a dream: to build a machine that would automate the millions of tedious transactions and process them in as little time as possible. Simmons' quest for the first office computer – the Lyons Electronic Office – would take 20 years and involve some of the most brilliant young minds in Britain.

    Interwoven with the story of creating LEO is the story of early computing, from the Difference Engine of Charles Babbage to the codecracking computers at Bletchley Park and the instantly obsolescent ENIAC in the US. It is also the story of post war British computer business: why did it lose the initiative? Why did the US succeed while British design was often superior?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateOct 25, 2012
    ISBN9780007392841
    Unavailable
    A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Tea Shops and the world’s first office computer (Text Only)
    Author

    Georgina Ferry

    Georgina is the author of Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life, a biography of the only British woman scientist to win a Nobel Prize and THE COMMON THREAD (with John Sulston) which is short listed for the 2002 Samuel Johnson Prize. Born in Hong Kong, Georgina has lived in Oxford for the past 19 years. She has worked as a science writer and broadcaster.

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    Reviews for A Computer Called LEO

    4/5

    23 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Interesting impressions of a different era.
    • 4/5
      "On Thursday, 29 November 1951, LEO took over Bakery Valuations from the clerks who had previously done the work, and became the first computer in the world to run a routine office job."LEO wasn't the first computer in the world, nor the fastest. But it was hugely significant -- it was the first that wasn't built by, and for, scientists and mathematicians. It represented the first, uncertain steps down a road that we take for granted these days -- that of business automation. It was a computer designed to be used for the ordinary, the everyday. This book tells its story, and that of the men who dreamed and built it.It's an interesting story, and Ferry tells it well. Much of it seems unlikely, and the whole episode deserves to be more widely known. One of Ferry's stated aims is to redress the imbalance which has seen LEO remain largely unsung and unacknowledged in histories of computing.Computing would go on to be dominated by American firms, supported by investment from government and the military that their British counterparts failed to provide. But for a time, the leaders in the field were a handful of visionaries and pragmatists at a British catering company. Extraordinary.
    • 4/5
      Having lived through computer history and even worked on a relative of the LEO (English Electric Leo KDF6) I found the book fascinating. Gripping even. The author gives an excellent account of the early conception and development of LEO. It was clearly a superior computer ahead of it's time, developed by an enthusiastic bunch of people. It is interesting that the developers believed in strong system methodology as much as computerisation of business systems. The ending was sad to read how the machine and people faded away.
    • 4/5
      A very interesting book, and an excellent read. Nice bibliography of sources on Lyons, computer history, and office history.
    • 4/5
      "On Thursday, 29 November 1951, LEO took over Bakery Valuations from the clerks who had previously done the work, and became the first computer in the world to run a routine office job."LEO wasn't the first computer in the world, nor the fastest. But it was hugely significant -- it was the first that wasn't built by, and for, scientists and mathematicians. It represented the first, uncertain steps down a road that we take for granted these days -- that of business automation. It was a computer designed to be used for the ordinary, the everyday. This book tells its story, and that of the men who dreamed and built it.It's an interesting story, and Ferry tells it well. Much of it seems unlikely, and the whole episode deserves to be more widely known. One of Ferry's stated aims is to redress the imbalance which has seen LEO remain largely unsung and unacknowledged in histories of computing.Computing would go on to be dominated by American firms, supported by investment from government and the military that their British counterparts failed to provide. But for a time, the leaders in the field were a handful of visionaries and pragmatists at a British catering company. Extraordinary.
    • 4/5
      Ferry covers the history of LEO, the Lyons Electronic Office, the first computer designed by and for a business. Along the way, we learn about the history of the Lyons company, best known for its chain of teashops and other catering businesses, and how their management’s quest for ever better and more efficient handling of information led them to choose to develop their own computer, at a time when the only publically known electronic computers were ENIAC and similar machines designed for military use and machines developed in academia.The Lyons company helped fund Cambridge’s EDSAC machine, then built the first LEO with numerous improvements over EDSAC. Lyons differed in their approach in another way—they wrote practical programs to achieve real business results. The teams would analyze business tasks by working with not only the people who wanted the programs, but also the people who did the work. As a result, their applications tended to work extremely well from the start.The LEO team’s attempts to expand their business into supplying computers and consulting to other companies were hurt by management’s lack of support and understanding. Lyons’ attempts to get the British government to help fund their computer business to allow them to provide some real competition to IBM and other American companies also failed; the British government first refused to believe that Lyons—a restaurant and catering company—could provide better systems than established electronic companies, then crippled the British computing industry by forcing independent companies to merge into a muddled, ineffective, and noncompetitive company that staggered on for years before being absorbed into Fujitsu.Ultimately Lyons failed, and LEO was eclipsed by the sales and marketing savvy of IBM and other American companies (helped, of course, by massive American government investment in these companies through the department of defense). But the Brits were there first, and their systems worked very well and continued to run into the 1960s.