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commercial digital computers on the market, and a wave of startup computer man-
ufacturers would continue to expand for two more decades.
LEO
The British LEO computer has a background that is historically and sociologically
interesting. The J. Lyons Company was not a high-technology company but rather
one of Britain's largest food-catering and food-producing companies. It also ran
tea shops throughout the United Kingdom.
Two Lyons executives, Oliver Standingford and Raymond Thomson, visited
the United States in 1947 to look at new business methods developed during the
war. While there, they met one of the ENIAC computer developers and saw the
potential of computers for aiding large business operations.
Upon returning to the United Kingdom, Standingford and Thomson visited
the British EDSAC computer, then under development. Standingford and Thom-
son reported favorably on computers to the Lyons board, which voted to provide
£3,000 to help speed up the EDSAC development.
Not only was funding provided to EDSAC, but the Lyons board also decided
to build a business-oriented computer for the company. This was a bold adventure
for a food-processing company that operated tea shops.
The new computer was called the
Lyons Electronic Office
, or LEO, I. A radar
engineer named John Pinkerton was hired to run the project and design the com-
puter. A Lyons engineer named Derek Hemy would be the new computer's first
programmer.
When completed in 1951, the computer's first production job was bakery valu-
ation. It was also used for payroll calculations, inventory management, and order
entry. In other words, the LEO I was immediately useful for handling day-to-day
business operations faster and more efficiently than could be done manually.
The LEO I also pioneered outsourcing and service bureau operations, because
the computer was soon used under contract to process payrolls for Ford Motors in
the United Kingdom. Other clients followed. Outsourcing and service bureaus fol-
lowed almost immediately in the wake of the first commercial digital computers.
Several upgrades called the LEO II, LEO III, LEO 360, and LEO 326 were
built. These were faster and more powerful than LEO I. The later LEO computers
featured a multitasking operating system that could run 12 programs simultan-
eously. Some LEO computers stayed in service as late as 1981, processing tele-
phone bills.
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