Digital audio of a recorded interview with Peter Hermon, who worked as a programmer and consultant for LEO Computers, later moving on to British Airways.

Interviewer: Neville Lyons
Date of interview: 28th June 2017
Length of recording: 23m41s
Format: original .mp3 recording 10.55MB (transferred to .mov video for presentation on YouTube 89MB)
Copyright in recording content: Peter Hermon and LEO Computers Society

Transcript editor: unknown

Abstract: Peter Hermon joined LEO Computers after he obtained first class honours from St. John’s Oxford, and seeing an advertisement for a mathematician from J. Lyons & Co. He was one of the most brilliant LEO recruits and quickly made his mark as a programmer and consultant. He was involved in a number of LEO sales, working first with Wills Tobacco and later with Dunlop Rubber. He joined Dunlop to first run their LEO installation, but subsequently rose to head Dunlop Management Services world-wide. He moved to BOAC where he was responsible for the development of BOADICEA the airline reservation system which became a major UK success story and later became a Director of British Airways. After retirement in 1989 he became an active member of the LEO Foundation, acting as its treasurer. Peter’s other interests were walking in North Wales and he has published a number of guides for walking in Wales.

Transcript :

Peter Hermon (PH) interview 
Interviewed by Neville Lyons (NL) on 15th of June 2017

The Business Systems Guru’s Story

NL
Perhaps you'd like to introduce yourself, telling us where you were born, when and your father’s occupation and so on?

Early Days
PH
I was born in November 1928 in Oxford.  My father was a motor engineer, working for Morris Motors.  My mother was a dressmaker, working for one of the big stores in Oxford.  For the first four or five years of my life we didn't have a home of our own.  My parents and I all lived in my grandparents’ house, a little terraced house, in Crown Street in Oxford.  And it wasn't until about 1933, when my father was promoted that we moved to Nottingham, where I spent the rest of my childhood.  My father, by that time, was a Morris Motors technical representative for an area centred round Nottingham.  

NL
Would, can you tell us a bit about your schooling and any further education you might have had? 
PH 
I started off at the local council school, Lenton Council School, near where we lived in Nottingham, but in 1939 I went to Nottingham High School.  For some reason I didn't take a scholarship examination there, partly because I think my parents thought they were going to have to move back to Oxford during the war.  So my father paid for me, nine guineas a term, which was a lot of money in those days.
So I started off at Nottingham High School in September 1939.  However, in 1941 I was awarded an internal scholarship, so thereafter fees ceased. I stayed at Nottingham High School until 1947. I enjoyed it there very much.  I took the school certificate, the higher certificate, and things like that, I was very happy indeed there.  I was very much an academic, not much good at sport.  
Originally I was very keen on classics, I was top of the class in Latin and I also did Greek for a year.  Then I was keen on chemistry, but eventually ended up with mathematics and on the basis of my higher school certificate I won a state scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge.  The next year, 1947, I got an open scholarship to Oxford to St. John’s College, which is where I eventually ended up.  
However, before going there I had to do my military service, so in September ’47 I had to report to Glen Parva Barracks in Leicester for my military service.  I had basic training there for six weeks, and then was posted to the Old Park Barracks in Dover, which was then a Royal Artillery training regiment, and I was there till the end of the year.  I also enjoyed it there very much, it was very, very interesting and exciting.  But thereafter my military career went downhill because I really had nothing to do.  I was eventually posted to the 39th Medium Regiment, Royal Artillery in Rafah, on the border between Egypt and Palestine, which was a boring place and we really had, literally, nothing to do.  Eventually they knew I had some mathematical background so I was invited to participate in some surveying activities and that, and things perked up from thereon.  
After about six months in Rafah we moved to the Canal Zone for a few weeks and then on to Misrata in Libya where I spent the rest of my time.  It was there that, as I said before, they discovered I had some mathematical ability, so I was asked to do some calculations for the survey work.  And they thought I was so quick and good at this, they were actually astounded.  It was nothing more actually than solving problems, solving triangles using a slide rule, but the fact that I could do this quick and efficiently really astounded them and I was, I gained a lot of prestige from that. 
 Anyway, eventually, early ’49, I was diagnosed with a pulmonary effusion, which means I had to be hospitalised in Tripoli and then sent home in a hospital ship, where I arrived in about September that year at Netley, near Southampton. 
 Now I was due to go up to Oxford in 1949, of course, since I left school in ’47, and national service was for two years.  But that had to be deferred for a year 'cos I, I wasn't let out of hospital till about November ’49.  But I've had no ill effects from that and I think in retrospect the gravity of that was very much exaggerated.  I was kept in bed for months on end without any treatment apart from drinking lots of milk, but that was that. 
 So eventually I went up to Oxford in October 1950 to read mathematics and I graduated in 1953 with first class honours, and I won the university prize for the best result of the year.  
After University
At that stage all I had in mind to do after Oxford was research.  But about the same time, in January ’54, I got married and I realised I wanted to earn some money, so I began to look around for a job and I didn't know what to do but I was offered the job of senior mathematical master at the Grammar School, which I took.  I took that 'cos I was paid a lot more money than the average job.  The salary was £771 a year, which in those days was quite a lot.  Most poor graduates were lucky if they got £500.  Anyway, I soon decided I didn't like teaching, I wasn't suited to it, I hadn't had any patience for boys or their ways or eccentricities.

To Lyons
So I started looking around for another job and one day I saw a little ad’, it wasn't more than three little lines in The Daily Telegraph saying ‘Lyons are looking for mathematicians’.  I couldn't think for the life of me why Lyons wanted mathematicians, but I applied and was invited into an interview by T.R. Thompson who then told me all about LEO.  It wasn't really me being interviewed, it was him selling the idea to me and they offered me a job, which I eventually took up in September 1955.  
I had no idea what LEO was and what computers were, I more or less took it on trust but it was a wonderful experience and I've never regretted it.  I started off in September ’55 on a five-week training course, which is one of the best courses I've ever been on.  And after that I was put to work programming part of the Ford’s payroll.  Lyons had just got a contract from Ford’s to do their payroll on the LEO computer, so I spent a few weeks on that, after which I was told to go and teach on the next course, for the next lot of intakes.  So having been a student on one course, I was a teacher in charge on the next.  Anyway, that all went off very well and then I went back to the programming office and was engaged on more jobs though I can't remember exactly what they were. 

NL
Who were you working under, can you tell us?
PH
I was working under Leo Fantl.  He was the ‘payroll king’ in those days.  

Anyway, it wasn't long in 1955 before I was appointed as assistant manager of the programming office, along with three others.  Now at that time I was put in charge of the programming development for one of LEO’s most prestigious sales. They had just sold the LEO II to the Imperial Tobacco Company in Bristol, who in those days, owned the Players and Wills brand of cigarettes, along with tobaccos and cigars and goodness knows what.  So I was in, put in charge of a team for developing that application, which was one of the most complicated they'd ever had up to that time. So frequent trips to Bristol became part of my activities from then on. 
That went off successfully. The installation was a great success. I then became a consultant responsible for, in effect, going to other companies and advising them on how they might make use of LEO facilities.  Though I was called a consultant, I was actually, of course, a salesman.  So I spent lots of time going to companies like gas and electricity boards, Dorman Long, the steel people up in Middlesbrough, and lots of others such as Renold Chains in Manchester.  And I thoroughly enjoyed myself!

NL
And can you tell me, had those companies all bought LEO?

[Historical note. Renold Chain purchased Leo III/42]
PH
But not in my time, because in those days, it was early days, where people wanted to wait and see what happened before diving in with big investments. Though I was instrumental in selling quite a number of LEO’s.
From Lyons to Dunlop
One of the last ones was for Dunlop, the big tyre company.  And when it came to a point in ’59 I moved over to them to work for them to install their system for them up in Birmingham.  So that's when I left LEO, to develop this, to develop this installation for Dunlop, so we all went to live in Sutton Coldfield.  By this time my wife and I had three children, two boys and a girl.  We lived in Sutton Coldfield, which was a very pleasant suburb of Birmingham. In the next few years installed this big system in Dunlop, which again went off very well.  
To BOAC and Beyond 
However, in 1964, towards the end of it, there was an advertisement in the paper for a senior data assistant manager with a big salary, five thousand pounds, a hell of a lot of money in those days, which I applied for and I soon found it was for BOAC.  Tysick’s were the consultants advising on it and I was called in for an interview and to cut a long story short I eventually got the job.  I was very pleased about this because during my time in Dunlop, as well as running the installation at Fort Dunlop, I became their computer chief for their subsidiaries all over the world.  So I'd regularly been visiting Dunlop subsidiaries in America, Canada, South Africa, India, Rhodesia and Malaysia.  So I really liked the idea of long distance travel by this time, so BOAC was an excellent fit.  And I started the whole reservation system up when I got there.  I reported directly to the chairman, Sir Giles Guthrie, so I had a lot of prestige and power and I could really do anything I liked.  I had excellent support, and again that all went off very well and in October 1968 we cut over this reservation system which was the most elaborate in the world at that time; so much so that other airlines came to us, asked for us to sell our expertise, which we did, so we ended up selling our expertise to Qantas, Air New Zealand, South African Airways, oh about twenty or thirty different airlines.  So again I was travelling all over the world dealing with all that sort of thing.

[Historical note. The system was called BOADICEA. It is now the name of their computer HQ near Heathrow]

NL
Would you say with BOAC you were a sort of pioneer as far as computing was concerned?
PH
Oh very much so, very much a pioneer. They had virtually nothing when I went there. We ended up with a staff of two or three thousand, including four or five hundred development people.  Oh yes, very much.  Yes.

NL
And what sort of computer were they using?
PH
We used IBM computers, IBM 360’s and 370’s, which we had to get special permission for because, of course, the government in those days was very much pro ICL.  But ICL, quite honestly, if you'll forgive me for being blunt hadn't a clue and we quickly disposed of them.  The trouble with ICL was they were still run by ex-punch card people who still had the punch card mentality and never realised the breadth and extent to which computers could broaden their horizons.  That's basically why they never made anything of it, in my view!

NL
And how did then progress within BOAC?
PH
Oh, I became in charge of management services, which as well as computers   communications encompassed productivity and organisation and work-study.  I eventually joined the board of BOAC.  Then shortly after that there were plans for a merger with BEA and I did a lot of work planning for that. When the merger came about I was appointed to be the group management services director for BOAC and BEA and all their subsidiaries.  And that meant bringing the BEA systems on to the same basis as the BOAC ones.  For a lot of, for this work we were eventually awarded a Queen’s prize for technological innovation.  A few years later, another Queen’s award for export achievement by virtue of all the sales we had made to other airlines.   And in 1978 I joined the board of British Airways itself and I was responsible for producing a paper planning for the merger of the two airlines, which then went ahead.  I eventually left in 1983.

NL
And was that your retirement?
PH
Not really, no, I just wanted to have a change

I then worked for a time for Tamlin Computers from America who were a big, start-up company with big new ideas. I didn't stay there for too long. 
Then I joined Lloyds of London to develop their computer systems and I was there for two years.  Then I moved to Harris Queensway, the big retailer, to develop computer systems there.  And I eventually retired from there about 1989 and since then I've been more or less retired.
I did some freelance consultancy for the Banks of Bali and Crédit Lyonnais but from full time, paid employment, I retired in 1989/1990.


Looking Back to LEO days
NL
You've had a very wide experience Peter, obviously, but going back to your LEO days can you remember any sort of particular incidents or, amusing incidents or indeed the various people that you worked with and their characters?
PH
Well the most striking thing to say is I never had such a happy time.  It was, looking back, like a dream; I thoroughly enjoyed life there.  The people were wonderful; we had a great esprit de corps.  And as I said once, and it summed it up, ‘supervision was something you sought rather than something that was imposed’.  
It really was a freewheeling sort of place, and you were just left to get on with things. David Caminer was the most wonderful person to lead that organisation.  I can't believe how wonderful it was.  
Going to work was like a dream really, it was so exciting and rewarding.  

NL
Yes.  You mentioned T.R. Thompson and David Caminer and Leo Fantl, were there other, any other personalities that you came across or can recall?
PH
Oh yes, there was John Gosden, he was a great technologist, Jim Smith, who was in charge of the mathematical work, matrix inversion and so forth.  They're the other two leading people I remember.

NL
You told me you were married, you had children, were they fully supportive of your working in LEO, when you were working with LEO?
PH
Oh yes, very much so, and they had to be because you didn't have any fixed hours. You had to work when the computer was available.  So many days you, many times you'd have to work late into the evening, not get home till ten o'clock, or work at weekends. But you didn't mind, it was so rewarding, but the family had to understand it of course.

NL
Of course, yes.  And, going on to any professional activities, are you, for example, a member of the British Computer Society?
PH
I think I was for a short time but I didn't have the, any regard for it.  It was run in its early days by a lot of academics who really didn't know what they were talking about.  People who had never done anything but theorised.  We, people who had done things and knew how it really worked, didn't have a great deal of regard for them.  So, no, I didn't stay with it very long.

NL
And have you, you've written books and, or articles on LEO?
PH
Well there's the book you've pointed out.

NL
That's the ‘User Driven Innovation’.  You contributed to that I think, yes?
PH
Yes, one chapter. Chapter 17.

I haven't written any others on LEO.

NL
And, well fine, you've really covered a tremendous amount and you've given me a lot of information.  I don't know if there's anything else you'd like to add before we conclude this interview?  About your lifetime or career, I think you've probably covered everything.
PH
Well the thing I underline, once again, is the joy of working for LEO. I use the word ‘joy’ deliberately.  It really was wonderful. I think you'd have paid to go there rather than being paid to go there.  Yes.
The only thing I would like to add is I was, I'm very sad that LEO folded because it needn't have done so. I mean T.R. Thompson, who was the leader of it in those days, was very keen that they made their own computers as well as selling the know-how. And that was very foolish, well, I mean they couldn't possibly build computers on the scale of IBM, dozens or hundreds, they could only build three or four a year, and it wasn't their expertise.  If they'd concentrated on selling know-how, programming techniques and actually installing systems they would still be around today I think, 'cos that was their real forte.  They didn't have the background in electronics to build computers.  So I always felt they were never going to make a go of it in that sense.

NL
Well that's a very interesting observation, yes, indeed.
PH
But he's a very stubborn man and you couldn't persuade him!

For long periods he insisted that all we needed for printing was printers that could print numbers not letters.  And we said ‘well if you're doing a stock picking job how can you get away with numbers when you've got to describe what stocks the men in the storehouse have got to pick’?  Well he said ‘they can do it from numbers’, 'cos they did it that way in Lyons, but Lyons in their tea houses only had eighty products. Eighty sorts of cake. So the stock pickers could remember those, but when we went to the Imperial Tobacco Company they had six hundred brands of tobacco and cigarettes and so forth but they couldn't possibly remember all those.  So we had to insist then that they got a printer that could do alphanumeric printing as well.  And that came about 'cos Imperial Tobacco said ‘unless we have alphanumeric printing there is no deal, we just have to have that’.

[Historical note. The Power-Samas alphanumeric was first added to LEO II/2 for Imperial Tobacco to satisfy this requirement]

NL
Yes.
NL
The LEO Computer Society has recorded this interview with Peter Hermon. The Society would like to thank Peter very much for his time and reminiscences.

This interview with Peter Hermon has been recorded by the LEO Computer Society as part of an Oral History Project to document the earliest use of electronic computers in business applications.  Any opinions expressed are those of the interviewee and not of the Society.

**************************************************************
Suggested page footnotes:

Page 2
T. R. Thompson  of Lyons in 1947 investigated the possibility of designing computers for use in offices. From 1949 onwards, he and J. M. M. Pinkerton supervised the construction of the Lyons Electronic Office, LEO.  By 1951, LEO was doing regular clerical jobs for LEO.

Page 3
Leo Fantl  1824 – 2000 was one of LEO’s original team of programmers. He has been described as one of the 'fathers of business computing'.

Page 5
David Caminer OBE: (1915 2008) had a long career with J. Lyons, LEO and English Electric from the 1930s through to the establishment of LEO and beyond to the formation of ICL. He became known as the world’s first Business Applications Programmer. 

John Gosden  Was educated at Monmouth College and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he graduated in mathematics. In 1953 he joined the J. Lyons organisation as a trainee programmer.

Provenance :
Recording made by the LEO Computers Society as part of their ongoing oral history project.

Copyright
The video above may be subject to copyright of the original author and is present only on this website for non-profit educational purposes only. If you are the original copyright owner and wish to have the media removed from this website please contact us using the relevant contact email address listed on our contact page.