Description of Photograph

Photograph of the control desks for LEO I - the control panel is on the right, with 'homemade' photo electric tape reader and teleprinter output on the left. Peter Bird notes there are reliability statistics visible on the wall.

This image appears in the interactive plan for our Virtual LEO I installation, p24.

 

Research comments: The 'homemade' nature of some of the components the team used to make the LEO system not only work but work in a business context is worth pointing out here. In many cases, the appropriate technology just did not exist at the time - so the engineers fashioned new components out of whatever did exist. They made existing technologies do new things. The reliability statistics on the wall point to the reason they did this: to successfully work for a commercial business like J. Lyons & Co., the machine had to be reliable. As a result LEO was quite different in many ways to the EDSAC machine it was based on. (LM)

 

Provenance
Collected by Peter Bird as part of his research for his book LEO - The First Business Computer (1994).

Date: November 1952

Physical Description: 1 photographic print; black and white

Archives Hub References: CMLEO/PB/PH/1/60733
PJB/3/2/051

Other References: DCMLEO20190524009
                  
                  
                  
                  


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This exhibit has a reference ID of CH60733. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.