LEO computer
Encyclopedia
The LEO I was the first computer
used for commercial business applications. Overseen by Oliver Standingford and Raymond Thompson of J. Lyons and Co.
, and modelled closely on the Cambridge
EDSAC
, LEO I ran its first business application in 1951. In 1954 Lyons formed LEO Computers Ltd to market LEO I and its successors LEO II and LEO III to other companies. LEO Computers eventually became part of English Electric Company (EELM) and then International Computers Limited (ICL) and ultimately Fujitsu
. LEO series computers were still in use until 1981.
, one of the UK's leading catering and food manufacturing companies in the first half of the 20th century, sent two of its senior managers, Oliver Standingford and Raymond Thompson, to the USA in 1947 to look at new business methods developed during the Second World War. During their visit they met Herman Goldstine, one of the original developers of ENIAC
, the first general-purpose electronic computer (although it had no stored program). Standingford and Thompson saw the potential of computers to help solve the problem of administering a major business enterprise. They also learned from Goldstine that, back in the UK, Douglas Hartree
and Maurice Wilkes were actually building another such machine, the pioneering EDSAC
computer, at the University of Cambridge
.
On their return to the UK, Standingford and Thompson visited Hartree and Wilkes in Cambridge, and were favourably impressed with their technical expertise and vision. Hartree and Wilkes estimated that EDSAC was twelve to eighteen months from completion, but said that this timeline could be shortened if additional funding were available. Standingford and Thompson wrote a report to the Lyons' Board recommending that Lyons should acquire or build a computer to meet their business needs. The board agreed that, as a first step, Lyons would provide Hartree and Wilkes with £3,000 funding for the EDSAC project, and would also provide them with the services of a Lyons electrical engineer, Ernest Lenaerts. EDSAC was completed and ran its first program in May 1949.
Following the successful completion of EDSAC, the Lyons' board agreed to start the construction of their own machine, expanding on the EDSAC design. The Lyons machine was christened Lyons Electronic Office, or LEO. On the recommendation of Wilkes, Lyons recruited John Pinkerton
, a radar engineer and research student at Cambridge, as team leader for the project. Lenaerts returned to Lyons to work on the project, and Wilkes provided training for Lyons' engineer Derek Hemy, who would be responsible for writing LEO's programs. The first business application to be run on LEO was Bakery Valuations. This was initially run as a test program on 5 September 1951, and LEO took over Bakery Valuations calculations completely on 29 November 1951.
to execute. To be useful for business applications, the computer had to be able to handle a number of data streams, input and output, simultaneously. Therefore, its chief designer, Dr. John Pinkerton
, designed the machine to have multiple input/output buffers. In the first instance, these were linked to fast paper tape readers and punches, fast punched card reader
s and punches, and a 100 line a minute tabulator. Later, other devices, including magnetic tape, were added. Its ultrasonic delay line memory
based on tanks of mercury
, with 2K (2048) 35-bit words (i.e., 8¾ K bytes
), was four times as large as that of EDSAC. The systems analysis was carried out by David Caminer
.
, inventory
, and so on. One of its early tasks was the elaboration of daily orders which were phoned in every afternoon by the shops and used to calculate the overnight production requirements, assembly instructions, delivery schedules, invoices, costings, and management reports. This, arguably, was the first instance of an integrated management information system plus a computerised call centre
. The LEO project was also a pioneer in outsourcing
: in 1956, Lyons started doing the payroll calculations for Ford UK and others on the LEO I machine. The success of this led to the company dedicating one of its LEO II machines to bureau services. Later, the system was used for scientific computations, as well. Met Office
office staff used a LEO I before the Met Office bought its own computer, a Ferranti Mercury
, in 1959.
In 1954, with the decision to proceed with LEO II and interest from other commercial companies, Lyons formed LEO Computers Ltd. The first LEO III was completed in 1961. This was a solid-state machine with a 13.2
s cycle time ferrite core memory. It was micro-programmed and was controlled by a multi-tasking
operating system. In 1963, LEO Computers Ltd was merged into English Electric Company and this led to the breaking up of the team that had inspired LEO computers. English Electric Company continued to build the LEO III, and went on to build the faster LEO 360 and even faster LEO 326 models, which had been designed by the LEO team before the takeover. All LEO IIIs allowed concurrent running of as many as 12 application programs through the "Master program" operating system. Some were still in commercial use with GPO
Telephones, forerunner of British Telecom, until 1981, which remained usable through parts cannibalised from redundant LEOs purchased by the GPO.
Users of LEO computers programmed in two coding languages: Intercode, a low-level assembler
type language; and CLEO (acronym: Clear Language for Expressing Orders), the COBOL
equivalent.
Many users fondly remember the LEO III and enthuse about some of its quirkier features, such as having a loudspeaker connected to the central processor which enabled operators to tell whether a program was looping by the distinctive sound it made. Many intermittent faults were due to dry joints and could be temporarily fixed by briskly strumming the card handles!
English Electric LEO Computers Ltd or English Electric Leo Marconi (EELM) eventually merged with International Computers and Tabulators
(ICT) and others to form International Computers Limited (ICL) in 1968. In the 1980s
, there were still ICL 2900 mainframes emulating LEO programs.
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
used for commercial business applications. Overseen by Oliver Standingford and Raymond Thompson of J. Lyons and Co.
J. Lyons and Co.
J. Lyons & Co. was a market-dominant British restaurant-chain, food-manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1887 as a spin-off from the Salmon & Gluckstein tobacco company....
, and modelled closely on the Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
EDSAC
EDSAC
Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator was an early British computer. The machine, having been inspired by John von Neumann's seminal First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England...
, LEO I ran its first business application in 1951. In 1954 Lyons formed LEO Computers Ltd to market LEO I and its successors LEO II and LEO III to other companies. LEO Computers eventually became part of English Electric Company (EELM) and then International Computers Limited (ICL) and ultimately Fujitsu
Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the world's third-largest IT services provider measured by revenues....
. LEO series computers were still in use until 1981.
Origins and initial design
J. Lyons and Co.J. Lyons and Co.
J. Lyons & Co. was a market-dominant British restaurant-chain, food-manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1887 as a spin-off from the Salmon & Gluckstein tobacco company....
, one of the UK's leading catering and food manufacturing companies in the first half of the 20th century, sent two of its senior managers, Oliver Standingford and Raymond Thompson, to the USA in 1947 to look at new business methods developed during the Second World War. During their visit they met Herman Goldstine, one of the original developers of ENIAC
ENIAC
ENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems....
, the first general-purpose electronic computer (although it had no stored program). Standingford and Thompson saw the potential of computers to help solve the problem of administering a major business enterprise. They also learned from Goldstine that, back in the UK, Douglas Hartree
Douglas Hartree
Douglas Rayner Hartree PhD, FRS was an English mathematician and physicist most famous for the development of numerical analysis and its application to the Hartree-Fock equations of atomic physics and the construction of the meccano differential analyser.-Early life:Douglas Hartree was born in...
and Maurice Wilkes were actually building another such machine, the pioneering EDSAC
EDSAC
Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator was an early British computer. The machine, having been inspired by John von Neumann's seminal First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England...
computer, at the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
.
On their return to the UK, Standingford and Thompson visited Hartree and Wilkes in Cambridge, and were favourably impressed with their technical expertise and vision. Hartree and Wilkes estimated that EDSAC was twelve to eighteen months from completion, but said that this timeline could be shortened if additional funding were available. Standingford and Thompson wrote a report to the Lyons' Board recommending that Lyons should acquire or build a computer to meet their business needs. The board agreed that, as a first step, Lyons would provide Hartree and Wilkes with £3,000 funding for the EDSAC project, and would also provide them with the services of a Lyons electrical engineer, Ernest Lenaerts. EDSAC was completed and ran its first program in May 1949.
Following the successful completion of EDSAC, the Lyons' board agreed to start the construction of their own machine, expanding on the EDSAC design. The Lyons machine was christened Lyons Electronic Office, or LEO. On the recommendation of Wilkes, Lyons recruited John Pinkerton
John Pinkerton (computer designer)
John Maurice McClean Pinkerton was a pioneering British computer designer. Along with David Caminer, he designed England's first business computer, the LEO computer, produced by J. Lyons and Co in 1951.,-Personal life:...
, a radar engineer and research student at Cambridge, as team leader for the project. Lenaerts returned to Lyons to work on the project, and Wilkes provided training for Lyons' engineer Derek Hemy, who would be responsible for writing LEO's programs. The first business application to be run on LEO was Bakery Valuations. This was initially run as a test program on 5 September 1951, and LEO took over Bakery Valuations calculations completely on 29 November 1951.
Technical description
LEO I's clock speed was 500 kHz, with most instructions taking about 1.5 msMillisecond
A millisecond is a thousandth of a second.10 milliseconds are called a centisecond....
to execute. To be useful for business applications, the computer had to be able to handle a number of data streams, input and output, simultaneously. Therefore, its chief designer, Dr. John Pinkerton
John Pinkerton (computer designer)
John Maurice McClean Pinkerton was a pioneering British computer designer. Along with David Caminer, he designed England's first business computer, the LEO computer, produced by J. Lyons and Co in 1951.,-Personal life:...
, designed the machine to have multiple input/output buffers. In the first instance, these were linked to fast paper tape readers and punches, fast punched card reader
Card reader
A card reader is a data input device that reads data from a card-shaped storage medium. Historically, paper or cardboard punched cards were used throughout the first several decades of the computer industry to store information and programs for computer system, and were read by punched card readers...
s and punches, and a 100 line a minute tabulator. Later, other devices, including magnetic tape, were added. Its ultrasonic delay line memory
Delay line memory
Delay line memory was a form of computer memory used on some of the earliest digital computers. Like many modern forms of electronic computer memory, delay line memory was a refreshable memory, but as opposed to modern random-access memory, delay line memory was serial-access...
based on tanks of mercury
Mercury (element)
Mercury is a chemical element with the symbol Hg and atomic number 80. It is also known as quicksilver or hydrargyrum...
, with 2K (2048) 35-bit words (i.e., 8¾ K bytes
Kilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
), was four times as large as that of EDSAC. The systems analysis was carried out by David Caminer
David Caminer
David Caminer, OBE has been called the world's "first corporate electronic systems analyst." He carried out the systems analysis and charting for the world's first routine business computer job.-Life and work:...
.
Applications and successors
Lyons used LEO I initially for valuation jobs, but its role was extended to include payrollPayroll
In a company, payroll is the sum of all financial records of salaries for an employee, wages, bonuses and deductions. In accounting, payroll refers to the amount paid to employees for services they provided during a certain period of time. Payroll plays a major role in a company for several reasons...
, inventory
Inventory
Inventory means a list compiled for some formal purpose, such as the details of an estate going to probate, or the contents of a house let furnished. This remains the prime meaning in British English...
, and so on. One of its early tasks was the elaboration of daily orders which were phoned in every afternoon by the shops and used to calculate the overnight production requirements, assembly instructions, delivery schedules, invoices, costings, and management reports. This, arguably, was the first instance of an integrated management information system plus a computerised call centre
Call centre
A call centre or call center is a centralised office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone. A call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. Outgoing calls for telemarketing,...
. The LEO project was also a pioneer in outsourcing
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is the process of contracting a business function to someone else.-Overview:The term outsourcing is used inconsistently but usually involves the contracting out of a business function - commonly one previously performed in-house - to an external provider...
: in 1956, Lyons started doing the payroll calculations for Ford UK and others on the LEO I machine. The success of this led to the company dedicating one of its LEO II machines to bureau services. Later, the system was used for scientific computations, as well. Met Office
Met Office
The Met Office , is the United Kingdom's national weather service, and a trading fund of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills...
office staff used a LEO I before the Met Office bought its own computer, a Ferranti Mercury
Ferranti Mercury
The Mercury was an early 1950s commercial computer built by Ferranti. It was the successor to the Ferranti Mark 1, adding a floating point unit for improved performance, and increased reliability by replacing the Williams tube memory with core memory and using more solid state components...
, in 1959.
In 1954, with the decision to proceed with LEO II and interest from other commercial companies, Lyons formed LEO Computers Ltd. The first LEO III was completed in 1961. This was a solid-state machine with a 13.2
s cycle time ferrite core memory. It was micro-programmed and was controlled by a multi-taskingComputer multitasking
In computing, multitasking is a method where multiple tasks, also known as processes, share common processing resources such as a CPU. In the case of a computer with a single CPU, only one task is said to be running at any point in time, meaning that the CPU is actively executing instructions for...
operating system. In 1963, LEO Computers Ltd was merged into English Electric Company and this led to the breaking up of the team that had inspired LEO computers. English Electric Company continued to build the LEO III, and went on to build the faster LEO 360 and even faster LEO 326 models, which had been designed by the LEO team before the takeover. All LEO IIIs allowed concurrent running of as many as 12 application programs through the "Master program" operating system. Some were still in commercial use with GPO
General Post Office
General Post Office is the name of the British postal system from 1660 until 1969.General Post Office may also refer to:* General Post Office, Perth* General Post Office, Sydney* General Post Office, Melbourne* General Post Office, Brisbane...
Telephones, forerunner of British Telecom, until 1981, which remained usable through parts cannibalised from redundant LEOs purchased by the GPO.
Users of LEO computers programmed in two coding languages: Intercode, a low-level assembler
Assembly language
An assembly language is a low-level programming language for computers, microprocessors, microcontrollers, and other programmable devices. It implements a symbolic representation of the machine codes and other constants needed to program a given CPU architecture...
type language; and CLEO (acronym: Clear Language for Expressing Orders), the COBOL
COBOL
COBOL is one of the oldest programming languages. Its name is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language, defining its primary domain in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments....
equivalent.
Many users fondly remember the LEO III and enthuse about some of its quirkier features, such as having a loudspeaker connected to the central processor which enabled operators to tell whether a program was looping by the distinctive sound it made. Many intermittent faults were due to dry joints and could be temporarily fixed by briskly strumming the card handles!
English Electric LEO Computers Ltd or English Electric Leo Marconi (EELM) eventually merged with International Computers and Tabulators
International Computers and Tabulators
International Computers and Tabulators or ICT was formed in 1959 by a merger of the British Tabulating Machine Company and Powers-Samas. In 1963 it also added the business computer divisions of Ferranti...
(ICT) and others to form International Computers Limited (ICL) in 1968. In the 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
, there were still ICL 2900 mainframes emulating LEO programs.
Books
- Bird, P.J. (1994). LEO: The First Business Computer. Wokingham: Hasler Publishing Co. ISBN 0-9521651-0-4.
- Campbell-Kelly, M., (1989). ICL: A Business and Technical History. Oxford: Clarendon PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
. - Caminer, D.T., Aris, J.B.B., Hermon, P.M.R., Land, F.F. (1996). User-Driven Innovation: The World’s First Business Computer. London: McGraw-HillMcGraw-HillThe McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., is a publicly traded corporation headquartered in Rockefeller Center in New York City. Its primary areas of business are financial, education, publishing, broadcasting, and business services...
. ISBN 0-07-009501-9. - Carmichael, H., editor (1996). An ICL Anthology, Chapter 6: LEO, Laidlaw Hicks, Surbiton, UK.
- Ferry, G. (2004). A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Tea Shops and the World's First Office Computer. Hammersmith: Harper Perennial. ISBN 1-84115-186-6.
- Hally, M. (2005). Electronic Brains: stories from the dawn of the computer age. Washington:Joseph Henry Press. Chapter 5: LEO the Lyons Computer. ISBN 0-309-09630-8.
- Land, F.F., (1997). LEO, the First Business Computer: A Personal Experience. In Glass, R.L.Robert L. GlassRobert L. Glass is an American software engineer and pioneer of the software field, currently serving as a visiting professor at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia.- Biography :...
, editor. In the Beginning: Recollections of Software Pioneers, pages 134–153. IEEE Computer SocietyIEEE Computer SocietyThe IEEE Computer Society is a professional society of IEEE. Its purpose and scope is “to advance the theory, practice, and application of computer and information processing science and technology” and the “professional standing of its members.” The CS is the largest of 38 technical societies...
, Los Alamitos, CA. - PEP, (1957). Three Case Studies in Automation, PEP, London.
- Simmons, J.R.M., (1962). LEO and the Managers, MacDonald, London.
Articles
- Aris, J.B.B. (1996). "Systems Design — Then and Now". Resurrection, Summer issue 1996.
- Land, F.F. (1996). "Systems Analysis for Business Applications". Resurrection, Summer issue 1996.
- Aris, J.B.B. (2000). "Inventing Systems Engineering". IEEE Annals of the History of ComputingIEEE Annals of the History of ComputingThe IEEE Annals of the History of Computing is a quarterly journal published by the IEEE Computer Society. It contains peer-reviewed articles and other contributions on the history of computing, computer science and computer hardware by computer scientists and historians...
, Vol. 22, No. 3, July–September, pp. 4–15 - Land, F.F. (2000). "The First Business Computer: A Case Study in User-Driven Automation". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 22, No. 3, July–September, pp. 16–26.
- Caminer, D.T. (1958), "...And How to Avoid Them". The Computer JournalThe Computer JournalThe Computer Journal is a journal published by the Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Computer Society. It contains peer-reviewed articles and other contributions on computer science and information systems. Its first issue appeared in 1958, and it has been published continually since...
, Vol. 1, No. 1. - Caminer, D.T. (1997). "LEO and its Applications: The Beginning of Business Computing". The Computer Journal, Vol. 40, No. 10.
- Caminer, D.T. (2003). "Behind the Curtain at LEO: A Personal Reminiscence". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 25, No. 2, April–June, pp3–13.
- Hendry, J. (1988). "The Teashop Computer Manufacturer: J. Lyons". Business History, Vol. 29, No. 8, pp. 73–102.
- Land, Frank (1999). "A Historical Analysis of Implementing IS at J. Lyons." In Currie, W.G.; Galliers, R.D., editors. Rethinking Management Information Systems, pp. 310–325. Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
.
External links
- Oral history interview with John M. M. Pinkerton, Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota. Pinkerton describes his work on the Leo computers. In this context he discusses the British computer firms J. Lyons and Company, English ElectricEnglish ElectricEnglish Electric was a British industrial manufacturer. Founded in 1918, it initially specialised in industrial electric motors and transformers...
, and International Computers Ltd.International Computers Ltd.International Computers Limited, or ICL, was a large British computer hardware, computer software and computer services company that operated from 1968 until 2002 when it was acquired, and renamed Fujitsu Services Limited after its parent company, Fujitsu... - About LEO — From Business Computing: the Second 50 Years, The Guildhall conference for business leaders, 2001
- J. Lyons & Co.: LEO Computers. Extract from Peter Bird's LEO — The First Business Computer (2002); at David Lawrence's Lyons website
- LEO Computers Society. Accessed 2007-08-31
- BBC Science - Electronic Brains BBC Radio 4 Series about early computers, Programme 1 is about LEO
- A computer called LEO: Lyons Teashops and the world's first office computer A standard work on the development of LEO
- Obituary of Caminer Daily Telegraph, 24 June 2008