I started work on LEOs in September of 1967 for Shell-Mex and BP based in Wythenshawe, Manchester. I was 19 at the time but still have fond memories of this time. I have my original training manual entitled 'English Electric Leo Marconi Training Manual- Leo III Basic Operating No 53'. This is a fairly weighty tome with several hundred A4 pages (hand typed/hand drawn I suspect) plus a couple of sample logs headed 'Mock Control Desk Exercise No. 1' and 'No. 2'. Whilst the manual purports to be 'basic', the first page is headed 'The Co-Ordinator' which describes the anatomy of an instruction! I worked on LEOs for about a year helping to run the SMBP group accounts which covered Shell, BP, Scottish Power and National Benzole.

I then became interested in programming having seen examples of CLEO and Intercode (akin to COBOL and Assembler on other systems). I subsequently transferred to operating an ICT 1004 (plugboard based) which I did get to program until it was replaced with a Univac 9400, whence I became a 'proper' programmer using DOS assembler and COBOL.  I still have the printout from my first Assembler program.