The LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) was a series of early computer systems created by J. Lyons and Co. The first in the series, the LEO I, was the first computer used for commercial business applications.
The prototype LEO I was modelled closely on the CambridgeEDSAC. Its construction was overseen by Oliver Standingford, Raymond Thompson and David Caminer of J. Lyons and Co. LEO I ran its first business application in 1951. In 1954 Lyons formed LEO Computers Ltd to market LEOI and its successors LEOII and LEOIII to other companies. LEO Computers eventually became part of English Electric Company (EEL), (EELM), then English Electric Computers (EEC), where the same team developed the faster LEO360 and even faster LEO326 models. It then passed to International Computers Limited (ICL) and ultimately Fujitsu.
LEO series computers were still in use until 1981.
Origins and initial design
J. Lyons and Co. was one of the UK's leading catering and food manufacturing companies in the first half of the 20th century. In 1947, two of its senior managers, Oliver Standingford and Raymond Thompson, were sent to the United States to look at new business methods developed during World War II. During the visit, they met Herman Goldstine who was one of the original developers of ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer. Standingford and Thompson saw the potential of computers to help solve the problem of administering a major business enterprise. They also learned from Goldstine that, back in the UK, Douglas Hartree and Maurice Wilkes were actually building another such machine, the pioneering EDSAC computer, at the University of Cambridge.[1]
On their return to the UK, Standingford and Thompson visited Hartree and Wilkes in Cambridge and were favourably impressed with their technical expertise and vision. Hartree and Wilkes estimated that EDSAC was 12–18 months from completion, but said that this interval could be shortened by additional funding. Standingford and Thompson wrote a report to the Lyons' board recommending that Lyons should acquire or build a computer to meet their business needs. The board agreed that, as a first step, Lyons would provide Hartree and Wilkes with £2,500 for the EDSAC project, and would also provide them with the services of a Lyons electrical engineer, Ernest Lenaerts. EDSAC was completed and ran its first program in May 1949.[2]
Following the successful completion of EDSAC, the Lyons board agreed to start the construction of their own machine, expanding on the EDSAC design. The LEO computer room, which took up around 2,500 square feet of floor space, was at Cadby Hall in Hammersmith.[3]
The Lyons machine was christened Lyons Electronic Office, or LEO. On the recommendation of Wilkes, Lyons recruited John Pinkerton, a radar engineer and research student at Cambridge, as team leader for the project. Lenaerts returned to Lyons to work on the project, and Wilkes provided training for Lyons' engineer Derek Hemy, who would be responsible for writing LEO's programs. On 15 February 1951 the computer, carrying out a simple test program, was shown to HRHPrincess Elizabeth.[4] The first business application to be run on LEO was Bakery Valuations, which computed the costs of ingredients used in bread and cakes.[5] This was successfully run on 5 September 1951,[4] and LEO took over Bakery Valuations calculations completely on 29–30 November 1951.[6][4]
Mary Coombs was employed in 1952 as the first female programmer to work on LEO, and as such she is recognized as the first female commercial programmer.[7][8][9][10][11]
Five files of archive material on the LEO Computer patent are held at the British Library and can be accessed through the British Library Archives catalogue.[12]
Design
LEO I's clock speed was 500kHz, with most instructions taking about 1.5ms to execute.[13][14][15] To be useful for business applications, the computer had to be able to handle a number of data streams, input and output, simultaneously. Therefore, its chief designer, John Pinkerton, designed the machine to have multiple input/output buffers. In the first instance, these were linked to fast paper tape readers and punches, fast punched card readers and punches, and a 100-line-per-minute tabulator. Later, other devices, including magnetic tape, were added. Its ultrasonic delay-line memory based on tanks of mercury, with 2K (2048) 35-bit words (i.e., 83⁄4kilobytes), was four times as large as that of EDSAC. The systems analysis was carried out by David Caminer.[16]
Applications and successors
A circuit board from a LEO III computer
Lyons used LEO I initially for valuation jobs, but its role was extended to include payroll, inventory, and so on. One of its early tasks was the elaboration of daily orders, which were phoned in every afternoon by the shops and used to calculate the overnight production requirements, assembly instructions, delivery schedules, invoices, costings, and management reports. This was the first instance of an integrated management information system.[17] The LEO project was also a pioneer in outsourcing: in 1956, Lyons started doing the payroll calculations for Ford UK and others on the LEO I machine. The success of this led to the company dedicating one of its LEO II machines to bureau services. Later, the system was used for scientific computations as well. Met Office staff used a LEO I before the Met Office bought its own computer, a Ferranti Mercury, in 1959.[18]
In 1954, with the decision to proceed with LEO II and interest from other commercial companies, Lyons formed LEO Computers Ltd.
The first LEO III was completed in 1961; it was a solid-state machine with a 13.2μs cycle time ferrite core memory.[19] It was microprogrammed and was controlled by a multitasking "Master program" operating system, which allowed concurrent running of as many as 12 application programs.
Users of LEO computers programmed in two coding languages: Intercode,[20] a low-level assembler type language; and CLEO (acronym: Clear Language for Expressing Orders), the COBOL equivalent.[21]
One of the features that LEO III shared with many computers of the day was a loudspeaker connected to the central processor via a divide-by-100 circuit and an amplifier which enabled operators to tell whether a program was looping by the distinctive sound it made.[22] Another quirk was that many intermittent faults were due to faulty connectors and could be temporarily fixed by briskly strumming the card handles.[citation needed]
Some LEO III machines purchased in the mid-to-late 1960s remained in commercial use at GPO Telephones, the forerunner of British Telecom, until 1981, primarily producing telephone bills.[5][19] They were kept running using parts from redundant LEOs purchased by the GPO.[citation needed]
Fate and legacy
In 1963, LEO Computers Ltd was merged into English Electric Company and this led to the breaking up of the team that had inspired LEO computers. The company continued to build the LEO III, and went on to build the faster LEO360 and even faster LEO326 models, which had been designed by the LEO team before the takeover.
English Electric LEO Computers (EEL) (1963), then English Electric Leo Marconi (EELM) (1964), later English Electric Computers (EEC) (1967), eventually merged with International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) and others to form International Computers Limited (ICL) in 1968. In the 1980s, there were still ICL 2900 mainframes running LEO programs, using an emulator written in ICL2960 microcode at the Dalkeith development centre.[23] At least one modern emulator has been developed which can run some original LEO III software on a modern server.[24] ICL was bought by Fujitsu in 1990.
Whether its investment in LEO actually benefited J. Lyons is unclear. Nick Pelling notes that before LEO I the company already had a proven, industry-leading system using clerks that gave it "near-real-time management information on more or less all aspects of its business", and that no jobs were lost when the system was computerized. In addition, LEO Computers lost money on many of its sales because of unrealistically low prices.[25]
In 2018, the Centre for Computing History along with LEO Computers Society were awarded funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund for their project aiming to bring together, preserve, archive and digitise a range of LEO Computers artefacts, and documents.[26] The Centre's museum gallery has an area dedicated to LEO, and as of 2021[update] they are also working on a LEO virtual reality project.[27][3] In November 2021, to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the first successful full program run on LEO I, the project released a film about the history of LEO, which went on to win Video of the Year in the Association of British Science Writers Awards in July 2022.[28][29]
The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was an early British computer. Inspired by John von Neumann's seminal First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, the machine was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England. EDSAC was the second electronic digital stored-program computer to go into regular service.
The history of computing hardware covers the developments from early simple devices to aid calculation to modern day computers.
Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes was an English computer scientist who designed and helped build the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC), one of the earliest stored program computers, and who invented microprogramming, a method for using stored-program logic to operate the control unit of a central processing unit's circuits. At the time of his death, Wilkes was an Emeritus Professor at the University of Cambridge.
J. Lyons & Co. was a British restaurant chain store, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1884 by Joseph Lyons and his brothers in law, Isidore and Montague Gluckstein. Lyons’ first teashop opened in Piccadilly, London in 1894, and from 1909 they developed into a chain of teashops, with the firm becoming a staple of the High Street in the UK. At its peak the chain numbered around 200 cafes. The teashops provided for tea and coffee, with food choices consisting of hot dishes and sweets, cold dishes and sweets, and buns, cakes and rolls.
International Computers Limited (ICL) was a British computer hardware, computer software and computer services company that operated from 1968 until 2002. It was formed through a merger of International Computers and Tabulators (ICT), English Electric Computers (EEC) and Elliott Automation in 1968. The company's most successful product line was the ICL 2900 Series range of mainframe computers.
The Department of Computer Science and Technology, formerly the Computer Laboratory, is the computer science department of the University of Cambridge. As of 2023 it employed 56 faculty members, 45 support staff, 105 research staff, and about 205 research students. The current Head of Department is Professor Alastair Beresford.
David John Wheeler was a computer scientist and professor of computer science at the University of Cambridge.
Douglas Rayner Hartree was an English mathematician and physicist most famous for the development of numerical analysis and its application to the Hartree–Fock equations of atomic physics and the construction of a differential analyser using Meccano.
John Maurice McClean Pinkerton was a pioneering British computer designer. Along with David Caminer, he designed England's first business computer, the LEO computer, produced by J. Lyons and Co in 1951.
The Computer Conservation Society (CCS) is a British organisation, founded in 1989. It is under the joint umbrella of the British Computer Society (BCS), the London Science Museum and the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry.
Conway Maurice Berners-Lee was an English mathematician and computer scientist who worked as a member of the team that developed the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercial stored program electronic computer. He was born in Birmingham in 1921 and was the father of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, and Professor Mike Berners-Lee, researcher into climate change.
David Caminer OBE was a British computer engineer who helped to develop the world's first business computer, LEO. He has been called "the world's first corporate electronic systems analyst" and "the world's first software engineer". He carried out the systems analysis and charting for the world's first routine business computer job, thus he is also called "the first business application programmer".
Jack Howlett CBE was a British mathematician and computer scientist who was head of the Atlas Computer Laboratory for the duration of its existence.
Beatrice Helen Worsley was a Canadian computer scientist, the first woman in the country to work in that profession. She received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Cambridge with Maurice Wilkes as adviser, the first Ph.D. granted in what would today be known as computer science. She wrote the first program to run on EDSAC, co-wrote the first compiler for Toronto's Ferranti Mark 1, wrote numerous papers in computer science, and taught computers and engineering at Queen's University and the University of Toronto for over 20 years before her death at the age of 50.
David Fielding Hartley FBCS is a computer scientist and Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. He was Director of the University of Cambridge Computing Service from 1970–1994, Chief Executive of United Kingdom Joint Academic Network (JANET) 1994–1997, and Executive Director of Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) 1997–2002. He is now much involved with the National Museum of Computing.
George Eric Felton was a British computer scientist. He undertook pioneering work in the field of operating systems and programming software and is the father of the GEORGE Operating System. He held the world record for the computation of π.
Mary Clare Coombs was a British computer programmer and schoolteacher. Employed in 1952 as the first female programmer to work on the LEO computers, she is recognised as the first female commercial programmer. The National Museum of Computing documents her contribution.
Mavis Kathleen Hinds (1929–2009) was an English meteorologist who, together with Fred Bushby, pioneered the use of computers to carry out meteorological calculations in the UK. She studied Mathematics at University College London (UCL) and on graduating joined the UK Meteorological (Met) Office in 1951, attending their Initial Forecasting Course that year. She went on to work with Bushby in using the Lyons Electronic Office (LEO), an early computer developed by J. Lyons & Co of Cadby Hall, London, becoming an expert in writing, running and correcting computer programs for weather forecasting. She was seen at that time as one of the first prominent female meteorologists and also the first to play a leading role in the development of Numerical Weather Prediction, not only in the UK but also worldwide.
The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer was the first book on computer programming. Published in 1951, it was written by Maurice Wilkes, David Wheeler, and Stanley Gill of Cambridge University. The book was based on the authors' experiences constructing and using EDSAC, one of the first practical computers in the world.
↑ Berry, F. J. (1 February 1959). "Intercode, a Simplified Coding Scheme for AMOS". The Computer Journal. 2 (2). AMOS - Ferranti Mark I*: 55–58. doi:10.1093/comjnl/2.2.55. ISSN0010-4620.
Caminer, D. T.; Aris, J. B.; Hermon, P. M.; Land, F. F. (1998). LEO: the incredible story of the world's first business computer. McGraw-Hill. ISBN0-07-009501-9.
Campbell-Kelly, M., (1989). ICL: A Business and Technical History. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Ferry, Georgina (2003), A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Tea Shops and the World's First Office Computer, London: Fourth Estate, ISBN1-84115-185-8
Hally, M. (2005). Electronic Brains: stories from the dawn of the computer age. Washington:Joseph Henry Press. Chapter 5: LEO the Lyons Computer. ISBN0-309-09630-8.
Land, F. F., (1997). LEO, the First Business Computer: A Personal Experience. In Glass, R. L., editor. In the Beginning: Recollections of Software Pioneers, pages 134–153. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA.
PEP, (1957). Three Case Studies in Automation, PEP, London.
Simmons, J. R. M., (1962). LEO and the Managers, MacDonald, London.
Aris, J. B. B. (1996). "Systems Design – Then and Now". Resurrection, Summer issue 1996.
Land, F. F. (1996). "Systems Analysis for Business Applications". Resurrection, Summer issue 1996.
Land, F. F. (2000). "The First Business Computer: A Case Study in User-Driven Automation". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 22, No. 3, July–September, pp.16–26.
Caminer, D. T. (1958), "...And How to Avoid Them". The Computer Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1.
Caminer, D. T. (1997). "LEO and its Applications: The Beginning of Business Computing". The Computer Journal, Vol. 40, No. 10.
Caminer, D. T. (2003). "Behind the Curtain at LEO: A Personal Reminiscence". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 25, No. 2, April–June, pp3–13.
Hendry, J. (1988). "The Teashop Computer Manufacturer: J. Lyons". Business History, Vol. 29, No. 8, pp.73–102.
Land, Frank (1999). "A Historical Analysis of Implementing IS at J. Lyons." In Currie, W. G.; Galliers, R. D., editors. Rethinking Management Information Systems, pp.310–325. Oxford University Press.
Savard, John J. G. (2018) [2005]. "Computer Arithmetic". quadibloc. The Early Days of Hexadecimal. Archived from the original on 16 July 2018. Retrieved 16 July 2018. (Has information on the LEO III character set.)
External links
LEO Computers Society. Includes LEOPEDIA which is intended to be a comprehensive reference to archive, museum and media holdings and references to LEO computers, and individuals associated with them, updated periodically by Frank Land.
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