Blighty's revolutionary Cold War teashop computer - and Nigella Lawson The Victorian offices were bulldozed long ago for a stack of flats and mirrored offices, and there's not a single indication to the significance of this site - or what happened here. This isn't the scene of a lost battle, and the bones of a missing Plantagenet king do not slumber beneath the car park serving the offices. …
"electron valves???"
Do you mean thermionic valves or have a couple of pages of some 1930s pulp magazines gotten mixed in with your notes old boy?
I worked with someone who reportedly cut his digital teeth on one of these things. I often thought it explained what a miserable git he had become by the time we had the fabulous high-tech ICL 1901T.
"Do you mean thermionic valves?"
Ah, the pedantry is strong in this one. Perhaps too much, though. There is no doubt that there is a flow of electrons from the filament, modulated by the grid(s) between the cathode and the anode. I used "electron valve" for anyone unfamiliar with the technology, to make it clear we're talking about controlling electric current rather than fluid or something else associated with valves.
To keep old-timers happy, I'll change it. I just fear you may have spilled your coffee over your yellowed pages of Practical Electronics magazine.
C.
I'd also wonder about calling the programs that the things ran "apps". Given how hard-wired they were (literally for the early ones), even programs may be stretching it a bit I guess.
Really enjoying this series of articles though, although using a terms that's only been around for a few years in relation to a machine of this vintage caused some serious mental gear-grinding.
I once worked near Westbourne Grove, London, where there was a shop that sold nothing but thermionic valves. As this was in the early 1980s, one couldn't but think their business model had reached the end of the line. Shortly afterwards, the shop was destroyed by fire. I suppose this might have been caused by overheating valves, but then again...
In the mid '80s, Minerva Road in Acton was the location of an old established electronics company who's name I've forgotten. I know this because I went for an interview there. Also, in Acton, there was an outpost of Ferranti, before they imploded. Does anyone else remember this? (I hope so, otherwise I'm having false memory syndrome.)
Ah, dear Nigella.
So good to see her line of wealthy industrialist forebears, former chancellor of the exchequer father, private oxbridge education, series of media savvy spouses and willingness to act like an embarrassingly randy old aunt on camera, haven't stopped her fighting her way to the top.
"he brought home a circuit board that he had been told was part of a Leo."
In the late 70s, my parents' house gained the *best* loft flooring. A group of late-model LEO IIIs was being decommissioned, and the aluminium honeycomb panels from the sides of the racks made their way up into our loft. They were strong enough to walk on, but light as anything.
Then again, my mother worked at Lyons as a programmer in the early 60s...
More on the Collectivist Techno FAIL at
Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley and Joel Barr.
That was another architecture than the 360 though.
Definitely less. 2/2d is less than 11p (2.4d = 1p, 1s = 5p). Heavens. I remember the fuss when beer went to 2 shillings pint in the mid sixites (before my official drinking time). I seem to remember a cup of tea being around 6d.
Lyons: school exeats when mother came up to take me out for the weekend and we would got to Lyons Corner House in the Strand or somewhere for tea and cakes. I avoid Starbucks and its USA ilk on principal. I think that lst year they were judged to provide the worst, weakest coffee in the British Isles.
I've become a grumpy old man, thinking back to when things worked, were affordable and it was fun. I worked for a couple of years in the mid-nineties at ICL Fujitsu in Bracknell. Rather good, well organised and some excellent engineers. It's been down hill in the quality of projects and engineers ever since. We even got major projects in on time and budget. Those were the days. But then, my managers had degrees in statistics or mathematics, knew what a computer looked like and took an active interest in the work and people rather than the budget and promotion for themselves.
In those days, the bean counters did as they were told and added numbers on their counting frames especially in a company with strong leaders who wouldn't think twice about handing you (the bean counter) their P.45 if you made too much noise drinking your Lyon coffee.
my Mother met my Father in Lyons Corner house.
>bean counters would have collective apoplexy
Yes... and no.
They weren't building a computer: nobody had heard of such a thing.
They were building an accounting machine for the accountants.
And their core business was accounting. They weren't diversifying from their central business model. The shops were run by shop managers, but the business was run by accountants and bookkeepers, and they were trying to make an incremental change in their business process.
But they weren't that far off from using dip pens and gas lights (they would have been familiar with both from childhood anyway). There had been tremendous changes in society and organisation, far more than I've seen in my 50 years, so I think they probably were more open to change than many people today.
They were building an accounting machine for the accountants.
Winding on to the late 60s/early 70s a former boss of mine asked the board for a computer and was given a firm "No".
He then asked for an accounting machine and got the OK for that, but he smuggled in a computer instead.
He also had the foresight to move to interactive minis when the rest of the group were still running overnight batch jobs on mainframes.
> Nobody can say whether the LEO lived up to Thompson’s promise to cut expenses or whether
> it helped Lyons become efficient - I asked Frank and Ralph, and they reckon nobody really knew.
You would probably be interested in the following paper:
The Case For The First Business Computer
Author: Nick Pelling, 26th March 2002, Kingston University Business School, Surrey, UK
ABSTRACT
The business cases behind the five proposals made to the board of J.Lyons & Co. by Thompson and Standingford in 1947 - which led to the construction of the first business computer [#1] - are analysed, but found to be strategically lacking. Both an alternate reading of the case and some contemporary implications are then developed.
http://www.nickpelling.com/Leo1.html
Thanks for an excellent reminder of the early days of computing. But
one correction. In the early when LEO was launched on the world I was a
trainee and junior programmer. The people who led the team to the
applications and who taught me were the genius of a programmer Derek
Hemy, Leo Fantl, John Grover and a little later another genius John
Gosden. But it was David Caminer who had the most prominent and
effective role on the systems and programming side until the demise of
LEO. You give me too much credit - there were a number of heroic figures and
it was a privilege to work with them.
Frank Land
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