Fifty years ago, a British team launched the world's first business computer.

Leo was a major milestone in the history of technology.

Yet it has tended to be overshadowed by the spectacular growth of US rivals and the amazing subsequent speed of development of thecomputer.

Computing believes that the contribution of the Leo pioneers ought to receive far more recognition than it does.We also believe that there are still lessons to learn today from the project.

TimelineOctober 1947

J. Lyons & Company, a British catering company famous for its teashops, takes an active role in promoting the commercial development ofcomputers.

1951

The LEO I computer goes into operation running the world's first regular routine office computer job.

1954

The company, LEO Computers Ltd, is formed

1963

LEO Computers Ltd merges with English Electric to form English Electric LEO, and later, English Electric Leo Marconi (EELM).

1968

Subsequent mergers eventually see LEO incorporated into ICL

We can still learn lessons from Leo

By Michael GubbinsHere's a Great British story. After the war, the country's leading purveyor of tea and cakes needed to automate its complex supply chainand accounting systems.

So Lyons mixed a handful of eggheads, an ounce or two of idealism and lashings of business know-how to cook up the world's firstbusiness computer - Leo, launched 50 years ago next month.

The realities of the market eventually ate away at the project, and in stepped the brash, confident Americans of a former punch-cardcompany called IBM.

And the rest? Well, you know the rest.

But before we wheel out the cliches about a lost inheritance and consign Leo to the world of the BBC2 documentary, maybe we shouldtake a fresh look. It should at least be a change from the dazzle of shiny but useless gadgets, bright yet unworkable ideas, and unfeasibleCalifornian tans.

That's particularly true if the voices of experience are as passionate as Leo pioneers Frank Land and John Aris - a welcome change fromthe see-through enthusiasm of the dotcom snake-oil merchant or the childlike fervour of the socially-inept techies.

Are there lessons 50 years on for IT directors coping with today's complex supply chain systems, ERP extensions and globalinfrastructures?

The vision of the Leo team and the idea conceals an essential simplicity. Behind the fondant fancies, Lyons was a tough company whichknew its market and never lost sight of the bottom line.

The world's first business computer was created to meet straightforward commercial imperatives: a problem needed solving andtechnology provided the solution.

How many companies since have been lured onto the rocks following the Siren call of must-have technology? Has the hype sometimes'fixed' what wasn't broken?

The internet, the client-server revolution and the development of software and hardware created applications of which the pioneers of '51could never have dreamed. But with Leo, the tail never wagged the lion.

Logically, Aris and Land sympathise with a non-proprietorial approach to IT, and see a line running from their project through to Linuxtoday. That's debatable, but there is a simpler truth that technology is a good servant and a bad master.

Another lesson is so glaring that it can easily be missed. How could an obscure (in global terms) company such as Lyons have instigated aworld-changing innovation and kept it going for 20-odd years?

The answer is that much-maligned art - management. The company assembled a team that was creative and dynamic, but grounded in thecompany's financial needs. Some of the UK's brightest university brains were recruited, and investment in education paid off.

It sounds simple. Yet sometimes you need to look back to look forward, and to draw the simple out of the complex. The Leo story is not one of UK innovation wasted, but of a pioneering business spirit which could and should inspire. It could make aninteresting movie, like Enigma.

But say it quietly - Hollywood will probably transfer the story to Silicon Valley.

Leo's contribution today

Financial insecurity, lack of entrepreneurship and ill-advised mergers cost the UK leadership of the world IT industry.

One of its pioneers, David Caminer, told a conference marking the 50th anniversary that there were still important lessons that today'sbusiness could learn from the project. 'Why did the UK become a second-class nation in IT, a follower rather than a leader?'

He says sound finance is still crucial. Leo had a 'sugar daddy' in the Lyons bakers and tea shop chain but as the scale of operations grew, itsimply could not compete with the US giants like IBM.

'It is comforting to be freed from financial worries while history is being made, but it is more than likely that they will catch up with yousooner or later - a good many dot coms found that out.'

Caminer also warns about the seductive but dangerous temptations of mergers. Leo joined English Electric in the 1970s - an unhappymarriage which ultimately damaged both businesses.

'I know of no computer merger anywhere where there has been added value from the merger of competing forces of engineers, marketersand programmers. It is like two civilisations coming together,' he said.

For the full speech see: http://is.lse.ac.uk/leo/

The next 50 yearsIn 50 year's time we will be overwhelmingly reliant on technology, says the Leo Foundation's report 'The World and Business Computing in2051'.

The report predicts a world where competing companies routinely share information as global mega-corporations with unimaginableeconomies of scale dominate vertical markets.

Traditional manufacturing industries will be run largely by robots both on the factory floor and in administrative centres.

And limitless power generation will contribute to mass consolidations with, for example, utility companies providing groceries, transportationand communications facilities as well as power.

As employee numbers drop through the floor businesses will no longer need physical office buildings but will rent out space in IT centres ona per-use basis.

Centre users will have access to the full range of corporate, government and administrative systems, with full security, via thethird-generation Internet. By 2051 the Internet will transport data at near light-speed using self-guided sub-atomic particles.

Underlying all this communication will run 10 terahertz machines able to handle anything a fully-connected world can through at them.

And every person will have a Personal Identification Device (PID), the size of a badge and acting as all-round communications deviceincluding phone, fax, computer and video-recorder. With subatomic storage, a whole lifetime's data wouldn't be enough to fill it.

Further readingLeo: The Incredible story of the world's first business computer (McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-009501-9, by David Caminer, John Aris, PeterHermon and Frank LandLinks

Web

www.leo-computers.org.uk

http://is.lse.ac.uk/leo/Books

Leo : The First Business Computerby Peter J. Bird

Published by Hasler Publishing Ltd ISBN 0-9521651-0-4

User driven innovation: The World's First Business Computer

by David Caminer, John Aris, Peter Hermon, Frank Land

Published by McGraw-Hill ISBN 0-07-709236-8

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