A Computer Called Leo
2003
First Published
4.39
Average Rating
242
Number of Pages
This is 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, the war, austerity and on into the 1960s and 1970s. Yet Lyons also has a more surprising claim to history. In the 1930s John Simmons, a young graduate in charge of the clerks' offices that totalled all the bills issued by the Nippies and kept track of the costs of all the tea, cakes and other goods distributed to the nation's cafes and shops, became obsessed by the new ideas of scientific management. He had a dream: to build a machine that would automate the millions of tedious transactions and process them in as little time as possible.
Avg Rating
4.39
Number of Ratings
87
5 STARS
49%
4 STARS
40%
3 STARS
10%
2 STARS
0%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads
Author
Georgina Ferry
Author · 5 books
Born in Hong Kong in 1955, Ferry had a peripatetic childhood as one of five children of an army officer. She went to Ellerslie School in Great Malvern from 1966–73, then to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford: she graduated in Experimental Psychology in 1976. She worked briefly for a science publisher before joining New Scientist magazine as a section editor. Soon afterwards she began to present science programmes on BBC Radio 4. She married David Long in 1981. They settled in Oxford, and sons Ed and Will were born in 1982 and 1985. Since then she has worked mostly as a freelance writer, editor and broadcaster.
