I am a 77 year old graduate of Aberdeen University. In the 1950’s we lived in Hastings and my parents would take us up to London to a show, we often used to go to Lyons Corner House for a meal. So I always loved Jo Lyons. I met my first husband, Christopher Ian Grigor Tyson, at university. When I graduated in 1963, we came down to London to look for jobs.  Chris had failed his degree, but was delighted to be given a job by LEO Computers Ltd, while I joined English Electric in their domestic appliance division to do market research.  My brother was working for ICL (the English Electric Computer Co, in Staffordshire).  We had another friend who was working for another computer company, but the name escapes me, and another for IBM, so when we had parties everyone had to define their terms before they could start talking about their jobs as each company used different words the the same thing.

Chris Tyson stayed with LEO Computers until his death in 1970, but the company name changed half a dozen times.  LEO was bought out by English Electric and became “English Electric Leo Marconi”, then it joined with ICL, and was taken over finally by ICT.  As far as I can remember Chris Tyson worked in the same office in Bayswater(?) despite the changes in company name.  I think it was LEO III that Chris worked on.

Myself working for English Electric, I remember using punch cards and paper tape to analyse the results of my surveys. For many years afterwards we used paper tape to hang Christmas cards from the picture rail as it was so much tougher than anything else.