LEO
The world’s first BUSINESS COMPUTER
It was created by J. Lyons & Co. in 1951 to resolve a variety of business issues in its large chain of teashops and food manufacturing and processing by implementing systems including inventory, costing, logistics and payroll. Many similar systems are still in use by businesses today but in 1951 they were transformational. Programmable digital Computers had been invented in the late 1940’s but these were for scientific applications
J. Lyons & Co. opened its first location in Piccadilly, London, in 1894, and by 1909 started growing into a chain which reached its peak of over 253 teashops nationwide by 1939.
It was also a catering company serving the Royal family since 1919, and a hotel conglomerate. It employed over 30,000 people and had over 2,750 delivery vehicles by the 1950s. As an example they made over 36 (about 60 km) miles of Swiss Roll every week.
Post world war II, in 1947, J. Lyons & Co. invested £3,000 (£152,368.68 in 2026) into a Cambridge mathmatician’s scientific computer (EDSAC) which was then further developed into the world’s first business computer LEO (Lyons Electronic Office). It also provided the opportunity for the first woman to become a programmer of business systems.
Royal visits
LEO’s Royal visits all happened in secret before the big launch on 29 November 1951. But Queen Elizabeth II (then Princess Elizabeth) had a lot to say about it…
Over 80% of the UK are not familiar with the LEO computer and its significant influence on modern business computing and logistics as we know it today.
Books written about LEO
LEO Remembered
Second edition Edited by Hilary Caminer and Lisa-Jane McGerty
An anthology of over 80 vivid first-hand reminiscences of working on LEO. People who worked in all roles – engineers, programmers, operators, sales people – remember just what it was like in those exciting early days of business computing.
Published 2022 by LEO Computers Ltd. ISBN 978–1-3999-3359-9
LEO The First Business Computer
Peter Bird
Peter Bird joined Lyons when, as he says, ‘the pioneering years of computing were no more than folk history.’ Nonetheless, through his ‘talking with old-timers’ and delving through the Lyons archives, he has made an important contribution to the LEO Computers story.
Published by Hasler Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0-9521651-0-4
A computer called LEO
Georgina Ferry
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.
Published by Fourth Estate. ISBN 1-84115-185-8
LEO and the Managers
by J.R.M.Simmons
1962. First Published in GB. 174 pages. Pictorial dust jacket over black cloth. Pages have light tanning and foxing throughout. Binding remains firm. Pencil inscription to front free endpaper. Boards
Published 1962 by Macdonald. ISBN 1771829579ADA
User-driven Innovation – The World’s First Business Computer
David Caminer, John Aris, Peter Hermon, Frank Land
The story of how the Leo came to be developed, with individual accounts of some of the earliest jobs written by the consultants who brought them to fruition. The authors were all part of the group that put LEO, the first business computer, to work.
Published by McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-709236-8