stoppress

It is with great regret that we have to report that Mary Coombs, one of the LEO pioneers passed away  on 28^thFebruary 2022 at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, at the age of 93. Mary was the World’s first female business computer programmer joining the LEO team in 1952. We will let members know when the funeral is arranged. Mary was a good friend of the society and will be sadly missed. You can see Mary’s obituary on the CCH Website Here. Other published Obituaries include The Times, Computer Weekly, Computing, BCS, The Register, The News Trace, The Guardian , The Daily Telegraph, The ACM, Wikipedia, Bucks Free Press, Elective College and Radio 4’s  Last Word on Friday (18^th March) at 4p.m. , repeated on Sunday (20^th March) at 8.30 p.m. – and available as a podcast thereafter -Listen at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qpmv

There is also a recording of a recent Zoom meeting held to remember Mary –Zoom Recording and copy of the presentation deck used by Hilary Caminer Presentation

Mary appeared in our/CCH recent film about LEO remembering the early days of LEO (and if you haven’t seen it or want to watch it again go here )and there was a short BBC Witness History feature made about her- available for viewing at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07w35t and her school, Putney High School also celebrated her at:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHiCMfHydlo

For those interested in Mary’s life you can read a transcript of her Oral History at the British Library here.

Picture of Mary below. Copyright Mike Hally/LEO Computers Society

September 1951  – At J. Lyons & Co on Wednesday, 5th September 1951 the Bakery Valuations programme was run to completion on real data as an experiment to test the hardware.  As noted in Ernest Lenaerts notebook for that date it ran from 3:50 to 5:35 without a fault and was the longest run of any programme at that time.