FBCS, FAIS Frank Land
email: f.land@lse.ac.uk

Remembering LEO

Keywords: Business computers, J. Lyons and Company, LEO

It is now more than 60 years since the world's first business use of a computer, the valuation of bakery output, was rolled-out the LEO I computer at Cadby Hall in London, the headquarters of the food production and catering company J. Lyons and Company. LEO I had been designed and built as a computer to be used for business data processing by a team of engineers recruited by Lyons, with a basic design following the design of the Cambridge University EDSAC. The story of the Lyons initiative has been recorded and explanations of how a company in the food business came to build a computer has been told in books and articles in the last decades (-see Appendix 1 for a comprehensive bibliography of material relating to LEO). This chapter remembers the contribution made by LEO.

The late David Caminer passionately wanted the world to be reminded of the LEO heritage. He had been instrumental in setting up and managing the LEO programming and systems function [START_REF] Aris | Inventing Systems Engineering[END_REF][START_REF] Ferry | [END_REF]). He felt that J. Lyons and the LEO team had played an important role in what is now taken for grantedthe use of computers in society for a wide range of activities other than mathematical calculations. And he was concerned because it seemed to him that the part played by LEO had been written out of the histories of computing then being publishedthe 1980s and later, and that as a result there was only a very limited memory of the LEO legacy. A good example is that the 875 page Concise Encyclopaedia of Computer Science (Reilly 2004), intended as a reference book for students, devotes half a sentence to LEO in Appendix III on page 832. The UK's Professor Martin Campbell-Kelly, one of the world's leading computer historians, in his History of the Software Industry (Campbell-Kelly, 2003) makes no mention of LEO and little of British software despite the pioneering achievements of LEO and other British companies, concentrating largely on American initiatives. He writes, (page 10), "... I probably have a better knowledge of the British software industry than of the American. However, I felt unable to incorporate much material on the British software industry because it would have appeared disproportionate, would have appeared chauvinistic". Such modesty can lead to the making of myths.

It was David Caminer who, supported by a small group of old enthusiastic LEO hands, was determined to ensure that the legacy of LEO would be written into computer history. Independently Peter Bird, the ex-head of Systems Development at J. Lyons & Company Limited, had long thought it was important for the LEO story to be part of computer history, and over a number of years, working very much on his own, had compiled a history of the LEO project, which apart from the historical narrative included much technical and personal detail. To publish the book he even set up his own publishing company, and in 1994 published 'LEO: The First Business Computer' [START_REF] Bird | LEO: The first Business Computer[END_REF].

It was in his later years, retired from ICL and Fujitsu, that David Caminer gathered a small band of LEO pioneers and enthused and bullied them into turning the LEO story into a narrative of computing history. The first step was to write an account of the LEO history leavened by the personal reminiscences of many of those who had played a part in the story, including some who had worked for LEO customers. The book, first published by McGraw-Hill in the UK [START_REF] Caminer | User Driven Innovation: The World's First Business Computer[END_REF], was subsequently published in the USA [START_REF] Caminer | LEO: The Incredible Story of the World's First Business Computer[END_REF], and in 2000 translated into Chinese for publication in China.

Between them these books provide an authoritative history of the LEO story, which helped to bring LEO back into the story of how computer use evolved and the special part played by J. Lyons and LEO.

The It was clear that the story of a British catering and food manufacturing business launching the first business computer and setting up a Computer Manufacturing and Service Company as a subsidiary -LEO Computers Limitedwas gaining traction at least in the UK and had become more widely known and intrigued parts of the media. The result was the publication of more books telling the LEO story. Science writer Georgina Ferry wrote an account [START_REF] Ferry | A computer called LEO: Lyons Teashops and the World's First office Computer[END_REF] which received the accolade of being the book of the week for BBC Radio 4 in September 2003 being broadcast twice a day for five days on Radio 4.

In 2001 BBC Radio 4 broadcast four 15 minute programs each program devoted to one pioneering initiative in the history of computers. One episode was entitled 'LEO the Lyons Computer'. The series was written, produced and narrated by Mike Hally. Its success led Hally to publish an extended version of the program in a book which demonstrates that computer developments in the 1940 (and earlier) and 1950s took place in many places and were not confined to the USA and Britain [START_REF] Hally | Electronic Brains: stories from the dawn of the Computer age[END_REF] Remarkably Channel 5 television was planning a documentary 'Disappearing Britain' screened in 2006 which included the story of tea drinking in Britain with the well-known actor Wendy Craig as presenter. 1 In researching their story they came across J. Lyons of teashop and tea marketing fame, and discovered that Lyons was using its own computer LEO for both teashops replenishment and the weekly planning of tea production and blending. Intrigued they followed up the story and 1 "Disappearing Britain: The British Cuppa" with Wendy Craig (2006) devoted a part of one of the programs to LEO and included an interview with the programmer (Frank Land) who had been responsible for the tea blending application.

To celebrate the 60 th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, BBC I television compiled a five episode program 'The 1952 Show' of notable events in Britain around the time of her coronation, and the editors selected the LEO story for episode 5 screened on 30 th March 2012. It featured an interview of one of the original team of engineers responsible for the design and construction of LEO I -Ernest Kaye.

The spate of books and media exposure appeared to ensure that in the public sphere in Britain the LEO story had received recognition and admiration even gaining a Guinness Book of Records Certificate as "The first ever business computer was LEO I (Lyons Electronic Office). It began operations in November 1951 at the Lyons headquarters, London, UK".

Recognition in the wider world of academia was more limited, though many computer history texts, but as suggested above, not all, noted the Lyons initiative and the role played by LEO in the evolution of business computing. Good examples are the IEEE Journal Annals of the History of Computing in the US and the Computer Journal in the UK both of which have carried a number of papers related to LEO over the years [START_REF] Anderson | Pioneers of Payroll on computers: LEO, the Army, the Navy Dockyards and De Havilland[END_REF][START_REF] Aris | Inventing Systems Engineering[END_REF][START_REF] Caminer | And How to Avoid Them[END_REF][START_REF] Caminer | LEO and its Applications: the Beginning of Business Computing[END_REF][START_REF] Caminer | Behind The Curtain at LEO[END_REF][START_REF] Delve | The Pinkerton Lecture[END_REF][START_REF] Gosden | Market Research Applications on LEO[END_REF][START_REF] Forbes | An Introduction to Compiler Writing[END_REF][START_REF] Lewis | Time Sharing on LEO III[END_REF][START_REF] Lewis | The Management of a Large Commercial Computer Bureau[END_REF][START_REF] Land | The First Business Computer: A Case Study in User-Driven Innovation[END_REF][START_REF] Land | LEO II and the Model T Ford[END_REF]). Important papers reviewing the achievements of the LEO team and their importance in the history of computing were contributed by senior American Scholars [START_REF] Baskerville | The LEO principle: perspectives on 50 years of business computing[END_REF][START_REF] Mason | The Legacy of LEO: Lessons learned from an English Tea and Cakes Company: Pioneering efforts in Information Systems[END_REF])).

In 1999 the Association for Information Systems (AIS), the organization representing the academic discipline of Information Systems world-wide with a membership of thousands, established an annual award and called it the LEO Award.

"Named after one of the world's first commercial applications of computing (The Lyons Electronic Office), the purpose of the LEO Award is to recognize truly outstanding individuals in the Information Systems community, both academics and practitioners, who have made exceptional contributions to research in and/or the practice of Information Systems. The LEO Award will be a singular honor to recognize seminal work by the Award winner." It is clear that the story of LEO and its pioneering achievements are now much better known. But is it 'mission accomplished'? David Caminer would have said "no, it is work-in-progress, and you must try harder". Even as late as August 2011, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google [START_REF] Schmidt | Television and the Internet: Shared Opportunity[END_REF], in his MacTaggart lecture, noted "You (Britain)my parenthesis -invented computers in both concept and practice" and added "it's not widely known, but the world's first office computer was built in 1951 by the Lyon's chain of teashops" (my underlining).

In 2011 the LEO Foundation was merged into the LEO Computers Society. The Society had been established primarily as a way of keeping ex-employees in touch with each other and to run regular reunions. It currently ( 2012) has a membership of over 300, including most of the surviving pioneers. But over time and with encouragement from LEO Foundation members it began to take an interest in ensuring that the LEO legacy was not lost and to take advantage of the knowledge and experience of its membership to retrieve lost elements of that legacy. To aid that process it has set up a LEO History Committee with the remit to take the various ad hoc and opportunistic efforts already in place and put them on a more coherent footing and ensure that outcomes were properly disseminated and made available to scholars, students and the public at large.

There are a number of ways in which the history of computers can be constructed.  Via the dedication and enthusiasm of individuals and groups, including 'institutions' such as the Computer Conservation Society2 and the LEO Computer Society3 who volunteer to sift through relics, collating classifying and editing material ranging from hand-written notes, including coding sheets, documents such as minutes of meetings, to artifacts, including technical diagrams and blue prints as well as circuit boards and in some cases complete computers. Others are more concerned with re-constructing computers long out of use or emulating old software.

One important strand of the LEO Computer Society's activity is building up a group of volunteers drawn from all branches of LEO's activities, but primarily ex-LEO engineers and ex-LEO programmers and systems analysts, to assess the material as it comes to light and determine what items should be saved and where they should be located to provide the best access for later use.

Perhaps the most important UK institution for remembering the UK computer heritage is the Computer Conservation Society, established jointly by the British Computer Society and the Science Museum. Apart from the outstanding work inspired by the late Tony Sale of reconstructing pioneering computers such as Colossus, the Ferranti Pegasus, ICT 1301 and now EDSAC, they set up a project, 'Our Computer Heritage', headed by Simon Lavington to provide detailed documentation of all the UK computer ranges, including, of course, the LEO range4 . Though much material on the LEO range has been supplied a great deal of material, much to our regret, is still missing.  By locating publicationsnewspaper articles, press releases, academic papers, books, and sadly, obituaries, as pioneers pass away. Much documentary material already exists in libraries, archives and museums. These include collections gifted to the archives by individual pioneers or their descendants. However, the collections are widely dispersed, and only rarely transcribed into digital formats required by future scholars and students. Indexing is at best limited. Providing scholars and others with a systematic account of what is available presents the historian with a problem. For example the extensive collection of LEO documents at the Manchester University Rylands library, though well catalogued, is all in its original form comprising manuscripts and typewritten papers as well as some computer print outs.

The bibliography in Appendix 1 should be regarded as a step in the direction of making known what is available and where it is located with respect to the history of LEO, but it is at best work-in progress as more material comes to light. Readers of this chapter are encouraged to help in adding to the bibliography by letting the author know of additional material. Internet searches engines have greatly facilitated the collection of relevant material. But large amounts of documentary material exists in private hoards, unclassified and not indexed, often only coming to light on the death of its collector. A good example is a cache of 100 or so manuscript notebooks found in a cardboard box and left by the original LEO engineer Ernest Lenaerts covering the years from 1949 and now donated to the LEO Computers Society by Lenaerts' sons. Their value cannot be assessed until they have been transcribed, but they have aroused the interest of a number of museums and archives. As noted above it is only the dedication of volunteers that can help rescue such material for posterity.  Collecting material, mainly artifacts, for exhibition in Museums. Many museums of science and technology arrange displays of computer hardware tracing the evolution of computers from their beginnings to the most recent technology available. But there are gaps in the story, exemplified by the story of Colossus the British pioneering code breaking computer during the Second World War that was destroyed, including all documentation relating to its design and construction, on orders from the Government who felt the need not to compromise the secrecy of its operation. The late Tony Sale, the original curator of the Bletchley Park Museum, who led the team which rebuilt the Colossus, wrote: "After VJ Day, suddenly it was all over. Eight of the ten Colossi were dismantled in Bletchley Park. Two went to Eastcote in North London and then to GCHQ at Cheltenham. These last two were dismantled in about 1960 and in 1960 all the drawings of Colossus were burnt. Of course its very existence was kept secret." 5 Gaps in the collection of LEO (and other) computers are making it difficult for the museums to provide a complete or fully coherent story. Again, the LEO Computers Society is playing its part in plugging the gap. When items are located they frequently carry no identifying label. The society's engineer members try to identify and explain the function of particular computer circuit boards, computer units and blue prints or help museums with their collection of LEO artifacts. One problem is that relics are scattered across a wide range of museums. LEO artifacts are held at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, and the London Science Museum will be showing pieces of LEO in its new computer exhibits. Recently the Computer Museum in Silicon Valley acquired some LEO pieces and will be showing them as part of its new facilities. Other pieces, including a nearly complete LEO III, are held in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, and another LEO III in the Museum of London. The bibliography (appendix I) has made a start in showing the holdings in a number of museums and archives.  Noting the content of Conferences and their proceedings, such as computer history conferences, and special events including ones to celebrate anniversaries of notable past events. A good example is the Google sponsored event at the London Science Museum to celebrate the 69 th anniversary of the roll-out of the fists LEO application on behalf of J. Lyons & Co limited. 6 The IFIP Working Group 9.7 7 provides information about relevant conferences. Conferences provide opportunities for scholar to learn from each other and exchange ideas.  Taking Oral Histories. Historians know that one of the prime resources for historical knowledge is stored in peoples' memories of past events.

Unfortunately it is a wasting asset as individuals including those with vital clues about past happenings pass away. This has led to the oral history movement, the attempt to capture memories and knowledge by interviewing and recording the stories of selected individuals. Historians in general rely on documentary evidence culled from account books, tally rolls, legal documents, minutes of meetings and so on supplemented by contemporary accounts provided by commentators and newspapers dating from the time of the event recorded. Whilst such historical accounts can, as historians know, suffer from deliberate distortions and omissions, oral histories in relying on memory at a distance from the events reported can suffer from false memories. In the UK the Oral History Society provides advice and training for novice oral historians. 8 It also sets the standards for recordings to ensure the long lasting quality of the recordings. The taking of oral histories involves interviewing and recording a subject with the interviewer leading the subject through a loose framework of questions. The interview then has to be transcribed, the transcript agreed with the subject, edited and archived in digital format. Transcription represents a major item of cost.

The British Library has a major Oral History project (the Life Histories project) recording selected individuals from each sector of British society. Two members of the LEO Computer Society were selected from the technology sector, and their histories are now part of the British Library archive. These two were Mary Coombs who joined LEO in 1953, and who may well have been the world's first female commercial programmer, and the author of this chapter. 9 The late John Pinkerton, LEO's chief engineer and designer of LEO I recorded his own history and that is now stored at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, now part of the IT History Society.

The result of these initiatives led the LEO Computers Society to launch its own Oral History project. This required the need to purchase appropriate recording equipment and subsequently to have the recordings professionally transcribed. The society applied for funding from the Association of Information Technology Trust and received a small grant to fund the project. The project was managed by a small team aided by volunteer interviewers who were given notes of guidance (Appendix 2). A schedule of individuals was drawn up giving priority to the oldest subjects. The team experimented with a variety of recording methods, but always retaining the recording standards established by the Oral History Society. These included using Skype and a smart phone to record interviews where the subject was remote from the interviewer, for example the ex-head of LEO in Australia, Neil Lamming. To date (May 2012) some dozen interviews have been conducted.

In addition to the oral histories members of the LEO Computers Society have written their own reminiscences, ranging from a few paragraphs to near monographs describing a particular application, ground-breaking at that time. These too after editing will form part of the LEO archive, to be ultimately placed in a public archive in order to make them as widely available as possible.

Let me finish by paying tribute to those who made the LEO story possible. First John Simmons, then Comptroller of J. Lyons, who saw his task as business process re-engineering to make Lyons a more effective business and who in 1947 sent Thompson and Standingford to the USA to discover if there had been any new ideas which Lyons could use. There they incidentally saw the first US computers, and recognized that they could be the future for business data processing and on their way home sketched how a computer might be used to complete a business process. They wrote the prescient report recommending Lyons to explore the possibility of Lyons using a computer; a report which Simmons thought was right and put it in front of the Lyons Board of Directors. The Board, to their credit, accepted the notion, and set in train the process which led to the Lyons Electronic Office (LEO). Then a tribute to John Pinkerton, the engineer of genius who brought the idea into reality and David Caminer who invented practical systems engineering and whose ideas led to a long sequence of innovative and ambitious applications.

And who are not mentioned? The many people who worked with those noted above and for those who have passed away the obituaries record at least some of their achievements in the LEO story.

In this chapter I am proud to pay tribute to all of them. (1989). The history of ICL is synonymous with the history of the British computer industry. ICL was formed by a series of mergers in response to the increasing market dominance of the large American corporations, particularly IBM. The struggles between these two giants and the inherent problems and implications of competing with US multi-nationals are examined in detail in Campbell Kelly's wide ranging study. At the time of writing in the late 1980s, the author was given unrestricted access to ICL archives and his lucid account of the company, its set-backs and successes makes for a compelling and informative read. This book, which was Winner of the Wadsworth Prize for Business History (1989), will be of great interest to anyone involved in business or the computing industry. (Ferry, G.) European Journal of Information Systems Vol. 12, Issue 4, 241-24  Delve, J., [START_REF] Delve | The Pinkerton Lecture[END_REF] The Pinkerton Lecture, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 23, Issue2, pp. 68-73  Ferry, G., (2005) Simmons, John Richardson Mainwaring (1902-1985), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/57/101057059/ Introduction

Articles and other Papers

The LEO Oral Histories are an attempt to capture the knowledge and memories of employees of LEO Computers and its customers for posterity. It is the intention to keep the voice recordings and the digitised transcripts in an archive, possibly at The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) at Bletchley Park and/or elsewhere. Links to the archive will be provided by a range of museum and specialist websites, including that of the LEO Computers Society, to permit as free access to the material as possible. The archive will form part of the historical record of the development and evolution of computing in the UK. Its users are expected to be international scholars studying the history of computers and computing, the development of business computing and administrative computing, the impact of computing on society, innovation and innovation diffusion.

Other users will be undergraduate and graduate students in computing and business disciplines engaged in projects related to the history of their discipline, as well as journalists and writers preparing scripts and texts for articles, books, radio and television programs, and films which have computer related themes as well as biographical material involving some of the subjects of the oral histories.

Oral Histories require an interviewer using special audio recording equipment supplied by the Society to record the subject's spoken history. The guidelines below provide a framework for an interviewer to work to. Once an interview has been recorded it has to be transcribed into printed text and the printed text checked by the subject and corrected. Corrections and explanations would only be added to the transcript in the form of indexed Endnotes. A standard comment about the corrections and explanations should be recorded by the Interviewer at the end of the oral recording.

The copyright for the text is vested in the LEO Computers Society with the full agreement of the subject. The standard copyright claim and year of claim will be recorded at the end of the oral recording by the Interviewer as follows:

"This interview of <interviewee> has been recorded by The LEO Computers Society as part of an Oral History Project to document the earliest use of electronic computers in business applications. Any opinions expressed are those of the interviewee and not of the Society. Copyright of this interview in recorded form and in transcript remains with The LEO Computers Society,201x." Interviewers are volunteers primarily drawn from the Society membership though other volunteers, such as students studying or researching computer history, may with the approval of the Society carry out appropriate interviews

The LEO Oral History project is supported by funding from the Association for Information Technology Trust (AITT).

Guidelines for Interviewers

Because the recordings will be used by a great variety of researchers not all of whom will be familiar with mid-20 th century technology or the role played by Lyons, it is essential that interviewers ensure that where a respondent uses technical terms or assumes familiarity with, for example, the names of people or historical events, he or she is asked to explain and clarify the points at issue. A good example would be a respondent noting Kimball Tags or mentioning TRT by the use of those very familiar initials. The recording should explain what Kimball Tags are and how they were used, and spell out TRT's proper name and briefly who he was.

It is essential that interviewers master the recording equipment before embarking on an interview. It is very easy to make a mistake such as forgetting to change tapes, or keeping the recording going even when the formal interview has been concluded and the interviewer and subject gossip about some of their experiences.

Interviewing and responding can be very tiring and place a strain on voice and concentration. It may be best to divide the whole interview into a number of sessions each lasting an hour or so. The important thing is that both interviewer and subject feel comfortable, and that will vary with different people. A very full life history may take quite a few sessions and because it is easy to lose concentration and hence the thread, it may be best conducted over more than one day.

It is the responsibility of the interviewer to 'guide' the respondent by asking questions which lead to the unfolding of the narrative. But at the same time the interviewer must not dominate and should intervene only to get the respondent to clarify and explain where that is felt to be necessary. Above all the respondent must feel that it is his or her story which is the subject of the interview. That means that the interviewee should be encouraged to voice opinions and make value judgements where this will enhance the story. Some remembered items may on reflection be regarded as being potentially damaging to living persons or slander them. Interviewers and respondents need to be alive to the possibility and be prepared to redact such items or place an embargo on their publication.

Introduction to the Interview

The oral introduction to the interview recording is indicated above. The following is an example, recorded for the interview of Tony Morgan. The text should be on the lines of:

It's the 8 th of November 2011 and I'm Ray Hennessy. I'm interviewing Tony Morgan to give us the story of his involvement with LEO Computers from the earliest days. Good morning, Tony. We are recording this interview as a part of The LEO Computers Society Oral History Project. The audio version and the transcript will be lodged at a central archive and made available for researchers and members of the public. Perhaps you'd like to introduce yourself … On the transcript, which starts with the above introduction the following should be inserted:

This transcript of the voice recording has been edited with the agreement of the respondent, Tony Morgan. Mistakes have been corrected and some clarification added within the text in italics; terms which may not be familiar to readers are explained in end notes.

Conclusion of the Interview

The interviewer should end the formal interview with something along these lines:

This interview with Tony Morgan has been recorded by The LEO Computers Society and the Society would like to thank Tony very much for his time and reminiscences. The interview and the transcript form part of an Oral History project to document the early use of electronic computers in business and other applications, but particularly in business. Any opinions expressed are those of the interviewee, that is Tony, and not of the Society. The copyright of this interview in recorded form and in transcript remains the property of The LEO Computers Society, 2011.

The following may be added at the end of the transcript, if appropriate:

As indicated in the introduction, changes and clarifications have been included in the transcript.

  publication of the 1996 and 1998 books led to David Caminer proposing the establishment of the LEO Foundation as a charity devoted to promoting the memory of LEO and encouraging academic studies of LEO. The first task the Foundation set itself was to organize a major Conference in 2001 to celebrate the 50 th anniversary -November 2001of the first time-critical regular job for J. Lyons & Company Limited. The Conference was held at the prestigious London Guildhall, sponsored by a number of organizations including the City of London, Fujitsu, the Wall Street Journal Europe, the IEE (now IET), KPMG and the London School of Economics. It attracted participants and speakers from around the world. A special edition of the Journal of Strategic Information Systems published the proceedings (Journal of Strategic Information Systems 2003).



  [START_REF] Anderson | Pioneers of Payroll on computers: LEO, the Army, the Navy Dockyards and De Havilland[END_REF] Pioneers of Payroll on computers: LEO, the Army, the Navy Dockyards and De Havilland , IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, ISSN: 1058-6180.  Anon (1949); 'A non-technical description of E.D.S.A.C'. How the Cambridge Electronic Calculator works, J. Lyons & Co., June 1949. http://www.leocomputers.org.uk/images/How%20EDSAC%20Works.pdf  Anon (1954); 'Electronic Abacus', The Economist, pp. 789-791, 13th March.  Anon (1957); Political & Economic Planning, 'The LEO Computer: a case study in the use of an electronic computer in routine clerical work', Three Case Studies in Automation, July  Anon (1960), 'Getting to grips with computers', The Times Newspaper, reprinted in The Times Newspaper, August 4th 2000  Anon (1960); 'Notes on Commissioning of LEO Automatic Office at the Ministry of Pensions', The Computer Journal, British Computer Society, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 198, January.  Anon (1965); Daily Mail Obituary for LEO I 9th January 1965 Plus other items about LEO initiatives in Eastern Europe http://www.ampneycrucis.f9.co.uk/PARK/LEO.htm  Aris, J.B.B. (1996); 'Systems Design -Then and Now', Resurrection, Journal of the Computer Conservation Society, Summer.  Aris, J.B.B. (2000); 'Inventing Systems Engineering', IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 4-15, July-September.  Aris, J.B., Land, F.F., Mellor, A., (eds.), (2003), LEO Conference Report, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Volume 12, Issue 4, Pages 253-398, December  Berry, T., (2002), Lessons from LEO the Lyons, Financial Director, January 2002 http://www.financialdirector.co.uk/financial-director/feature/1742501/lessons-leo-lyon  Bidmead, C., (2011) David Caminer, creator of the first business computer, Reg Hardware, Unsung Heroes of Tech, 27 th September 2011, http://www.reghardware.com/2011/09/27/heroes_of_tech_david_caminer/  Bird, P., (1990/91), LEO the Pride of Lyons, British Journal of Administrative Management  Caminer, D.T. (1958); '….And How to Avoid Them', The Computer Journal, British Computer Society, Vol. 1, No 1, pp. 11-14.  Caminer, D.T. (1997); 'LEO and its Applications: the Beginning of Business Computing', The Computer Journal, British Computer Society, Vol. 40, No 10, pp. 585-597.  Caminer, D.T. (2002); 'LEO and the Computer Revolution', 2 nd annual Pinkerton Lecture, IEE Computing and Control Engineering Journal, Vol. 13.  Caminer, D.T. (2003); 'Behind The Curtain at LEO', IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 3-13, April-June.  Cane, A., (2011); 'Perspectives: Unlearnt lessons of LEO', Capgemini, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c7fc396-168d-11e1-be1d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1sNr3Iehd  Coombs, M., (2003) Review: 'A Computer called LEO'

User Driven Innovation: The world's first business computer,

  J.R.M.Simmons, Macdonald, London, 1962. The paperless office concept of the Lyons Comptroller, whose support was vital to the LEO project.  LEO, the First Business Computer; P.Bird, Hasler Publishing, 1994. Peter Bird joined Lyons when, as he says, 'the pioneering years of computing were no more than folk history.' Nonetheless, through his 'talking with old-timers' and delving through the Lyons archives, he has made an important contribution to the LEO story. Of particular value are the appendices which, inter alia, give details of the instruction codes, speeds, capacities and deliveries of the different models.  (eds.) D.T. Caminer, J.B.B. Aris, P.M.R. Hermon, F.F. Land, McGraw Hill, Maidenhead, 1996. A first-hand account written by thirteen of the early users who developed the disciplines of systems engineering and put LEO to work on economic, time-dependent business applications, starting in 1951. Included is an edited version of the seminal report of the two Lyons executives who, after a tour of the early computer activity in the United States in 1947, recommended that Lyons acquire a computer of their own. Also included is a Science Museum interview with John Simmons.  LEO

	Appendix 1: Bibliography
	Books
	 'LEO and the Managers';

, the Incredible Story of the World's First Business Computer

  Georgina Ferry, Fourth Estate, London, 2003. 'LEO and its creators deserve their place in history not because of what it was, but because of what it did, for LEO was the first computer in the world to be harnessed to the task of running a business.' A paperback edition was published in 2005, by Trafalgar Square.  An ICL anthology, edited by Hamish Carmichael; Chapter 6, LEO, pp. 91-94, Laidlaw Hicks Publishers, Surbiton, 1996. Chapter 6 presents an anthology of quotations about LEO, mainly from LEO personnel.  Electronic Brains: stories from the dawn of the Computer age by Mike Hally, Granta Publications, London, 2003. The book is based on 4 BBC radio programmes produced by Mike Hally. Despite its populist title, it is a very readable and informative account of some early computer ventures in the USA, UK, Soviet Union and Australia. Chapter 5 is an account of the LEO story. 

, (eds.) D.T. Caminer, J.B.B. Aris, P.M.R. Hermon, F.F. Land, McGraw Hill, New York, 1998. The revised US edition of User-Driven Innovation, a Chinese edition was published in 2000.  A Computer Called LEO;

Early British Computers: The Story of Vintage Computers and The People Who Built Them;

  Simon H. Lavington, (Manchester University Press, 1980) at http://edthelen.org/comp-hist/EarlyBritish.html#TOC. Chapter 13, pages 68-77, gives a brief history of LEO and English Electric including a timeline.  ICL -A Business and Technical History; Campbell-Kelly, M., Clarendon Press, Oxford.

http://www.computerconservationsociety.org/

http://www.leo-computers.org.uk/

http://www.ourcomputerheritage.org/

http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/lorenz/colossus.htm

http://storify.com/lynetter/leo-60th-anniversary http://www.comphist.org/ http://www.oralhistory.org.uk/ See http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/oralhistoryofscience/2011/08/new-interviewsonline.html#tp and http://cadensa.bl.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/0/0/5?searchdata1=CKEY7328647&library=ALL and http://cadensa.bl.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/?ps=4vatGo3loS/WORKS-FILE/22600167/9

 [START_REF] Ferry | [END_REF]David Tresman Caminer (1915-2008), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/99795?&docPos=27  Forbes, J.M., (1965); 'An Introduction to Compiler Writing', The Computer Journal, British Computer Society, Vol. 8, No 2, pp. 98-102.  Gosden, J.A., (1960); 'Market Research Applications on LEO', The Computer Journal, British Computer Society, Vol. 3, No 3, pp. 142-143.  Gosden, J.A., (1964), "The Operations Control Center Multi-Computer Operating System." Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery, E2.2-1-E2.2-9. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.  Gosden, J.A., (1997); 'Mathematics and Software at LEO Computers', Resurrection, Journal of the Computer Conservation Society, No. 17, pp. 15-22, Spring.  Hendry, J. (1986); 'The Teashop Computer Manufacturer', Business History, Vol. 29, No 8.  Hinds, M.K. (1981); 'Computer Story', Meteorological Magazine, Vol. 110, pp 69-80.  Kaye, E.J. and Gibbs G.R. (1954); 'LEO -A Checking Device for Punched Paper Tape', Electronic Engineering, Vol. 29, pp. 386-392.  Land, F.F., (1960), 'Computers in Purchasing and Stores Departments: LEO at the Ford Motor Company Spares Depot', Computers in Purchasing and Stores Departments, Purchasing Officers Association, pp 27 -33.  Land, F.F. (1996); 'Systems Analysis for Business Applications', Resurrection, Journal of the Computer Conservation Society, Summer.  Land, F.F., (1997); 'Information Technology Implementation: The Case of the World's First Business Computer: The Initiation Phase', in (eds.) McMaster, T., Mumford, E., Swanson, E.B., Warboys, B., and Wastell. D., Facilitating Technology Transfer through Partnership: Learning from Practice and Research, p. 3-19, Chapman & Hall, London.  Land, F.F. (1998); 'LEO, The First Business Computer: A Personal Experience', in Glass, R.L. (ed.), In the Beginning. Personal Recollections of Software Pioneers, IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA.  Land, F.F. (1999), A Historical Analysis of Implementing IS at J. Lyons, in Currie, W.L. and Galliers, R.D., (Eds), Rethinking Management Information Systems, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 310 -325.  Land, F.F. (2000); 'The First Business Computer: A Case Study in User-Driven Innovation', IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 16-26.  Land, F.F., (2006), LEO II and the Model T Ford, British Computer Society Journal, Vol 49, No. 6, pp 650 -656.  Lavington, S.H., (1980), 'LEO and English Electric' in Early British Computers: The story of vintage Computers and the people who built them, Chapter 13, pp 68 -77, Butterworth-Heinemann, London  Lenaerts, E.H., (1951), Visual Presentation of Binary Numbers, Electronic Engineering, Vol. 23. pp. 140-141  Lenaerts, E.H., (1952?), LEO, Lyons Electronic Office --Operation and Maintenance, Electronic Engineering, Vol. 26, pp. 11-17.  Lenaerts, E.H. (1954); 'LEO -Operations and Maintenance', Electronic Engineering, Vol. 29, pp. 335-341.  Lewis, J.W. (1963); 'Time Sharing on LEO III', The Computer Journal, British Computer Society, Vol. 6, No 1, pp. 24-28.  Lewis, J.W. (1964); 'The Management of a Large Commercial Computer Bureau', The Computer Journal, British Computer Society, Vol. 7, No 4, pp. 255-261.  Mason, R.O., (2004), 'The Legacy of LEO: Lessons learned from an English Tea and Cakes Company: Pioneering efforts in Information Systems', Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, pp 183 -219.

Obituaries and Biographies

Ernest Joseph Kaye 1922-2012 Ben Rooney in Wall Street Journal http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/05/07/u-k-computerpioneer-dies/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE6TX70A3Rc http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/11/14/worlds-first-business-computer-celebrates-60thanniversary/ https://plus.google.com/106615548454096392167/posts/4v94i6yGPst#1066155484540963921 67/posts/4v94i6yGPst http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/outriders/2011/11/leo_making_history.shtml George Manley 1938-2011 http://centaurs-rfc.org/html/web_news_29.html Gordon Foulger 1942-2011 http://www.gordonfoulger.co.uk/obituary.php John Aris 1934-2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/26/john-aris-obituary http://www.vukutu.com/blog/2010/08/a-computer-pioneer/ http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/CCS/res/res52.htm#i Mavis Hinds 1929-2009 Mavis Hinds working for the Meteorological Office used LEO I for weather forecastingthe earliest use of computers for modelling the weather in the early 1950s. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.502/abstract David Caminer 1913-2008 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2188963/David-Caminer.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Caminer http://uk.fujitsu.com/pensioner/topics/obituaries/david_caminer/ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/technology/29caminer.html http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/views/obituaries/2008/06/26/david-caminer-64375-21152334/ http://boingboing.net/2008/06/29/computer-pioneer-and.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/11/1 Colin Tully 1936-2007 http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/16757 http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/content/52/3/388.short http://www.leo-computers.org.uk/images/colintullytribute.pdf John Gosden 1930-2003 http://www.leo-computers.org.uk/gosdenobit.html

Private Holdings

Many individuals dead and alive, members of the LEO Computers Society or ex LEO employees have private collections of LEO artefacts, documents and photographs, some of which are of historical importance. They include:

Guidelines for the Interviewee

It is a very good idea to make comprehensive notes of your career in respect of LEO Computers but also note how your life led you, eventually, to working with LEO, and what happened afterwards. Note the names of anyone you can remember working with at LEO, not necessarily LEO staff, but any other people who were also devising LEO-based systems. Suggested CV and Interview Framework: The framework is not intended as pro-forma script. Oral histories will vary in the detail provided, ranging from anecdotes about specific events to full life histories including details of domestic and family life. These guidelines are to be regarded as a menu. As far as possible the interviewee should dictate the flow. The role of the interviewer is to provide prompts when needed and to ensure that the interviewee's narrative is as clear and complete as possible without excessive intrusion.  Family: Born, where and when. NB The above is laid out as a sequence. In practice the interviewee will recollect events and feelings out of order and may want to add elements recalled during the interview. This has to be permitted with the interviewer providing explanations in the recording as this occurs.


Norman Sanders
email: norman_sanders@onetel.com

A Possible First Use of CAM/CAD

Keywords: CAM, CAD, Boeing, 727 airplane, numerical-control

This paper is a discussion of the early days of CAM-CAD at the Boeing Company, covering the period approximately 1956 to 1965. This period saw probably the first successful industrial application of ideas that were gaining ground during the very early days of the computing era. Although the primary goal of the CAD activity was to find better ways of building the 727 airplane, this activity led quickly to the more general area of computer graphics, leading eventually to today's picture-dominated use of computers.

Introduction to Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing

Some early attempts at CAD and CAM systems occurred in the 1950s and early 1960s. We can trace the beginnings of CAD to the late 1950s when Dr. Patrick J.

Hanratty developed Pronto, the first commercial numerical-control (NC) programming system. In 1960, Ivan Sutherland at MITs Lincoln Laboratory created Sketchpad, which demonstrated the basic principles and feasibility of computer-aided technical drawing. There seems to be no generally agreed date or place where Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing saw the light of day as a practical tool for making things. However, I know of no earlier candidate for this role than Boeing's 727 aircraft. Certainly the dates given in the current version of Wikipedia are woefully late; ten years or so.

So, this section is a description of what we did at Boeing from about the mid-fifties to the early sixties. It is difficult to specify precisely when this project startedas with most projects. They don't start, but having started they can become very difficult to finish. But at least we can talk in terms of mini eras, approximate points in time when ideas began to circulate and concrete results to emerge.

Probably the first published ideas for describing physical surfaces mathematically was Roy Liming's Practical Analytic Geometry with Applications to Aircraft, Macmillan, 1944. His project was the Mustang fighter. However, Liming was sadly way ahead of his time; there weren't as yet any working computers or ancillary equipment to make use of his ideas. Luckily, we had a copy of the book at Boeing, which got us off to a flying start. We also had a mighty project to try our ideas onand a team of old B-17/29 engineers who by now were running the company, rash enough to allow us to commit to an as yet unused and therefore unproven technology.

Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) comprises the use of computer-controlled manufacturing machinery to assist engineers and machinists in manufacturing or prototyping product components, either with or without the assistance of CAD. CAM certainly preceded CAD and played a pivotal role in bringing CAD to fruition by acting as a drafting machine in the very early stages. All early CAM parts were made from the engineering drawing. The origins of CAM were so widespread that it is difficult to know whether any one group was aware of another. However, the NC machinery suppliers, Kearney & Trecker etc, certainly knew their customers and would have catalysed their knowing one another, while the Aero-Space industry traditionally collaborated at the technical level however hard they competed in the selling of airplanes.

Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) in the Boeing Aerospace Factory in Seattle by Ken McKinley

The world's first two computers, built in Manchester and Cambridge Universities, began to function as early as 1948 and 1949 respectively, and were set to work to carry out numerical computations to support the solution of scientific problems of a mathematical nature. Little thought, if any, was entertained by the designers of these machines to using them for industrial purposes. However, only seven years later the range of applications had already spread out to supporting industry, and by 1953 Boeing was able to order a range of Numerically-Controlled machine tools, requiring computers to transform tool-makers' instructions to machine instructions. This is a little remembered fact of the early history of computers, but it was probably the first break of computer application away from the immediate vicinity of the computer room.

The work of designing the software, the task of converting the drawing of a part to be milled to the languages of the machines, was carried out by a team of about fifteen people from Seattle and Wichita under my leadership. It was called the Boeing Parts-Programming system, the precursor to an evolutionary series of Numerical Control languages, including APT -Automatically Programmed Tooling, designed by Professor Doug Ross of MIT. The astounding historical fact here is that this was among the first ever computer compilers. It followed very closely on the heels of the first version of FORTRAN. Indeed it would be very interesting to find out what, if anything preceded it.

As early as it was in the history of the rise of computer languages, members of the team were already aficionados of two rival contenders for the job, FORTRAN on the IBM 704 in Seattle, and COBOL on the 705 in Wichita. This almost inevitably resulted in the creation of two systems (though they appeared identical to the user): Boeing and Waldo, even though ironically neither language was actually used in the implementation. Remember, we were still very early on in the development of computers and no one yet had any monopoly of wisdom in how to do anything.

The actual programming of the Boeing system was carried out in computer machine language rather than either of the higher-level languages, since the latter were aimed at a very different problem area to that of determining the requirements of machine tools.

A part of the training of the implementation team consisted of working with members of the Manufacturing Department, probably one of the first ever interdisciplinary enterprises involving computing. The computer people had to learn the language of the Manufacturing Engineer to describe aluminium parts and the milling machine processes required to produce them. The users of his new language were to be called Parts Programmers (as opposed to computer programmers).

A particularly tough part of the programming effort was to be found in the "post processors", the detailed instructions output from the computer to the milling machine. To make life interesting there was no standardisation between the available machine tools. Each had a different physical input mechanism; magnetic tape, analog or digital, punched Mylar tape or punched cards. They also had to accommodate differences in the format of each type of data. This required lots of discussion with the machine tool manufacturers -all very typical of a new industry before standards came about.

A memorable sidelight, just to make things even more interesting, was that Boeing had one particular type of machine tool that required analog magnetic tape as input.

To produce it the 704 system firstly punched the post processor data into standard cards. These were then sent from the Boeing plant to downtown Seattle for conversion to a magnetic tape, then back to the Boeing Univac 1103A for conversion from magnetic to punched tape, which was in turn sent to Wichita to produce analog magnetic tape. This made the 1103A the world's largest, most expensive punched tape machine.

As a historical footnote, anyone brought up in the world of PCs and electronic data transmission should be aware of what it was like back in the good old days! Another sidelight was that detecting and correcting parts programming errors was a serious problem, both in time and material. The earliest solution was to do an initial cut on wood or plastic foam, or on suitable machine tools, to replace the cutter with a pen or diamond scribe to 'draw' the part. Thus the first ever use of an NC machine tool as a computer-controlled drafting machine, a technique vital later to the advent of Computer-Aided Design.

Meanwhile the U. S. Air Force recognised that the cost and complication of the diverse solutions provided by their many suppliers of Numerical Control equipment was a serious problem. Because of the Air Force's association with MIT they were aware of the efforts of Processor Doug Ross to develop a standard NC computer language. Ken McKinley, as the Boeing representative, spent two weeks at the first APT (Automatic Programmed Tooling) meeting at MIT in late 1956, with representatives from many other aircraft-related companies, to agree on the basic concepts of a common system where each company would contribute a programmer to the effort for a year. Boeing committed to support mainly the 'post processor' area. Henry Pinter, one of their post-processor experts, was sent to San Diego for a year, where the joint effort was based. As usually happened in those pioneering days it took more like 18 months to complete the project. After that we had to implement APT in our environment at Seattle.

Concurrently with the implementation we had to sell ourselves and the users on the new system. It was a tough sell believe me, as Norm Sanders was to discover later over at the Airplane Division. Our own system was working well after overcoming the many challenges of this new technology, which we called NC. The users of our system were not anxious to change to an unknown new language that was more complex. But upper management recognized the need to change, not least because of an important factor, the imminence of another neophytic technology called Master Dimensions.

Computer-Aided Design (CAD) in the Boeing Airplane Division in Renton, by Norman Sanders

The year was 1959. I had just joined Boeing in Renton, Washington, at a time when engineering design drawings the world over were made by hand, and had been since the beginning of time; the definition of every motorcar, aircraft, ship and mousetrap consisted of lines drawn on paper, often accompanied by mathematical calculations where necessary and possible. What is more, all animated cartoons were drawn by hand. At that time, it would have been unbelievable that what was going on in the aircraft industry would have had any effect on The Walt Disney Company or the emergence of the computer games industry. Nevertheless, it did. Hence, this is a strange fact of history that needs a bit of telling. I was very fortunate to find myself working at Boeing during the years following the successful introduction of its 707 aircraft into the world's airlines. It exactly coincided with the explosive spread of large computers into the industrial world. A desperate need existed for computer power and a computer manufacturer with the capacity to satisfy that need. The first two computers actually to work started productive life in 1948 and 1949; these were at the universities of Manchester and Cambridge in England. The Boeing 707 started flying five years after that, and by 1958, it was in airline service. The stage was set for the global cheap travel revolution. This took everybody by surprise, not least Boeing. However, it was not long before the company needed a shorter-takeoff airplane, namely the 727, a replacement for the Douglas DC-3. In time, Boeing developed a smaller 737, and a large capacity airplanethe 747. All this meant vast amounts of computing and as the engineers got more accustomed to using the computer there was no end to their appetite.

And it should perhaps be added that computers in those days bore little superficial similarity to today's computers; there were certainly no screens or keyboards! Though the actual computing went at electronic speeds, the input-output was mechanicalpunched cards, magnetic tape and printed paper. In the 1950s, the computer processor consisted of vacuum tubes, the memory of ferrite core, while the large-scale data storage consisted of magnetic tape drives. We had a great day if the computer system didn't fail during a 24 hour run; the electrical and electronic components were very fragile.

We would spend an entire day preparing for a night run on the computer. The run would take a few minutes and we would spend the next day wading through reams of paper printout in search of something, sometimes searching for clues to the mistakes we had made. We produced masses of paper. You would not dare not print for fear of letting a vital number escape. An early solution to this was faster printers. About 1960 Boeing provided me with an ANalex printer. It could print one thousand lines a minute! Very soon, of course, we had a row of ANalex printers, wall to wall, as Boeing never bought one of anything. The timber needed to feed our computer printers was incalculable.

The Emergence of Computer Plots

With that amount of printing going on it occurred to me to ask the consumers of printout what they did with it all. One of the most frequent answers was that they plotted it. There were cases of engineers spending three months drawing curves resulting from a single night's computer run. A flash of almost heresy then struck my digital mind. Was it possible that we could program a digital computer to draw (continuous) lines? In the computing trenches at Boeing we were not aware of the experimentation occurring at research labs in other places. Luckily at Boeing we were very fortunate at that time to have a Swiss engineer in our computer methods group who could both install hardware and write software for it; he knew hardware and software, both digital and analog. His name was Art Dietrich. I asked Art about it, which was to me the unaskable; to my surprise Art thought it was possible. So off he went in search of a piece of hardware that we could somehow connect to our computer that could draw lines on paper. Art found two companies that made analog plotters that might be adaptable. One company was Electro Instruments in San Diego and the other was Electronic Associates in Long Branch, New Jersey. After yo-yoing back and forth, we chose the Electronic Associates machine. The machine could draw lines on paper 30x30 inches, at about twenty inches per second. It was fast! But as yet it hadn't been attached to a computer anywhere. Moreover, it was accurate -enough for most purposes. To my knowledge, this was the first time anyone had put a plotter in the computer room and produced output directly in the form of lines. It could have happened elsewhere, though I was certainly not aware of it at the time. There was no software, of course, so I had to write it myself. The first machine ran off cards punched as output from the user programs, and I wrote a series of programs: Plot1, Plot2 etc. Encouraged by the possibility of selling another machine or two around the world, the supplier built a faster one running off magnetic tape, so I had to write a new series of programs: Tplot1, Tplot2, etc, (T for tape). In addition, the supplier bought the software from us -Boeing's first software sale! While all this was going on we were pioneering something else. We called it Master Dimensions. Indeed, we pioneered many computing ideas during the 1960s. At that time Boeing was probably one of the leading users of computing worldwide and it seemed that almost every program we wrote was a brave new adventure. Although North America defined mathematically the major external surfaces of the wartime Mustang P-51 fighter, it could not make use of computers to do the mathematics or to construct it because there were no computers. An account of this truly epochal work appears in Roy Liming's book.

By the time the 727 project was started in 1960, however, we were able to tie the computer to the manufacturing process and actually define the airplane using the computer. We computed the definition of the outer surface of the 727 and stored it inside the computer, making all recourse to the definition via a computer run, as opposed to an engineer looking at drawings using a magnifying glass. This was truly an industrial revolution Indeed, when I look back on the history of industrial computing as it stood fifty years ago I cringe with fear. It should never have been allowed to happen, but it did. And the reason why it did was because we had the right man, Grant W. Erwin Jr, in the right place, and he was the only man on this planet who could have done it. Grant was a superb leaderas opposed to managerand he knew his stuff like no other. He knew the mathematics, Numerical Analysis, and where it didn't exist he created new methods. He was loved by his team; they would work all hours and weekends without a quibble whenever he asked them to do so. He was an elegant writer and inspiring teacher. He knew what everyone was doing; he held the plan in his head. If any single person can be regarded as the inventor of CAD it was Grant. Very sadly he died, at the age of 94, just as the ink of this chapter was drying.

When the Master Dimensions group first wrote the programs, all we could do was print numbers and draw plots on 30x30 inch paper with our novel plotter. Mindblowing as this might have been it did not do the whole job. It did not draw full scale, highly accurate engineering lines. Computers could now draw but they could not draw large pictures or accurate ones or so we thought.

5.

But CAM to the Rescue!

Now there seems to be a widely-held belief that computer-aided design (CAD) preceded computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). All mention of the topic carries the label CAD-CAM rather than the reverse, as though CAD led CAM. However, this was not the case, as comes out clearly in Ken McKinley's section above. Since both started in the 1956-1960 period, it seems a bit late in the day now to raise an old discussion. However, there may be a few people around still with the interest and the memory to try to get the story right. The following is the Boeing version, at least, as remembered by some long retired participants.

Numerical Control Systems

The Boeing Aerospace division began to equip its factory about 1956 with NC machinery. There were several suppliers and control systems, among them Kearney & Trecker, Stromberg-Carlson and Thompson Ramo Waldridge (TRW). Boeing used them for the production of somewhat complicated parts in aluminium, the programming being carried out by specially trained programmers. I hasten to say that these were not computer programmers; they were highly experienced machinists known as parts programmers. Their use of computers was simply to convert an engineering drawing into a series of simple steps required to make the part described. The language they used was similar in principle to basic computer languages in that it required a problem to be analyzed down to a series of simple steps; however, the similarity stopped right there. An NC language needs commands such as select tool, move tool to point (x,y), lower tool, turn on coolant. The process required a deep knowledge of cutting metal; it did not need to know about memory allocation or floating point.

It is important to recognize that individual initiative from below very much characterized the early history of computing -much more than standard top-down managerial decisions. Indeed, it took an unconscionable amount of time before the computing bill reached a level of managerial attention. It should not have been the cost, it should have been the value of computing that brought management to the punch. But it wasn't. I think the reason for that was that we computer folk were not particularly adept at explaining to anyone beyond our own circles what it was that we were doing. We were a corporate ecological intrusion which took some years to adjust to.

Information Consolidation at Boeing

It happened that computing at Boeing started twice, once in engineering and once in finance. My guess is that neither group was particularly aware of the other at the start. It was not until 1965 or so, after a period of conflict, that Boeing amalgamated the two areas, the catalyst being the advent of the IBM 360 system that enabled both types of computing to cohabit the same hardware. The irony here was that the manufacturing area derived the earliest company tangible benefits from computing, but did not have their own computing organization; they commissioned their programs to be written by the engineering or finance departments, depending more or less on personal contacts out in the corridor.

As Ken McKinley describes above, in the factory itself there were four different control media; punched Mylar tape, 80-column punched cards, analog magnetic tape and digital magnetic tape. It was rather like biological life after the Cambrian Explosion of 570 million years agoon a slightly smaller scale. Notwithstanding, it worked! Much investment had gone into it. By 1960, NC was a part of life in the Boeing factory and many other American factories. Manufacturing management was quite happy with the way things were and they were certainly not looking for any more innovation. 'Leave us alone and let's get the job done' was their very understandable attitude. Nevertheless, modernisation was afoot, and they embraced it.

The 1950s was a period of explosive computer experimentation and development. In just one decade, we went from 1K to 32K memory, from no storage backup at all to multiple drives, each handling a 2,400-foot magnetic tape, and from binary programming to Fortran 1 and COBOL. At MIT, Professor Doug Ross, learning from the experience of the earlier NC languages, produced a definition for the Automatically Programmed Tooling (APT) language, the intention being to find a modern replacement for the already archaic languages that proliferated the 1950s landscape. How fast things were beginning to move suddenly, though it didn't seem that way at the time.

New Beginnings

Since MIT had not actually implemented APT, the somewhat loose airframe manufacturers' computer association got together to write an APT compiler for the IBM 7090 computers in 1961. Each company sent a single programmer to Convair in San Diego and it took about a year to do the job, including the user documentation. This was almost a miracle, and was largely due to Professor Ross's well-thought through specification.

When our representative, Henry Pinter, returned from San Diego, I assumed the factory would jump on APT, but they didn't. At the Thursday morning interdepartmental meetings, whenever I said, "APT is up and running folks, let's start using it", Don King from Manufacturing would say, "but APT don't cut no chips". (That's how we talked up there in the Pacific Northwest.) He was dead against these inter-company initiatives; he daren't commit the company to anything we didn't have full control over. However, eventually I heard him talking. The Aerospace Division (Ed Carlberg and Ken McKinley) were testing the APT compiler but only up to the point of a printout; no chips were being cut because Aerospace did not have a project at that time. So I asked them to make me a few small parts and some chips swept up from the floor, which they kindly did. I secreted the parts in my bag and had my secretary tape the chips to a piece of cardboard labeled 'First ever parts cut by APT'. At the end of the meeting someone brought up the question of APT. 'APT don't cut no chips' came the cry, at which point I pulled out my bag from under the table and handed out the parts for inspection. Not a word was spoken -King's last stand. (That was how we used to make decisions in those days.)

These things happened in parallel with Grant Erwin's development of the 727-CAD system. In addition, one of the facilities of even the first version of APT was to accept interpolated data points from CAD which made it possible to tie the one system in with the other in what must have been the first ever CAM-CAD system. When I look back on this feature alone nearly fifty years later I find it nothing short of miraculous, thanks to Doug Ross's deep understanding of what the manufacturing world would be needing. Each recourse to the surface definition was made in response to a request form the Engineering Department, and each numerical cut was given a running Master Dimensions Identifier (MDI) number. This was not today's CAM-CAD system in action; again, no screen, no light pen, no electronic drawing. Far from it; but it worked! In the early 1960s the system was a step beyond anything that anyone else seemed to be doing -you have to start somewhere in life.

Developing Accurate Lines

An irony of history was that the first mechanical movements carried out by computers were not a simple matter of drawing lines; they were complicated endeavors of cutting metal. The computer-controlled equipment was vast multi-ton machines spraying aluminum chips in all directions. The breakthrough was to tame the machines down from three dimensions to two, which happened in the following extraordinary way. It is perhaps one of the strangest events in the history of computing and computing graphics, though I don't suppose anyone has ever published this story. Most engineers know about CAD; however, I do not suppose anyone outside Boeing knows how it came about.

So, from CAM to CAD

Back to square one for a moment. As soon as we got the plotter up and running, Art Dietrich showed some sample plots to the Boeing drafting department management.

Was the plotting accuracy good enough for drafting purposes? The answer -a resounding No! The decision was that Boeing would continue to draft by hand until the day someone could demonstrate something that was superior to what we were able to produce. That was the challenge. However, how could we meet that challenge? Boeing would not commit money to acquiring a drafting machine (which did not exist anyway) without first subjecting its output to intense scrutiny. Additionally, no machine tool company would invest in such an expensive piece of new equipment without an order or at least a modicum of serious interest. How do you cut this Gordian knot?

In short, at that time computers could master-mind the cutting of metal with great accuracy using three-dimensional milling machines. Ironically, however, they could not draw lines on paper accurately enough for design purposes; they could do the tough job but not the easy one.

However, one day there came a blinding light from heaven. If you can cut in three dimensions, you can certainly scratch in two. Don't do it on paper; do it on aluminium. It had the simplicity of the paper clip! Why hadn't we thought of that before? We simply replaced the cutter head of the milling machine with a tiny diamond scribe (a sort of diamond pen) and drew lines on sheets of aluminium. Hey presto! The computer had drawn the world's first accurate lines. This was done in 1961.

The next step was to prove to the 727 aircraft project manager that the definition that we had of the airplane was accurate, and that our programs worked. To prove it they gave us the definition of the 707, an aircraft they knew intimately, and told us to make nineteen random drawings (canted cuts) of the wing using this new idea. This we did. We trucked the inscribed sheets of aluminium from the factory to the engineering building and for a month or so engineers on their hands and knees examined the lines with microscopes. The Computer Department held its breath. To our knowledge this had never happened before. Ever! Anywhere! We ourselves could not be certain that the lines the diamond had scribed would match accurately enough the lines drawn years earlier by hand for the 707. At the end of the exercise, however, industrial history emerged at a come-to-God meeting. In a crowded theatre the chief engineer stood on his feet and said simply that the design lines that the computer had produced had been under the microscope for several weeks and were the most accurate lines ever drawn -by anybody, anywhere, at any time. We were overjoyed and the decision was made to build the 727 with the computer. That is the closest I believe anyone ever came to the birth of Computer-Aided Design. We called it Design Automation. Later, someone changed the name. I do not know who it was, but it would be fascinating to meet that person.

CAM-CAD Takes to the Air

Here are pictures of the first known application of CAM-CAD. The first picture is that of the prototype of the 727. Here you can clearly see the centre engine inlet just ahead of the tail plane.

Seen from the front it is elliptical, as can be seen from the following sequence of manufacturing stages:-

An Unanticipated Extra Benefit

One of the immediate, though unanticipated, benefits of CAD was transferring detailed design to subcontractors. Because of our limited manufacturing capacity, we subcontracted a lot of parts, including the rear engine nacelles (the covers) to the Rohr Aircraft Company of Chula Vista in California. When their team came up to Seattle to acquire the drawings, we instead handed them boxes of data in punched card form. We also showed them how to write the programs and feed their NC machinery. Their team leader, Nils Olestein, could not believe it. He had dreamed of the idea but he never thought he would ever see it in his lifetime: accuracy in a cardboard box! Remember that in those days we did not have email or the ability to send data in the form of electronic files.

Dynamic Changes

The cultural change to Boeing due to the new CAD systems was profound. Later on we acquired a number of drafting machines from the Gerber Company, who now knew that there was to be a market in computer-controlled drafting, and the traditional acres of drafting tables began slowly to disappear. Hand drafting had been a profession since time immemorial. Suddenly its existence was threatened, and after a number of years, it no longer existed. That also goes for architecture and almost any activity involving drawing.

Shortly afterwards, as the idea caught on, people started writing CAD systems which they marketed widely throughout the manufacturing industry as well as in architecture. Eventually our early programs vanished from the scene after being used on the 737 and 747, to be replaced by standard CAD systems marketed by specialist companies. I suppose, though, that even today's Boeing engineers are unaware of what we did in the early 1960s; generally, corporations are not noted for their memory.

Once the possibility of drawing with the computer became known, the idea took hold all over the place. One of the most fascinating areas was to make movie frames. We already had flight simulation; Boeing 'flew' the Douglas DC-8 before Douglas had finished building it. We could actually experience the airplane from within. We 6: The final smoothing cut has been completed and the part is ready for use in forming the inlet sheets. did this with analog computers rather than digital. Now, with digital computers, we could look at an airplane from the outside. From drawing aircraft one could very easily draw other things such as motorcars and animated cartoons. At Boeing we established a Computer Graphics Department around 1962 and by 1965 they were making movies by computer. (I have a video tape made from Boeing's first ever 16mm movie if anyone's interested.) Although slow and simple by today's standards, it had become an established activity. The rest is part of the explosive story of computing, leading up to today's marvels such as computer games, Windows interfaces, computer processing of film and all the other wonders of modern life that people take for granted. From non-existent to all-pervading within a lifetime!

The Cosmic Dice

Part of the excitement of this computer revolution that we have brought about to these sixty years was the unexpected benefits. To be honest, a lot of what we did, especially in the early days, was pure serendipity; it looked like a good idea at the time but there was no way we could properly justify it. I think had we had to undertake a solid financial analysis most of the projects would never have got off the ground and the computer industry would not have got anywhere near today's levels of technical sophistication or profitability. Some of the real payoffs have been a result of the cosmic dice throwing us a seven. This happened already twice with the first 727.

The 727 rolled out in November, 1962, on time and within budget, and flew in April, 1963. The 727 project team were, of course, dead scared that it wouldn't. But the irony is that it would not have happened had we not used CAD. During the early period, before building the first full-scale mockup, as the computer programs were being integrated, we had a problem fitting the wing to the wing-shaped hole in the body; the wing-body join. The programmer responsible for that part of the body program was yet another Swiss by name Raoul Etter. He had what appeared to be a deep bug in his program and spent a month trying to find it. As all good programmers do, he assumed that it was his program that was at fault. But in a moment of utter despair, as life was beginning to disappear down a deep black hole, he went cap in hand to the wing project to own up. "I just can't get the wing data to match the body data, and time is no longer on my side." "Show us your wing data. Hey where did you get this stuff?" "From the body project." "But they've given you old data; you've been trying to fit an old wing onto a new body." (The best time to make a design change is before you've actually built the thing!) An hour later life was restored and the 727 became a single numerical entity. But how would this have been caught had we not gone numerical? I asked the project. At full-scale mockup stage, they said. In addition to the serious delay what would the remake have cost? In the region of a million dollars. Stick that in your project analysis!

The second occasion was just days prior to roll-out. The 727 has leading-edge flaps, but at installation they were found not to fit. New ones had to be produced over night, again with the right data. But thanks to the NC machinery we managed it. Don't hang out the flags before you've swept up the final chip.

A Fascinating Irony

This discussion is about using the computer to make better pictures of other things. At no time did any of us have the idea of using pictures to improve the way we ran computers. This had to wait for Xerox Park, a decade or so later, to throw away our punched cards and rub our noses into a colossal missed opportunity. I suppose our only defence is that we were being paid to build airplanes not computers.

Conclusion

In summary, CAM came into existence during the late 1950s, catalyzing the advent of CAD in the early 1960s. This mathematical definition of line drawing by computers then radiated out in three principal directions with (a) highly accurate engineering lines and surfaces, (b) faster and more accurate scientific plotting and (c) very highspeed animation. Indeed, the world of today's computer user consists largely of pictures; the interface is a screen of pictures; a large part of technology lessons at school uses computer graphics. And we must remember that the computers at that time were miniscule compared to the size of today's PC in terms of memory and processing speed. We've come a long way from that 727 wing design.

1:

  Four rough cuts positioned on a Kearney & Trekker milling machine platform prior to cutting. 2: Cutting starts on the rough cuts. 3: The elliptical first cut has been completed and the transverse parabolic cut has almost been completed. 5: The parabolic cut has been repeated with a smaller cutter. 4: The first two cuts have been completed.