Tea cakes and technology
THEWORLD’SFIRST BUSINESSCOMPUTERS From counting teacakes to putting the roof on the Sydney Opera House, Nicole Kobie recounts how computers first broke into business
Meet the unlikely business IT pioneers
Counting cakes and cups of tea — it sounds like a task for the volunteers at a village fete, but it was the first job that computers were ever entrusted with in a business.
In the 1950s, computers were already in use by academics and the military, but hadn’t yet begun their all-consuming creep into commerce. J Lyons & Co and its tea shops took the first step and other industries soon followed, from farming to architecture, all looking for the efficiencies promised by the primordial computers of the era.
Imagine the joy on managers’ faces after LEO — the Lyons Electronic Office — whizzed, beeped and whirred into life in September 1951, spitting out the necessary calculations in only one-and-a-half seconds. And imagine the concern on the faces of the workers who would have to learn how to input data into the hulking, noisy machinery (the LEO Computers Society has sound clips on its website at leo-computers.org.uk) and whose jobs were suddenly at risk of changing, if not disappearing altogether.
LEADINGLIKEALYON
A tea shop might sound like an unlikely place for the business world’s first foray into computing, but that would underestimate the scale of the brewing firm. At its peak, Lyons’ 24-hour locations had 400 staff each, and back-office costs to support the growing business were rising fast. Shop employees had to call in orders, which would be noted down on paper before being passed to suppliers, who would in turn pack the extra tea and cakes onto lorries.
Worried the company couldn’t scale without a change, in the 1920s Lyons’ board hired John Simmons, a Cambridge maths genius, to be what might today be labelled an “innovation consultant”. “He was their guru of making change,” said Frank Land, who worked on the first LEO in the 1950s.