LEO Asst. Editor

Harding, Thomas, (2019), Legacy: One Family, a Cup of Tea, and the Company that Took on the World, Penguin Books. Legacy charts the rise and fall of one of the most influential dynasties in British history through the lives of five astonishing generations; both sweeping and intimate, it is a story of sacrifice and selflessness, betrayal and personal tragedy, and Empire and its cost. Included in the story is a brief account of the origins and development of LEO, the decision to found LEO computers Limited as a subsidiary company, and the later decision to dispose of the
subsidiary. The book allows the reader to peek behind the scenes at the way the members of the family which ran Lyons operated https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/1071513/thomas-harding.html

Hendry, John (1990) ‘Innovating for Failure. Government Policy and the Early British Computer Industry’, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. xx, 240 pp. Hendry analyses the failure of the British Computer Industry in spite of the efforts of the NRDC to rationalise the industry. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Innovating-Failure-Government-Computer-Computing/dp/0262081873

Henin, S., (2017) Il racconto del computer , Edizioni Manna

Hénin, S., (2014) Come le violette a primavera, AICA, pp. 163, 174-5, 19

Hicks, Mar (2017) ‘Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost its Edge in Computing’, MIT Press. Marie Hicks, an American Academic, has produced a well-researched and in many ways fascinating account of the British Computer Industry from its birth at the beginning of World War 2 code-breaking at Bletchley Park to the demise of ICL in the mid-1970s. As such it includes many references to LEO including reports of interviews with LEO employees. However, the focus is on British Government computing, and in particular on the making of staffing policy in the Civil Service. Whilst the account is often interesting and provides an insight into the social history of the Civil Service as it enters the Information Age its basic hypothesis embodied in the title of the book is at best dubious. http://programmedinequality.com/

Hollingdale, S.H. & Toothill , G.C., (1965), Electronic Computers. Penguin (Pelican) Books, London. This early book on the history of computers includes a number of references to LEO. See pages 230 and 281-282, and a photograph. It is a brief but accurate account noting payroll and teashop ordering. What is also interesting, in a book published in 1965, is the absence of any mention of war—time computing in Bletchley or any computer innovations outside the USA and UK. A surprising number of pages are devoted to analogue computers. A second edition was published in 1975. See Electronic Computers

IEEE History Foundation. Milestones By Year Dedicated And Region comprises a variety of relevant material related to the interests of the IEEE. It includes references to LEO and includes an oral history of LEO programmer Betty
Cooper, http://ethw.org/Oral-History:Betty_Cooper

Jones, Capers (2014) ‘The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering’, Addison-Wesley. Capers Jones’s book is a monumental history of computers and computing with a prime focus on ‘software engineering’. Jones has an introductory chapter which deals with the pre-history from the beginning of civilisation to 1930, then chapters dealing with each decade up to 2013. His chapter on the 1950s includes the LEO story, brief (pages 85, 86, in a 452 page book), but giving some weight to the place of LEO in computing history. See Capers Jones

Kavanagh, J., (2007) ‘BCS – Celebrating 50 years’, British Computer Society. 82 pages including a chapter titled ‘Birth of an Industry and the BCS’, which features Maurice Wilkes, photo of LEO I and potted history of LEO. More info at Google Books

Lavington, Simon H. (1980) ‘Early British Computers: The Story of Vintage Computers and The People Who Built Them’, Manchester University Press, http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/EarlyBritish.html#TOC
Chapter 13, pages 68-77, gives a brief history of LEO and English Electric, including a timeline.