Alison Taylor and Chris Tyson, I am a 77 year old graduate of Aberdeen University,
now living in Jersey. In the 1950’s we lived in Hastings and my parents would take us up
to London to a show, we often used to go to Lyons Corner House for a meal. So I always
loved Jo Lyons. I met my first husband, Christopher Ian Grigor Tyson, at university.
When I graduated in 1963, we came down to London to look for jobs. Chris had failed his
degree, but was delighted to be given a job by Leo Computers Ltd, while I joined English
Electric in their domestic appliance division to do market research. My brother was
working for ICL (the English Electric Computer Co, in Staffordshire). We had another
friend who was working for another computer company, but the name escapes me, and
another for IBM, so when we had parties everyone had to define their terms before they
could start talking about their jobs as each company used different words the the same
thing. Chris Tyson stayed with Leo Computers until his death in 1970, but the company
name changed half a dozen times. Leo was bought out by English Electric and became
“English Electric Leo Marconi”, then it joined with ICL, and was taken over finally by
ICT. As far as I can remember Chris Tyson worked in the same office in Bayswater(?)
despite the changes in company name. I think it was LEO III that Chris worked on. I have
no momentos of Chris’ time at Leo, but I do have a Pelican book “Electronic Computers”
by S.H. Hollingdale and G.C. Tootill first published in 1965. It mentions the beginnings of
the British computer industry, which confirms my memories of the companies above. I
would be very happy to send you this book if you do not have it already. Myself working
for English Electric, I remember using punch cards and paper tape to analyse the results of
my surveys. For many years afterwards we used paper tape to hang Christmas cards from
the picture rail as it was so much tougher than anything else. I hope this snippet of
information is of interest to you and long may the society prosper.
