Reference:

Lionising Leo. The Times Higher Education Supplement, page 25, 22 November 1996. Review of The World's First Business Computer: User-Driven Innovation, D.T. Caminer (ed.), McGraw-Hill, 1996.

J. Lyons & Co., a successful catering company, had the foresight in the late 1940s to realise that great savings could be made in terms of manpower and time if some of their more mundane procedures could be automated. One of the most significant was the payroll, now undertaken by computer at even the smallest of organisations today. The company was the first in the world to computerise its commercial operations. It had to start essentially from scratch, first hiring an electronic engineer, John Pinkerton, to design and build the computer, and then training well-selected recruits to program LEO, the Lyons Electronic Office, as the computer came to be called. LEO was based on the EDSAC computer developed by Maurice Wilkes et al. at Cambridge. Initial approval for the development of LEO was given even before EDSAC was finished, and the final go-ahead was sanctioned almost immediately after the first successful EDSAC test run.

This book presents a firsthand account of the development and programming of LEO by many of the people involved. It is largely non-technical in nature, mainly presenting the managerial and social aspects, which is unusual compared to many historical accounts of computing innovations. Since there are so many contributors (thirteen in all), the resulting view is inevitably eclectic, but fascinating for all that.

The book is divided into four parts. The first takes the reader through a historical journey from the background of the Lyons company, the first office computer job undertaken in 1951, through LEO I, II and III, to the eventual wind-down in the late 1960s. Subsequent parts provide more individual views by various pioneers and innovators, and the use of LEO abroad in South Africa and behind the Iron Curtain. The appendices include insightful extracts of a far-seeing report of a visit to the major US centres of computer development in 1947 by Lyons personnel, a transcript of an interview with the Director of Lyons at the time, recorded in the 1970s, and a demonstration script for LEO I produced in 1955.

The pervasive impression from the book is that of a band of exceptional, dedicated and hard-working professionals performing pioneering work almost without realising it at the time. The obvious camaraderie of those involved seems to have survived the years and made a lasting impression on them. Many contributors make comments along the lines that that the spirit within the LEO group was never repeated in subsequent jobs; there are still get-togethers every so often.

The members of the LEO team were obviously well-chosen people of high calibre who willingly worked long hours. Without their dedication and rapidly developed expertise, the entire project could easily have failed. The amount of investment available was relatively small, but it was used wisely. However, the catering background of Lyons probably closed a number of doors to commercial expansion. For example, in the US during the 1950s, 60% of IBM's research and development budget came from US government contracts, with $400 million coming from the US armed forces. Against such huge investments, LEO stood little long-term chance of survival. LEO was swallowed up by English Electric in 1963, and later ICT which became ICL, with fatal consequences for the LEO team which received a great culture shock in the process.

Many of the difficulties of introducing computerisation encountered with LEO are not dissimilar to those faced today. Now the problem would be termed Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). The unique LEO approach was to use consultants rather than salesmen to do much of the liaising with customers to determined what was really required, rather than letting the customer guess what they might need and discover their mistakes later. This could be an expensive process, and such altruism is not widespread today.

One omission amongst the potential contributors is John Pinkerton, without whose technical expertise the project could not have proceeded, and no explanation of this is forthcoming in the book. However, many of the managers and programmers of the time provide their recollections whilst at Lyons. No photographs are included in the book; a selection of the personalities involved and the working environment could have been a worthwhile addition. However, there is a helpful list of contributors with short biographies, which is useful if you become confused about who is who.

This is the first widely available book to provide a comprehensive body of knowledge on LEO. This work has been rather unrepresented in the literature until now; many early histories of computing concentrate on the more research-oriented developments. LEO, the first truly commercial computer in the world, is now sufficiently old to be evaluated in a detached historical perspective, but recent enough for most of the participants still to be available to tell their tale. Thus this is an extremely timely book. I believe it will be useful for scholars of the history of computing to evaluate the contribution of LEO more fully. It is also a good accessible read for all those interested in the computer industry, particularly its early commercial beginnings. Those without a technical knowledge of computing should not find this book daunting; it gives a sense of excitement in producing the world's first business computer.

For those interested in early computing, visit the Virtual Museum of Computing on-line under:

http://vmoc.museophile.org/

John Pinkerton died on 22 December 1997. He was born on 2 August 1919.

Note: The text above is as originally submitted to the Times Higher Education Supplement, and has been copy edited in the final published version. It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes if full acknowledgement to the author and publisher are given.