Celebrating LEO, the world’s first business computer

This year marks the 60th anniversary of LEO, the world’s first business computer—built by J.Lyons & Co, a leading British food manufacturer at the time that also ran a famous chain of tea shops.

Lyons management had long been keen to streamline their back-office operations. In 1947, two Lyons managers visited the U.S. to learn about the latest business processes, including whether the electronic computers they’d heard about during their wartime service, like ENIAC, might be useful. (At the time, the closer-to-home advances at Bletchley Park were still a well-kept military secret.)

They returned inspired by the possibilities and keen to build a machine of their own. After several years of development, LEO, a.k.a. Lyons Electronic Office, took on its first office job on November 17, 1951—weekly valuations for the bakery division, calculating margins on Lyon’s output of bread, cakes and pies.



Until LEO, computing in a work setting was treated like a specialist bit of kit on a factory production line. Each machine was dedicated to a single task. In essence, they were narrowly defined calculating machines. The vision for LEO, in contrast, was bravely broad. LEO was a single computer capable of handling a whole swathe of accounting and bookkeeping tasks, as well as producing daily management reports.

LEO was such a success that Lyons set up a commercial subsidiary to sell spare time on LEO to other businesses, including the Ford Motor Company, which used it to process the payroll for the thousands of workers at its U.K. plant. Later, Lyons also built entirely new LEOs and sold them to other blue-chip companies of the era. In total, more than 70 LEO’s were built, with the last remaining in service until the 1980’s (not bad for a computer that took up an entire room!).

Today we view IT as critical to any enterprise, but in the 1950s, this was by no means a given, as evidenced by a quote from a 1954 issue of The Economist: “There are those who do not believe in the desirability of introducing anything as esoteric as electronics into business routine.” Things certainly have changed, and in a sense, all modern day businesses owe a debt to the LEO team.

Last week at the Science Museum in London, we were delighted to sponsor a small gathering of early LEO programmers  to celebrate their accomplishments and reminisce about their pioneering work. Today, on this 60th anniversary, we invite you to have a cup of tea and join us in toasting LEO—a remarkable ancestor in IT’s family tree.



Posted by Lynette Webb, Senior Manager, External Relations

European Commission President Barroso takes your questions on YouTube World View

(Cross-posted on the YouTube Blog)

Tomorrow, September 28, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso will deliver his annual State of the Union Address. In these turbulent times, we wanted to give people a chance to make their voices heard and ask their questions about the EU. So we teamed up with broadcaster Euronews and invited President Barroso to answer your questions in a special, live YouTube World View interview that will take place on Thursday, October 6 at 10:00am Central European Time.

Starting today, we invite you to submit your questions for President Barroso via youtube.com/worldview. Questions can be on any topic, from the Euro crisis and austerity measures to growth and jobs, from foreign policy and immigration to ethnic minority issues, human rights and the environment. You can ask written or video questions—and view and vote on other people’s questions—in any of the European Union’s languages, thanks to Google Translate.

During the interview on October 6, hosted by Euronews anchor Alex Taylor, the President will answer a selection of the most popular questions, as determined by your votes. The interview will be streamed and broadcast in multiple languages on both YouTube and Euronews.



President Barroso’s interview will be the first multi-lingual livecast in the World View series, which gives anyone with an Internet connection the ability to pose questions, vote on what’s most important to them and get answers directly from senior politicians and world leaders. President Barroso’s interview follows interviews with U.S. President Obama, President Kagame of Rwanda, U.K. Prime Minister Cameron, Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Whatever your question, President Barroso wants to hear from you. Be sure to submit your question via the World View channel before midnight CET on Wednesday October 5.

Posted by Al Verney, Head of Communications, Google Brussels