You can also find the date and agenda in the document LEO Computers Society Annual General Meeting which you can download by clicking on this link. The document contains all the instructions and links required to register for the AGM and for registering Proxy votes etc.
September 1951 – At J. Lyons & Co on Wednesday, 5th September 1951 the Bakery Valuations programme was run to completion on real data as an experiment to test the hardware. As noted in Ernest Lenaerts notebook for that date it ran from 3:50 to 5:35 without a fault and was the longest run of any programme at that time.
The BBC programme Antiques Road Trip made a stop off at Cambridge to visit the Cambridge Computer History Museum and interviewed Jason Fitzpatrick the Museum founder. Jason covered many interesting topics including early calculators, EDSAC, LEO and the BBC Micro and ARM chips.
You can hear and view the section from Cambridge Here
The Presentation that Neville Lyons gave on the LEO Computers Society Zoom on 13 May 2021 is now on YouTube
2021 marks LEO’s 70th Anniversary Year – unfortunately the Trustees felt they had to postpone the Reunion from 2021 but replace it with a series of Zoom events to celebrate the events of 1951 (see the post on the new Zoom dates) The new date for the Reunion at the Victory Services Club is Sunday, 10th April 2022
See Here for the new Zoom dates
There is a revised date for our Reunion – Sunday, 10th April 2022. Details will follow
On 15th February 1951, a LEO diary note read: ‘It can be said that on this day, LEO performed its first programme before HRH Princess Elizabeth.’
LEO I was still under development at that time but later in 1951 LEO ran its first programme.
The Society Secretary wrote to the Queen earlier and received this reply a few days ago.
Ernest Lenaerts who was one of the designers of LEO I kept a detailed diary with technical notes and recordings of events left the following entry in his record of 16 February 1951
16-2-51
HRH was no more and no less impressed than I had expected. The information printed by the Teleprinter was unintelligible except of course for the message printed at the bottom which provided some light relief. Fortunately LEO made few mistakes – obviously not subject to stage fright and the Demo went off smoothly. A little more interest was shown I think in the interior of the machine when she saw the complexity of the circuits – how many of this machines like these in existence?
Only one other in working condition – No others on commercial clerical problems. This auspicious occasion called for an enormous improve in general tidyness of the lab and I must make an effort to preserve this. My own desk was clear for the occasion – the first time in months. Work on the machine can go ahead again and I have been given a more or less free hand to proceed on which problem I deem the best tackled first. The object will be to bring the machine to full operating condition as soon as possible so that Caminer & Co can get [[weaving]] on some of the programmes that they have kept up their sleeves for so long. The first and most obvious fault to be cleared is the corruption in the Teleprinter which I Think are due to breakthro in the output Unit. Other troubles to be cleared are occasional “1”s being added into the store. These have the effect of spoiling all of the test programmes received from Cambridge ”
Following the successful AGM using Zoom to hold the meeting online we have decided to try to have more regular meetings. The next one is on Mon 08-Mar 2021 10:30 GMT
We are organizing a new series of Zoom Meetings.
See Below
Wednesday Online celebrations!
During the past year we have discovered that online forums and presentations have been a great way to get our members together. Zoom has allowed former colleagues, now living in different continents to reminisce together and for, 22nd September 17.00 BST AGM including updates on all our activities and a vote for Trustees. This will be followed by a discussion among members on ideas for the future.
Tuesday, 19th October 10.30 BST We hope to bring you a tour of The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. As many of you will know, TNMoC has a reconstruction of EDSAC, the computer built at Cambridge which Lyons helped to fund so that they could develop a commercial computer for themselves.
Wednesday, 17th November 15.00 GMT Our new LEO Film! By this date in 1951, LEO was almost ready to run its first regular clerical run working on the Lyons Bakery Valuations Job. As part of our National Lottery Heritage Fund programme, we have had a 15 minute film made about LEO. This will be given its press launch in late November to chime with the actual anniversary itself, but we have managed to arrange for our members to be given an exclusive pre-launch viewing. The film will be followed by an opportunity for members to comment and for a discussion with the filmmakers.
LEO Matters from May 2021 in desktop published format. Edited by Hilary Caminer and published by Bernard Behr.
Contents: (Clicking on the highlights below will take you straight to the page containing the item highlighted. To open the whole document click on the image of the front page.
Date : November 2020
