Lyons used LEO I initially for valuation jobs, but its role was extended to include payroll, 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 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 if a program was looping by the distinctive sound it made.
English Electric LEO Computers Ltd or English Electric Leo Marconi (EELM) eventually merged with International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) and others to become in 1968 International Computers Limited (ICL).
Notes
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 Press.
- 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-Hill. 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., editor. In the Beginning: Recollections of Software Pioneers, pages 134—153. IEEE Computer Society, 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 Computing, 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 Journal, 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 Press.