Behind the Curtain at LEO: A Personal Reminiscence
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
O(ver)-Government?: Emerging technology, citizen autonomy and the regulatory state
Information Polity - The coming of age of e-government studies;papers from EGPA 2010
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The Lyons teashops were one of the great British institutions,providing a cup of tea and a penny bun through the depression, thewar, austerity andon into the sixties and seventies. Yet Lyons alsohas a more surprising claim to history.In the 1930s John Simmons, ayoung graduate in charge of the clerks' offices that totalled allthe bills issued by the 'Nippies' and kept track of the costs ofall the tea, cakes and other goods distributed to the nations cafesand shops, became obsessed by the new ideas of scientificmanagement. He had a dream: to build a machine that would automatethe millions of tedious transactions and process them in as littletime as possible. In A Computer Called LEO, Georgina Ferry recountsthe unique story of Simmons' quest for the first office computer -the Lyons Electronic Office. It would take 20 years and involvesome of the most brilliant young minds in Britain. Interwoven withthe story of the building of LEO is the story of early computingitself from the Difference Engine of Charles Babbage to thecodecracking computers of Bletchley Park and the instantlyobsolescent ENIAC, developed in the US. It is also the story of thepost war British computer business; why did it lose the initiative?Why did America succeed while British design was often superior?Georgina Ferry's account of a forgotten triumph in British historyis a timely corrective and an exuberant celebration of one of theleast likely marriages in business history: the Lyons teashop andthe cutting edge ofcomputer science