Book description
The eccentric story of one of the most bizarre marriages in the history
of British business: the invention of the world's first office computer
and the Lyons Teashop.
The Lyons teashops were one of the great British institutions,
providing a cup of tea and a penny bun through the depression and the
war, though to the 1970s. Yet Lyons also has a more surprising claim to history.
In the 1930s John Simmons, a young maths graduate in charge of the
clerks' offices, had a dream: to build a machine that would automate the
millions of tedious transactions and process them in as little time as
possible. Simmons' quest for the first office computer - the Lyons
Electronic Office - would take 20 years and involve some of the most
brilliant young minds in Britain.
Interwoven with the story of creating LEO is the story of early
computing, from the Difference Engine of Charles Babbage to the
codecracking computers at Bletchley Park and the instantly obsolescent
ENIAC in the US. It is also the story of post war British computer
business: why did it lose the initiative? Why did the US succeed while
British design was often superior? 'A COMPUTER CALLED LEO is as
captivating a book as you could hope for, whether it's industrial
history you're after, or a commentary on the development of computing,
or social documentary, or an elegant tragedy. One reads it with a
growing sense of gloomy fatalism and even gloomier recognition. But one
also reads it with admiration and fascination, not just for Georgina
Ferry's poised, cool and elegant storytelling but for the people
involved in the making of LEO, who, before they were let down by the
suits, did something extraordinary because nobody had told them it
couldn't be done.' Michael Bywater, Daily Telegraph
'Meticulously researched and cogently written, it sets the story in the
wider context of early computer development both in America and the UK.'
Fanny Blake, The Times
'This is not a book for computer nerds, but one for anyone curious
about mid-20th-century Britain's unique combination of engineering
genius and economic frailty.' Sunday Telegraph Georgina is the author
of Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life, a biography of the only British woman
scientist to win a Nobel Prize and THE COMMON THREAD (with John Sulston)
which is short listed for the 2002 Samuel Johnson Prize. Born in Hong
Kong, Georgina has lived in Oxford for the past 19 years. She has worked
as a science writer and broadcaster.
