Tony Weber: LEO Australia. “I was in the founding management group (Accountant/finance director) of the Australian subsidiary in the early 1960’s under the management of Peter Gyngell. I had 25 years service with the Leo/ICL group of Companies, which then lead to another 30 years in the industry including service in Hong Kong then Boston USA. I spent the last 18 years up to 2015 on the Board of the public Company Prophecy International Limited; an Australian listed software Company. I have great memories of Leo, and the service it provided to the Australian business community in the early computer days, and enriched employment to 100’s of staff in the IT industry.”
Geoff Weston, I read your piece in U3A Matters with great interest as I believe that I was involved with the first use of computing in the civil engineering industry. I worked for John Laing Ltd. (now Laing O’Rourke) under John Mason who was Project Surveyor. In ’58/’59 I was a very junior surveyor on the London to Yorkshire motorway (M1) when a capable body was needed for a boring but important task. I drew, on specially printed pro-forma sheets, cross sectional profiles of the construction at 100 foot intervals (chainages) of our “B” section from Ampthill to North of Newport Pagnell, about 650 in total. I added all the data points numerically and passed these sheets to the boss who combined them with other three sections and sent them to Cadby Hall where this enormous piece of kit called Leo worked out the total volumes of soil cut out, placed in cuttings, spread as topsoil etc.etc. This was to check the Ministry of Transport’s figures and I understand that there was a significant difference therefore value. I never heard anything more about this and it seems to have escaped into the mists of time. By coincidence, my grandfather, uncle and other relatives worked at Cadby Hall.
Fred Whittaker I was a low person in the scheme of things at Minerva Road 1966-68. I had a sort of admin role to perform which meant strolling around the various engineering offices weekly and asking questions about timeliness of process. This was logged and forwarded to a higher office in Kidsgrove. I guess it helped the chief engineers to plan the end products. I had other duties to do. One was to receive engineering changes to the display mainframe together with the parts to be installed…usually minor. My dilemma was that I was not qualified to do any installation and the engineers had their work to do. I had to ask any engineer available on the floor to do it for me. It always worked. A bit off the cuff you might say. That probably summarizes my work life there…lots of odd duties without a particular job description. When the end came and we all lost our jobs I got hurt, injured my spine, and was hospitalized and off sick for months. The company continued to pay my salary until I was well and found another job. My hat off to them. One time I was phoned by MGM films who were enquiring about renting a main frame for the film Hot Millions, starring Peter Ustinov and Maggie Smith. It was about a main frame being compromised by some freak occurrence and millions being siphoned away. Ustinov being the happy operator. The MGM producers came to Minerva Road to look around and saw the Spectra 70…I think it was…..which was all glossy and new but only there for testing and showing to potential buyers. I had to tell them that it wasn’t available for hire and they had to settle for a second generation main frame which looked dowdy and was full of external cables etc. The post office had bought a few I believe? (Editor, actually a LEO 326, 3d generation computer) They agreed to rent that plus an engineer to maintain it and so it went forward. I saw the film later and it wasn’t very good. I had a very good time there at Minerva rd, and by meeting so many gifted engineers had an education nearly every day. A few of our colleagues were installing a main frame in Ostrava Czechoslovakia when the Soviet army invaded and took over the country. I believe it was a coal mine or coal industry that had bought the machine. Our colleagues were eventually brought home after some delay. No harm done…although I never heard anything more about the main frame or if it was paid for. I have no photos of my time there except for some photos of a cricket match between the ladies and gentlemen. Plus a couple of photos of the Joe Lyons rugby team playing at the Greenford ground. Nice memories. After I left Minerva Road I worked at Ultra electronics until they also laid off about 300 people. I then thought I would go to another country and get laid off there. I applied to Canada and arrived there in July 1970. I have been in Canada ever since. I now live in Sooke on Vancouver island BC. My main employment was for the Ontario government in the Ministry of Community and Social something in Toronto. After eight years they made it clear that I had no further use to them. I got the message and quit. I had saved up enough money to buy a franchise in the printing industry and so I travelled to Long Island NY for a two week intensive course. Back in Toronto I opened up for business hired a pressman and hit the businesses around for work. This was successful for twenty years until at 61 I sold the business and the unit I had bought earlier and retired. I got married in 1990 and lived in suburban Toronto until retirement when we sold up and drove west to BC in 1999. https://www.dropbox.com/s/cxntixmcw30spej/Fred%20Whittaker%20memoir.doc?dl=0 More from Fred Whittaker Here are some images of yesteryear. Bottom right is myself in my office in Minerva rd pulling the strings on Mon General. The others are three images of Robin Stanley Jones and Linda on their wedding day on the Thames somewhere. Also pictured is Nigel something by Robin’s Borzoi. His wife is the central figure standing. Nigel was on the commissioning of Leo Three in Czechoslovakia when the Russkies invaded. Nigel and his wife coincidentally met me again in Toronto where he was playing Rugby by Lake Ontario. They later moved west to Kitchener..I think..and then lost touch. The others pictured maybe other employees or friends…can’t say. The lettering on the wall is letraset by me. I hope you find these interesting and if you want better images I can do that.
Pat Whitaker Joined Cerebos Foods Limited – a LEO III customer – in 1964 – after graduating with an honours degree in mathematics. Pat had taken the LEO aptitude test before the job offer and taken the LEO programming course at Hartree House. Pat worked on the Cerebos sales invoicing suite using Intercode. In 1967 Cerebos replaced its LEO III with a System 4 computer
Michael Wilson Currently lives in Canada. I joined Leo in 1961 at Minerva Road. I had just graduated from Teachers College and in those days a teacher was at the bottom of any salary scale. So I applied for and was hired as an Instructor for the LEO III Field Engineering Training School. Soon I was Manager of Leo 3 and KDP 10 training. I had gone to Kidsgrove to learn the KDP 10 and then taught the first class in London. I worked for Reg Allen and then John Wheeler, who I think are still members of our alumni, as I am still in touch with Reg who lives in Dawlish. Until recently I still had Marketing Brochures for Leo 3 and Leo 326 and the Lector and an organisation chart of the School! I took them two years ago to San Jose when I was to meet Dag Spicer at the Museum of Computing. Unfortunately, due to some health problem, we did not meet. However, now cannot find them!!! After over 55 years!!! I will keep searching for them
Norman Witkin, Memoir of working with LEO in South Africa Norman had programmed an ICT HEC computer in South Africa, but seeking wider experience applied for a programming job with LEO Computers in London. Passing the aptitude test he joined the LEO team in Hartree House in 1959 aged just 19, working under John Aris. When LEO reached an agreement with Rand Mines for a LEO III to be managed by Leo Fantl, he was invited to join the LEO team in Johannesburg as a programmer working on the Rand Mines applications, both traditional and more ground-breaking. In 1967 Norman and his family emigrated to US in Cherry Hill, working in a variety of IT jobs including the establishment of an IT start-up. Of his LEO and Rand Mines experience he writes “…for its enlightened management, I tip my hat to LEO’s leadership. The management and operation of LEO Computers in South Africa from inception in the early 1960s and throughout that decade, was efficient, effective, courteous — and principled and fair. I am proud to have been part of its history and lucky to have enjoyed it.” Norman’s full memoir is held in Dropbox at: https://www.dropbox.com/s/isb623nkoy0ouho/Norman%20Witkin%20Memoirs.doc?dl=0
Greg Wojtan MY DAYS WITH LEO At the beginning of October 1963, aged 25, I went to the Milk Marketing Board to do an aptitude test for a job as a LEO computer programmer, thinking that it might be more interesting than selling brushes for Kleen-E-Ze, which had been my job since leaving Edinburgh University that year without a degree but with lots of flower power. There were some 120 of us programmer aspirants who, like me responded to the Times job ad placed by the Milk Marketing Board, but only 2 of us would be hired that day to programme their LEO III (Editor: MMB not on list of LEO III owners). I came in 3rd in terms of the aptitude test, so the lady running the show suggested I nip down to Earl’s Court where there was an Office Efficiency
exhibition and where the LEO computer was being shown. Maybe, with my good results LEO would hire me, she said. So I did that and a nice LEO lady at the exhibition fixed me up for an appointment the following Monday, in Hartree House with the then LEO Programming Manager, at the time; one Bernard Pierce. When I sat down with Bernard he didn’t say anything for about 7 minutes until I asked whether one of us should say something, and asked if it should be me. He stopped doodling and asked me; ”if you have a cup of tea and a cup of milk of the same volume as the tea, and you take a spoon of milk and mix it into the tea, then take a spoon of the tea & milk mixture and mix it into the cup holding only milk, will the tea cup have more milk in it than the milk cup have tea? Or what? Justify your answer”. Hang on, I thought – I’ve already done and passed my aptitude test! But there was no messing with Bernard. So I thought a bit more, gave him the correct answer and was hired to start at LEO the following Monday. A couple of weeks later English Electric appeared and ‘fused’ with us, but I stayed on working on LEO for several years. So, after learning Intercode and CLEO, I was a sort of accolyte to real programmers for several months before I was sent out to my first solo job at Shell (Editor: Shell Mex & BP) in Hemel Hampstead. My task was to use the Shell LEO to find out whether there was any sense in Shell running their Green Shield stamp schemes. In hindsight, the job wasn’t all that difficult, but I did have several panic attacks, especially as it was my first project – when the word project in the world of computers had not yet been invented. Anyway I delivered on time, rushing the results on the final day on my scooter to Shell Mex & BP’s headquartes in the Strand. The results incidentally were that Green Shield stamps did boost Shell sales, but only for some 6 or 7 weeks after the scheme was introduced. In 1965 I worked at Hartree House again, on stuff that really stretched my brain axons to breaking point. This was because I was working with a bright wire called Gordon Scarrot from the Ferranti stable. He taught me Zipf’s law, which I used for years after to detect monopolistic practices, and masses of other esoteric stuff. E.g how to debug radix problems using machine code directly on the machine: Sort of open brain surgery on the poor LEO. Gordon was surely one of the geniuses that got attracted to LEO like a magnet. I did odd jobs for him – him Mentor, me Apprentice. One worthwhile one I remember was to produce a ready reckoner to estimate the duration of sort programmes run on different Mag.Tape configurations. (I think our first 6.5MB LEO discs only appeared a year or two later, essentially solving the data sorting problem. Meanwhile we used painful and unpredictable tape sorting). As I was finishing the reckoner I got to know Ralph Land. Ralph it was who thought it would be a good idea to give me something useful to do. This turned out to be a payroll system for the several thousand employees of the NHKG, Steelworks in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia (Editor: LEO III/41). At the same Mike Carrington (died in the UK in 1967) had to volunteer to do a stock control system for NHKG. We had a year for each job and both managed our assignments OK. (One problem I had that sticks in my mind to this day, was that the payroll programme had to deal with a lady employee of NHKG who was paying for an elephant in installments to an Indian Maharajah that she had been married to, but had run away from). How I got to that first East European LEO job in December 1965 is written up in Hilary’s compendium of Leo reminiscenses (Editor: Remembering LEO). After Czecho, I got moved to Poland to do a monstrous stock control system for all the steelworks in Silesia, for an oufit called HPMOA on a Leo 360. At the time I and my fledgling new family lived just down the road from Katowice in Chorzow – the dirtiest town in Europe!. On an average day 80 tons of dust were deposited on Chorzow from the skies and my daughter spent her early childhood in dark grey nappies. The office was in Katowice, but I and the 4 Polish computer specialists assigned to me to produce this system had to fit into a room measuring 15 sq.m
Penny Woodward, Operator Coventry City LEO !!!/28. I experienced the Leo 111 computer whilst employed by Coventry City Council between 1970-1973. I was a computer operator working three shifts, four persons to a shift, to keep council’s finances running smoothly. Although initially engaged as a trainee computer programmer, part of the training and experience was to work in operations, and I enjoyed the work so much I preferred to stay in that field and asked to remain in my current post. I worked on that machine until it was replaced, and subsequently scrapped. I left that council and took up other work but eventually went back into operations for Rugby Borough Council on a different machine, quite different but almost as antique. Regrettably I took no physical pieces of the old machine but attach some pictures just before it was scrapped, unfortunately not of a good quality
