Menu for the Lyons dinner held at the Trocadero ' to celebrate successful demonstration of clerical work performed by the calculator of LEO', on Wednesday 16th May 1951.

Research comments: The LEO Chronicle states that on 16th May 1951 "A Dinner is given at the Trocadero to the staff of LEO. Mr. Geoffrey Salmon in a speech congratulates them on the success attained so far.". At this point in time LEO was working well enough for the team to be able to show its potential for undertaking clerical work to Lyons' directors and management, although developing suitable input/output equipment was still proving problematic. But progress was considered sufficient for this dinner to be provided by Lyons for the LEO team.

The menu for the dinner is typical of Lyons and uses a colourised image of LEO's racks, with their blue covers in place, for the front page. Page 2 shows the racks with the covers removed and the valves visible. Note that LEO is still referred to as a 'calculator' at this point in time; the term computer was not yet in common use.

The dinner was held at the Trocadero, a huge restaurant operated by Lyons, which was situated on the corner of London's Shaftesbury Avenue and Windmill Street. According to historian Peter Bird, from the very first year of opening in 1895 the Trocadero made a profit of £200 per week, increasing to £800 by the turn of the century - nearly twice as much as all the teashops put together and a third of Lyons' profits. By the 1930s its revenues declined, although it was used from 1896 to 1962 as the venue for the shareholders' Annual General Meetings, during which they were frequently reminded by the Chairman to use its facilities for their own business or private entertaining needs. This LEO dinner was one such Lyons-related event.

Geoffrey Salmon, who led the toast to LEO during the dinner, was a member of the Salmon-Gluckstein family who founded Lyons. The menu tells us that John Simmons, one of the Lyons managers central to the decision to start the LEO project, led the toast to the King (George VI) and T.R. Thompson (TRT), who was recruited by Simmons and played a leading role in the success of LEO, led the toast to the Lyons company. (LM)

Provenance :
Transferred to the LEO Computers Society archive by LCS Chair, Peter Byford.