27th November 2020

Since our previous update, we have uploaded the following:

• 62307 LEO I BBC Newsreel, 16 Feb 1954

Apart from LEO - The Automatic Office (1957), this is the only footage we have seen of LEO I, complete with audio.  It also includes some significant figures from the LEO team, including Ernest Lenaerts, Wally Dutton and a wonderfully awkward interview with Assistant Comptroller, T.R. Thompson. If you're aware of any other films of LEO I, please don't hesitate to get in touch!

Since completing the first phase of photographs in the archive last month, I have moved on to the swathes of documentation in the archive, concentrating first on the the earlier development of LEO.

As part of the extensive research for his book, LEO - The First Business Computer (1998), Peter Bird gathered not only photographs but a considerable collection of papers, including a run of Lyons/LEO Computers committee minutes from the late 1950s-early 1960s. At the end of this run are a couple of volumes labelled 'Miscellaneous Documents' (usually this phrase strikes terror into archivists..), and there he deposited, in fairly neat chronological order, the surviving papers of the the LEO Computers Ltd Company Secretary, Michael A. Holmyard.  Evidently these papers, including correspondence, file copies of internal memos and other documents, were collected by Michael Holmyard in the course of his work as the most senior administrative officer for LEO Computers. Either by accident or by design, fortunately they survived the cull which Peter Bird describes as having wiped out the 'official' archive of LEO at some point in the late 1980s. Michael Holmyard's files give at least a partial picture of the development of LEO from the administrative point of view, and as far as I can see, have rarely been looked at previously.  Over the past few weeks I have focussed on digitising the papers, and have now also catalogued the following:

• 62309 Programme of work for Ernest Lenaerts drawn up by John Pinkerton (8 Aug 1949)
• 62310 Terms on which LEO Calculations are Carried Out (30 Nov 1954)
• 62444 Draft version - Terms on which LEO Calculations are Carried Out (22 Dec 1954)
• 62445 Memo regarding Lyons subsidiary company accounts (3 May 1955)
• 62446 Memo regarding Lyons subsidiary company accounts (3 Oct 1955)
• 62447 Termination of Public Relations services (11 June 1956)
• 62448 Memo regarding Lyons subsidiary company accounts (26 Oct 1956)
• 62449 Arrangements for research visit to US by John Pinkerton and David Caminer (Feb-Mar 1958)
  • Interesting insight into administrative background to the US visits, so key to the development of LEO.
• 62450 Statement to Press on Computer Delivery (5 June 1958)
• 62451 LEO clerical work move to Minerva Road (23 June 1958 or 1959)
• 62452 LEO management appointments (16 Sep 1958)
  • Here is noted the appointment of Frank Land as Programming Consultant.
• 62453 Correspondence with Lord Halsbury, National Research Development Corporation (29-30 Oct 1958)
  • This exchange contains some very interesting material from John Pinkerton, giving a list of what he believed were the most innovative elements of the work by the LEO team, writing to Tony Giffard, 3rd Earl of Halsbury, then Director of the National Research Development Corporation (a government body established to encourage private sector technological development).
• 62454 Tender Submissions for Automatic Data Processing Systems for Admiralty and Air Ministry (11 Nov 1958)
  • Although the tender documentation itself does not survive, it is interesting to see LEO Computers applying for government contract work at this point.

We hope to have more of these papers online soon!

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