LEO (computer)

The LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) was a series of early computer systems created by J. Lyons and Co. The first in the series, the LEO I, was the first computer used for commercial business applications. The prototype LEO I was modelled closely on the Cambridge EDSAC. Its construction was overseen by Oliver Standingford, Raymond Thompson and David Caminer of J. Lyons and Co. 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 (EEL), (EELM), then English Electric Computers (EEC), where the same team developed the faster LEO 360 and even faster LEO 326 models. It then passed to International Computers Limited (ICL) and ultimately Fujitsu. LEO series computers were still in use until 1981. J. Lyons and Co. was one of the UK's leading catering and food manufacturing companies in the first half of the 20th century. In 1947, two of its senior managers, Oliver Standingford and Raymond Thompson, were sent to the United States to look at new business methods developed during World War II. During the visit, they met Herman Goldstine who was one of the original developers of ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer. 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 12–18 months from completion, but said that this interval could be shortened by additional funding. Standingford and Thompson wrote a report to the Lyons' board recommending that Lyons should acquire or build a computer to meet their business needs.

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Related concepts (2)

LEO (computer)

ENIAC

ENIAC ('ɛniæk; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. There were other computers that had combinations of these features, but the ENIAC had all of them in one computer. It was Turing-complete and able to solve "a large class of numerical problems" through reprogramming. Although ENIAC was designed and primarily used to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory (which later became a part of the Army Research Laboratory), its first program was a study of the feasibility of the thermonuclear weapon.