LEO editor

Doug Comish:  Sporting Reminiscence
Information about Lyons Sports Day activities: I did take part in one of them but having got changed into football kit the opposition failed to turn up!
However I can recall one interesting cricket match we played at Sudbury.
The Programming section challenged the rest of LEO and I was appointed Captain of the  side.We batted first and I managed to contribute a few runs.When our opponents batted,they gradually approached our total and lost wickets on the way. They had one guy who could hit the ball very hard to deep midwicket and the situation was reached that their last pair were together and they needed about ten to win.I considered myself a safe pair of hands and so I moved myself to deep midwicket in case their batsman offerred an opportunity for a catch.
They ultimately got to within two runs of our total and their batsman went for his favourite shot and connected. I saw the ball all the way into  my hands and to my dismay right out of them!!

But it was a good match

Mike Cowlard, Reminiscences of a LEO Operator
        Left School with two O levels (Maths and English.  Joined GPO as Clerical Officer.  Always good with figures quickly promoted.  Advised that he might get faster promotion outside GPO noted adverts for computer jobs.  Tried Heinz and Lyons doing well in aptitude tests.  Offered job by Peter Bird, then operations manager of the Lyons LEO operation.  Joined Lyons as Operator in May 1968.  His 50 years in computing comprised Operator/Shift Leader/Shift Supervisor – Leo II/III,  managing the crazy Autolector.  Migrated to IBM – Operator/Shift Leader/Shift Supervisor/Programmer/System Analyst.  For full text of Mike’s reminiscence see https://www.dropbox.com/s/9qub4z79qs3l6wz/Mike%20Cowlard%2C%20Reminiscences%20of%20a%20LEO%20Operator.docx?dl=0

Dick Cromwell      Leo memories –     I went to LEO II at Elms House Hammersmith in February 1959. I left in April 1963 to start LEO III training. I started as an Assistant Engineer, then Shift Engineer and finally in July 1962 became Chief Engineer at the site. I moved on to LEO III/16 and took it to Kayser Bondor at Baldock Hertfordsire. Dick’s full account can be found at https://www.dropbox.com/s/fd5p9o24j8zh0rt/Dick%20Cromwell%27S%20LEO%20MEMORIES.docx?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0s4nweb17m4zqwm/Anthony%20Robin%20Davies%20memoir.doc?dl=0

John Daines:  Reminiscence

The Glyn Mills payroll paid people by Credit Transfer rather than by cheque**.  It was at the start of each bank branch having a sort code as well as folk having account numbers.  We produced a payslip and a credit transfer (Credit Advices on the pic).  There was a tape that contained “the Bank File” and that started to be used for more payrolls – “the standard payroll” that became an early package, requiring only “minor” tailoring for each customer.

They paid military officers (all army, half RAF or half army, all RAF I think and the input data was referred to as ”casualties”, a term used in the pic.  I seem to remember that the casualties were punched and verified twice and two tapes were input for comparison (Bob Stevenson may be able to confirm).

Glynn Mills had their offices at Osterley Park (wartime evacuation) and I remember that on one weekend I had to deliver the results to Osterley.  It was when the Hammersmith flyover was being built so it involved a lot of in-and-out under the works on the A4.

I did some googling and discovered that they were also adopters of another technology used in an innovative way. See Wireless World Sept 52 page 379 Glynn Mills use of Television for documents

Ray Dawson, Reminiscences  published in Bits and Bytes, Newsletter for ICL Pensioners. Autumn 2000, pages 3-4, and https://www.dropbox.com/s/pvn23zfn0p6ylwf/Ray%20Dawson%20Reminiscences.docx?dl=0 
JD also remembers the Master Routine: I have listings of the master routine and it was written in Intercode.
Intercode itself was a level above machine code and, although a instruction looked to be an equivalent to a machine code instruction, it was often expanded by the translator into several machine code instructions.
However, Intercode instructions 100/0/0 to 131/1/3 were one for one equivalents of machine code instructions 0/0/0 to 31/1/3.  That meant that the master routine programmers could program at the lowest level and use specialist low level instructions that weren’t in the Intercode set e.g. input output, interrupt handling, setting store protection tags .etc

Interestingly, Cleo allowed for routines to be written in Intercode and, by implication from the above, that Intercode might include machine code

John Daines November 2021

I’ve always assumed that P1, P2 and P3 are constituent programs of the L3 suite – Bakery Valuations.
From reading some of the files, these are very complicated programs and the machine was tiny.
 
The following shows the amount of time involved.

From looking at Lenaerts Notebook No 8 page 39 written on Monday, Dec 3^rd 1951, he refers to the P programme’s successful run on Friday afternoon (November 30^th) at 2:20.  Note that Len then continues with his usual pre-occupation (faults!).

Note also that on the 28^th, page 37, he notes the successful completion of P1, suggesting that perhaps P2 ran on the 29^th.
Three days therefore looks a reasonable view.

John Daines LEO III Programming and Operating Utilities
An important utility managed program changes with the Version Control utility  implemented in the Intercode Translator.  A programme had a 5 digit version number that was incremented by 1 each time the program was amended.  See Volume III, section15 at http://sw.ccs.bcs.org/leo/LeoIC6-17.htm#s15 15.1, 15.2 and 15.3 last paragraph “New Issue Number” Each line of code was numbered by the Translation when the program was first created and, if it had been amended, the program version number of the amendment was printed next to it.  All this was built in.  There was a program trials facility built into the Translator see volume III section 16 at http://sw.ccs.bcs.org/leo/LeoIC6-17.htm#s16
There were standard sort utilities 07003 (3 tape sort) and 07003 (4 tape sort).  They were string sorts where the strings were created on two work tapes from the input tape in the first pass and subsequently merged, utilising the hardware merge instruction, until the final two strings were merged onto the output file.
Printing could either be directly to a line printer, which would restrict its use by other programs, or by sending each print line to a magnetic tape file with a header, that said what type of report it was, together with any paper movement controls.  Thus a program could effectively output to any number of “printers”.  The standard print program utility 06060 would subsequently read the magnetic tape, printing all lines of a report type on each pass.  Lines of print were assembled by a table driven hardware instruction that selected data as required, changing formats and inserting £ signs as required.  All this was cross checked by the Translator.
There were also utilities to manage program libraries, copy and compare magnetic tape files and print the contents of magnetic tapes and main store.  See volume V.
More importantly, there is an extensive piece of work by Ken Kemp, who was in charge of Leo systems and programming at the English Electric-Leo Service Bureau in Bristol in the mid to late 1960’s. At http://sw.ccs.bcs.org/leo/Manuals.htm , the main index to the manuals, there is a pointer to Recollections of a Leo III user, which is at http://sw.ccs.bcs.org/leo/KenK.htm    

Barbara Dickens,   I was a LEO programmer in Intercode on the Leo 326 installed by the Dept of National Savings. I started in 1968 and was trained by the Post Office trainers before working for DNS at Lytham St Annes. I remember the days very well as I did mainly maintenance which meant finding old code to delete to make room for any amendments. After a few years I moved onto ICL System4 machines programming in Usercode and COBOL before joining SMBP and working in COBOL and machine code on Univac 1100 series.I  eventually moved onward and upward into management and consultancy but I still remember my Intercode days and the carol tunes made from holes in the printers format tapes.

George Drummond, GPO (BT) –Reminiscence      Born in Fife Scotland in Feb 1947.Attended Kirkcaldy High School, then Strathclyde University. Initially applied to the Post Office and was interviewed in Edinburgh for an Executive Officer post ( as they were called in those days ). During the interview I was asked if there were any specific areas in which I would like to work, and I said computing. I was then asked to go down to London to sit a computing aptitude test, and from there I was offered a job on the Telephone Billing programming team in Docos House, Aldgate London. I was the last BT in-house instructor to teach Intercode and CLEO programming. When the St Albans training school no longer had instructors in house, it was passed to the TB3 project team to take over that role, as we were the last operational user of those languages. We even had a few non-BT students on the later courses as , by that time, no-one else taught those languages. As a result of BT’s decision to offer this externally I had to go through a six-week course at BT’s training college to learn how to become an instructor and to become an accredited courses lecturer before BT could ‘Sell’ this training commercially. I started work originally with the Post Office in 1968 working on the Leo 326 Telephone Billing Suite of programmes known as MFC ( Major File Change). These were a suite of programmes used when Telephone Exchange Ranges were being altered to support the STD dialling system. The suite was capable of carrying out complete, or partial, exchange re-numbering. I also worked as a senior programmer on the introduction of Post Codes, Decimalisation programme, and VAT introduction for Telephone Billing. From several years I took charge of the programmers who provided Software Support to all of the operational Leo326 telephone billing systems. When BT then moved to the 2900 systems, I relocated back to Edinburgh ( my home town) as a System Software Support manager based in Craiglockhart. I subsequently moved into an IT sales technical and system consultancy role for the final four years of my 39 year career with BT.I retired in 2007 now live on the South Coast in West Sussex. 
https://www.dropbox.com/h?preview=George+Drummond+memoirs.doc

John Edwards  Reminiscence      after attending Neville Lyons Lecture I worked only briefly  for Lyons doing Time and Motion Study at Cadby Hall. It was in fact an interim job as I  resumed my degree work at London University. I was making the most of a grant to study after wartime service as a navigating officer in the Merchant Navy. I got to know most of the departments at Cadby Hall, including T&M on the swiss roll line that you mentioned. I also did some studies at the Coventry Street Corner House. This was to determine the average time spent in the Brasserie ;  this was done by simply counting the numbers going in, and those coming out , over a period of time .   I remember a somewhat hilarious moment in the ice cream factory when a stainless steel overhead pipe carrying the liquid  ingredients became disconnected and poured a fair amount over the foreman.  

The overall impression I had of operations at Cadby Hall was great efficiency. The main point of the T&M work was to get control , by knowing the man- hours required to produce the various items. I think that efficiency was the main driving force behind Leo , was it not ?     I did not have any direct connection with Leo, I was told that there were some people from Birmingham University working on it.  I have always tried to impress on people the remarkable achievement of the first commercial computer being developed by a food company, and by the lead that this should have given the UK  in that science. I feel that Lyons should have persisted in being in the computer business and given government support.  I know from personal experience how little support was given to new technology.  In 1971 I had a small electronics company, in that year Intel produced the first microprocessor (the  4004)  we used this to produce the first desktop computer in the same year. Unfortunately in spite of getting orders from UK and abroad, and being  used in commerce ,  lack of adequate finance killed it off. https://www.dropbox.com/s/tjlxl5xtiyd8p0d/John%20Edwards%20Reminiscence.docx?dl=0