LEO editor

MOD Secrets of Eastcote Government Office Site: The Customs Excise Years. 
(In 1947, under the inspiration of TR Thompson, Lyons, the firm of tea-shops, started – with remarkable foresight – to take a  serious  interest  in applying digital  computing to their accounting and office work generally.   By 1954, LEO (Lyons Electrical Office) computers carried out 3 commercial jobs  for  Lyons  –  the  bakeries’  payroll,  calculation  of production and schedule dispatch to 150 tea shops, and  the provision of management information.)
The the earlier Elliot 405 was replaced in 1963 by the tenth LEO 3 ever built. It  was  housed  in  H  Bay  (thought  by  many  to  have  been originally intended as the location for the Operating Theatre had D-Day proved more widely injurious), and, being a very advanced and powerful machine for its time, it aroused so much interest that a glass wall was built around it to allow for a viewing gallery. Data input was via Hollerith punched cards (rectangular holes, and 80 columns), and paper tape.  At this stage the purpose of the site’s computing power was purely for Census Office work, but later the Department’s Payroll system was computerised and run on the LEO, a huge undertaking. The LEO worked until 1971

MOD Secrets of Eastcote Government Office Site: Read More »

presentation at the London School of Economics on 14th October 2016. The presentation took the form of a conversation between the speaker, the Executive Chair of Alphabet, the Google parent company, and Professor Chrisanthi Avgerou of the LSE and the audience. The presentation can be heard on the LSE podcast at Podcast The event was jointly sponsored by LSE’s Department of Management and the LEO Computers Society. It was intended to be the first of an annual LEO lecture.

Schmidt, E. (2016) From LEO to Deep Mind: Britain’s computing pioneers, Read More »