| Description |
A series of 4 programmes which tells the human stories of some of the computer pioneers in three countries, Britain, America and the Ukraine. Each is a little cameo of social history of the early post-war years half a century ago, from a time when in the words of one of them ?everything you did was new, no-one had ever done it before?. No anorak needed to enjoy these programmes! Fifty years ago the great catering company J Lyons, best known for its Teashops and Corner Houses, ran the world?s first real business computer program, calculating the value of its bakery sales. Astonishingly Lyons had also developed and built the computer itself, and it gave it the playful name of ?LEO? ? short for Lyons Electronic Office. Across the Atlantic, two rival teams were developing their own business computers, shortly to become famous as the ?Univacs?, the name that came to mean ?computer? in 50?s America. One group worked in an old barn, overlooked by an ancient stuffed moose. Meanwhile in an abandoned monastery on the edge of war-torn Kiev, another group worked night and day to build the Soviet Union?s first computer. And while all these electronic marvels were taking shape, a genius at the London School of Economics was turning his engineering skills to economics to create the world?s first and only hydraulic computer. It used coloured water in plastic tubes to model the national economy, and it worked so well they even sold one to the Central Bank of Guatemala.part 1) ?LEO the Lyons Computer? (30/10/01)The first programme starts in the Piccadilly café which is still identifiable as the first Lyons Teashop ever opened, at the end of the 19th Century. It moves on to Hammersmith where a Lyons historian describes how the great Cadby Hall factory complex needed an army of clerks to run it. LEO veterans explain how the company that believed it could do anything decided to build a business computer, and did so with considerable success. A former Teashops manageress recalls what a difference it made to her work when all the daily orders were computerised. And one of the telephonists who typed her orders into LEO remembers the excitement of ?feeding this marvellous machine?. It was so successful that Lyons did jobs for other companies and the government, like working out the new tax tables on the night of the Chancellor?s Budget. It also calculated the distance between every one of British Rail?s 5000 stations and every other one. But the name died in the 60s, beaten by the perception that a catering company couldn?t build computers, and the disorganisation of Britain?s computer industry.Presented by Mark Whitaker, this series is Pennine Productions? third commission for Radio 4 |