THE LEONINE PAYMASTER

See Also: CAFES J. Lyons; COMPUTERS

For much of the 20^thC the company J. Lyons played a central role in British life. Its caf's and brands of teatime comestibles and beverages were used by much of the population. After the Second World War the firm s directors became interested in the possibility that punched card tabulating equipment might be able to handle the enterprise's data processing in areas such as its payroll and stock control. In 1947 John Simmons, the head of Lyons's systems analysis office, sent two of his underlings to the United States to investigate innovations that it might be able to apply to its own internal procedures.

In Philadelphia the pair were shown the ENIAC computer. This had been designed to make mathematical calculations. They appreciated that the technology could be applied to commercial purposes. They reported back that there was scope for the electronic devices to be used to run Lyons's operational and accounting activities. The company's board of directors accepted the proposal that Lyons should develop its own machines.

The Lyons Electronic Office (Leo) project was headed by David Caminer, an employee who had had no higher education. The firm gave 2500 to Maurice Wilkes of the University of Cambridge to help him to fabricate his EDSAC machine. In 1949 the academic's computer started to operate. Lyons then started to build a copy of it. The hardware aspect of the project was led by an engineer who had worked on the Cantabrigian project, while the systems and programming ones were overseen by Caminer.

Caminer not only appreciated that the machine could replicate Lyons's existing activities but that it had the potential to assist the company's management activities. This insight came to be regarded by some as the birth of systems engineering. Leo was constructed in the administrative block of Lyons's Hammersmith headquarters. The machine was sixteen-feet-long, occupied 5000 sq. ft. in 21 racks, and had 6000 valves.

In 1951 the Leo became the first computer to automate everyday business operations. Three years later Leo I was first used to process the weekly payroll at Cadby Hall Bakeries, a Lyons subsidiary. Its software was modelled on Lyons's clerical systems.¹ Other companies expressed an interest in the machine. In 1955 Leo Computers was set up to market the system.²

The Leo managers did not feel themselves to be bound by the prevailing orthodoxy that it was necessary to have a background in mathematics in order to be able to work with computers. The people whom they hired included John Aris, an Oxford Classics graduate. Of his university studies he once stated, The great advantage of studying the Classics is that it does not fit you for anything else. His appreciation of the way in which syntax can function furnished him with a range of skills that proved to be applicable to programming.

The world's final Leo, a Leo III, ceased operation in 1981. The computer had been used by the Post Office.

Location: Cadby Hall, 66 Hammersmith Road, W14 8RH

¹. Contemporaneously, Lyons was employing one Margaret Roberts, a chemistry graduate, to investigate fillings for Swiss rolls. She was to become better known under her married name - Margaret Thatcher.

². Lyons sold Leo Computers to English Electric in 1964. By then 80 LEO computers had been sold. Three years later English Electric s operation became part of I.C.L.. The descendant business was acquired by Fujitsu of Japan.

Cadby Hall

Cadby Hall (1873) was home to a piano manufacturing business that had been founded by Charles Cadby. Lyons bought the two-acre property in 1894 and extended the building. The site's Inner London location meant that there was limited scope for expansion. Following the First World War the company acquired a larger site at Greenford. Increasingly, its manufacturing operations were based there.

The LEO Computers Society

The LEO Computers Society was set up in 2018. It is a charity

Website www.leo-computers.org.uk

David Backhouse 2024