Beginnings of a revolution - The Computing Universe: A Journey through a Revolution - page 20

LEO: The first business computer

A curious footnote to the EDSAC is the development of Lyons Electronic
Office, or LEO, the world's first computer specifically designed for business
applications rather than for numerical calculations. The unlikely business
was that of J. Lyons & Co., which ran a nationwide chain of Lyons Tea Shops
as well as Lyons Corner Houses ( Fig. 1.22 ). These offered English high teas and
cream cakes in London and featured uniformed waitresses called “Nippies.”
The catering business required an army of clerks to ensure that the correct
quantity of baked goods was delivered fresh every day and to process the
associated receipts and invoices. It seems obvious to us now that such jobs
can be computerized, but at the time it required real vision to recognize
that a computer originally designed to calcu-
late trajectories of shells could be useful for
nonscientific business applications.
The LEO project was the vision of
John Simmons, a mathematician in the
Organization and Methods Department
of Lyons who was an enthusiastic advo-
cate for automation with computers. After
sending a team to the United States in May
1947, Simmons realized that, with Maurice
Wilkes on their doorstep in Cambridge, he had a local university partner
who could help his company find a solution to its problems. In May 1949,
after the EDSAC was clearly shown to work, Simmons was given the go-
ahead to build LEO. The engineer appointed to design the machine was
John Pinkerton ( B.1.9 ), arguably the first industrial computer engineer. He
assembled a small very talented team and ensured that their modifications
of the EDSAC design took account of the unusual user requirements. Their
type of business jobs was very different from scientific calculations, which
typically had very little input and output and ran for a long time between
operations. The LEO machine had multiple input and output channels and
much more memory than the EDSAC. In addition, because reliability was
a critical concern for running day-to-day business applications, Pinkerton
designed the machine with 28 interchangeable vacuum tube units so that
defective units could be swapped out without delay. The machine was ready
in late 1951, and LEO took over “bakery valuations” from the clerical staff in
November. The machine calculated the value of the bakery output in terms of bread, cakes, and pies from
the bakery input of materials, labor, and power costs. It used the factory costs with the prices and profit
margins to calculate the value of the products distributed to the teashops, grocers, and restaurants. LEO
also calculated the value of products kept in stock. The LEO Computers Company was formed in 1954 and
delivered upgrades of the machine until the early 1960s, when the company merged with English Electric.
In 1968 this company formed the foundation for a new British computer company called International
Computers Ltd., which operated profitably for several decades.

Fig. 1.22 Lyons operated a network
of tea shops and “corner houses”
throughout the United Kingdom and,
surprisingly, pioneered the use of
computers for business calculations.

B.1.9 John Pinkerton (1919-97),
one of the first computer engineers,
pictured in front of the LEO, the first
business computer that he designed
and built as a modified version of
the EDSAC. The machine was built
for J. Lyons & Co. to automate the
record keeping for the production
and delivery of their baked goods to
their famous Lyons Tea Shops. LEO,
Lyons Electronic Office, went into
operation in 1951.