LEO editor

Ray Shaw

LAST OF THE ORIGINAL DESIGN TEAM THAT BUILT LEO

Ray Shaw, the last remaining link with the original design team that built the world’s first business computer, LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) has died aged 98.

Recruited into J Lyons & Co in 1949 for his expertise in radar and radio telecommunications by the LEO hardware team leader, Dr John Pinkerton, he was involved initially with the development of special test equipment and testing schedules for basic units within LEO, but later worked on the design of many of the 90 circuits that went into the early LEO machines.

He went on to do design work on the LEO II development that enabled the system to operate four times faster by interleaving the pulses from the mercury delay line storage without major changes to the processor.

Shaw left Lyons in 1956 to work down under with, briefly, Amalgamated Wireless of Australia on component standardisation and specification, and then joined the University of Sydney Physics Department at The Adolf Basser Computing Laboratory to work on magnetic tape backing storage for the university’s computer, pioneering the use of error-correcting code techniques to minimise the loss of information due to magnetic tape flaws.

Returning to England in 1960 he joined English Electric Computers in Kidsgrove, Staffordshire, to work on the design of the KDF9 computer and then, by a strange twist of fate, found himself back with Pinkerton’s research group and LEO after English Electric’s takeover of the Lyons computer business in 1963.

Work on standards

His later work with LEO involved working on a number of high-profile projects involving advanced data transmission techniques, including research into packet-switching techniques and data transmission standards.  The European Computer Manufacturers’ Association (ECMA) had a series of Technical Committees (TC’s) and Shaw was vice chairman of TC9 that was looking at data transmission and error correction techniques that would in time become part of the multi-layer model that supports the internet. 

Raymond Denby Shaw was born in Ilford, Essex, the son of Eliza Shaw, nee Pember, and Frederick Alfred Shaw. He left school at 16 with little in the way of qualifications apart from a facility for mathematics.

He joined Jacob White & Co, a privately owned electrical and mechanical engineering workshop. Then, in 1940, he went on to work on the testing of thermionic radio valves with Standard Telephones & Cable Company in Sidcup, Kent. His main ambition at the time was to become involved in radio research, which led to a move to the Electro Physical Laboratories in Hendon, London, that were engaged in R&D work relating to photovoltaic detecting devices and systems. And thence to Vacuum Science Products at Norwood Junction, a company concerned with the development and manufacture of silver-caesium photoelectric devices.

In 1943, Shaw volunteered to serve in the Royal Air Force and was trained as a radar mechanic, becoming involved with airborne radar equipment and navigational aids and air-to-ground cathode ray tube displays both in the UK and in the Far East theatres of war. Demobilised with the rank of sergeant in 1947, he returned to his pre-service employers continuing work on photovoltaic photoelectric devices and studies in radio and telecommunication engineering.

Following the merger that created ICL in 1968 and through to 1980, when he retired from ICL, he was involved in the formulation of mainframe computing system requirements for future products. He was also prominent as the leader of an advanced team of trouble-shooters.

Founding member of BCS

A founding member of the British Computer Society, Ray Shaw’s many interests were reflected in a wide range of other memberships, including the Chartered Institute of British Management, the Defence Electronics History Society, and the British Society for the History of Mathematics.

He was married twice, but had no children.  His first marriage, to Ann Twyford in 1952, ended in divorce in the 1970s. The second, to Muriel Fussel in 1982, ended with her death from cancer in 2005. His one sister, Eileen, pre-deceased him in 2015. He is survived by her children, Yvonne and Alan, and by five other nephews and nieces from Muriel’s side of the family.

Raymond Tempest Shaw, b. 17 April 1924, d. 27 November 2022

Remembering Ray Shaw a Video of John Daine’s presentation

Also on Dropbox

Ray Shaw (far left in front) with members of the early LEO build team, including its leader, Dr John Pinkerton (middle row, second from left with glasses)

An addendum from Dag Spicer

Thank you so much sending me this – I really appreciate the extra effort you make to include those of us who are a bit off-piste in terms of time zone!

What a wonderful presentation by John Daines. Please pass along with deep admiration my best wishes to him for a touching and informative talk.

I’ve downloaded the whole meeting and will be keeping it in my personal research archives – it’s a fine source of information on LEO, as are every LEO meetings.

The discussion about whether “LEO was cost effective” was interesting. My feeling on that is more relevant than whether it made sense economically was that Lyons would not have been able to grow at the rate it did without computers – they were facing a crisis of complexity that only computer methods could tackle. My $0.02.  :_)

Thank you again for this amazing talk, Peter. I am honoured to be included.

With warmest regards,

Dag Spicer

Senior Curator

Computer History Museum
Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
1401 N. Shoreline Blvd.

Mountain View CA  94043

John Simmons – 1902-1985 after gaining a first class degree in Mathematics from Cambridge University he was recruited by George Booth, Lyons company secretary as a Management Trainee and statistician with a brief to review and develop the Lyons business processes.  Under his tutelage many innovations to business processes were introduced and in 1932 he established the Systems Research Office.  In 1947 he sent two of his managers to the USA to study if Lyons could learn from American business processes.  The outcome of the visit was the famous Standingford/Thompson report suggesting the possibility of computers as an engine for making the company more efficient. He used his own reputation and authority to endorse the idea and the resulting collaboration with Cambridge University to build LEO.  He was appointed to the Lyons Board in 1954 as an Employee Director and a year later as a full Director. His reputation in the business world was an important factor in the establishment of LEO, the product of a catering company, as one of the leading computer supplier in the UK and further afield.  A biographical sketch can be found on pages 209 o 210 of Peter Bird’s LEO: the World’s First Business Computer, and his profile is included in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (ODNB) written by Georgina Ferry and published online September 2005.
http://www.oldbrightonians.com/notable-obs/business/john-simmons-bc.-1916.html
Ox ford Dictionary of National Biography ODNB

David Caminer adds:

Handwritten notes by David Caminer in preparation for his Pinkerton Lecture and transcribed by his daughter Hilary, hon. secretary LEO Computer Society January 2021. Words in brackets below are guesses at what was on the original manuscript.

This may well be the last time that we of the small band who conceived the first business computer, built it and first put it to work. And so it seems appropriate to put aside reticence for a moment and to say a few concise words about my colleagues.

First then to Simmons. I have already spoken about him as the architect of Lyons office systems and  (its) infrastructure. Without the enormous respect that he had gained from ‘the family’ as the controlling group of the Company was known, it is more than unlikely that LEO would have been proceeded with.  He was known as a man who could be relied upon utterly and that when he made a proposal it had been completely thought through and would be carried to fruition, within a fixed time- frame and within budget. He was confident enough to advise the family of his intentions more than he needed to do. He believed very firmly in carrying everyone along with him and when LEO was actually being built he made certain that it should not be regarded as  a Frankenstein and first invited all the management and supervisors of the offices to see it in progress. He promised that no one would lose their job because of it, arguing that it could take time for the Computer to replace labour and by that time there would be natural wastage.

He himself was a formidable person. He had glacier blue eyes that were transfixing. He was very quietly spoken. I don’t remember him ever raising his voice. He was a tidy man in every sense. I recall his large mahogany desk. Always clear when we entered his room. He would then take the paper to be discussed from his top right hand drawer. It was always there, in place. His questions were searching/He was not always satisfied with the answers, but his natural courtesy did much to check his impatience. If we didn’t altogether agree with what was being proposed, he would smile rather thinly and declare ‘I hear what you say!’ If we were unwise enough to continue on this same track, he would repeat ‘I hear what you say’ this time with a note of resignation and dismissal. He was a totally logical man. Thinking the impossible was no problem for him as long as it could be logically supported. He brought his mathematical disciplines to his management chair. These were not just … but a continuum in his style of thought.

John Simmons was a very private man. He was always the captain of the ship, but was not at all well known except to his senior officers. Many working in his large offices would not have been able to recognise him. He only very seldom ventured onto the shop floor. He was the son of missionaries and, without wearing his faith on his sleeve, we were very aware of the responsibility he bore for the people working for him. He was particularly conscious of the situation in which he had placed the small army of machine operators, all girls and women that had grown up. They were the counterparts of the operators in the continuous band factories, but as he noted, while those within factory operations could chat while they carried out their repetitive operations, the accounting … or … …groups had to keep their minds on the work all the time. When he discovered it, I don’t know, but he found that in the drive for efficiency, he had implanted drudgery in the offices. He quickly saw the potential of the computer to eradicate that drudgery and he seized up it.  https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/i2pncloi68lpa3jywtrrg/John-Simmons-appreciation.doc?dl=0&rlkey=qut7r1fol6k21ei49g5v1l7yx

His wife Judy writes: “John read Mathematics at Trinity , Cambridge but changed to English after the first year as the school he had been evacuated to during the war had not covered Applied Maths and he found at Trinity that he had too much to catch up on . It says a lot for his versatility that he was able to graduate in English after only two years study . After an abortive few months in advertising he was lucky enough to spot an advertisement for some new fangled thing called a computer and he started his career at LEO in 1956. After a period spent programming he moved to the training department under Robin Gibson and found his true home starting at Hartree House , then in Ealing and finally at Beaumont until 1990 when he had to retire following a devastating brain haemorrhage . He was wheelchair bound and disabled in many ways but has survived nearly 30 years through grit and determination, living a fulfilling life, never feeling sorry for himself but concentrating on what he could do rather than that which he could no longer do. There may be some oldies who remember him”.  Peter Byford adds “many will remember him as Training Manager at Hartree House and his ability to make nervous applicants and LEO recruits feel at ease.”

Robin Stanley-Jones – Died 2013, joined as a technician around 1961 and worked at Minerva Rd; did 24/7 shifts on III/1 at Hartree House; then went with LEO III/8 to Australia (Tubemakers of Australia) (1963?). He “became ICL. He remained in IT, mostly with Digital Equipment, until his retirement

George F Stevens – 1911-2002,senior Lyons manager who took responsibility for the running of the Lyons LEO Computers when LEO Computers Limited merged with English Electric.  He subsequently oversaw the switch by Lyons to IBM computers.
http://www.kzwp.com/lyons.pensioners/obituary2S2.htm

Matt Taub Died December 2021 joined the Research Department of LEO in the summer of 1955 after working for about five years on the application of electronics in telephony. Left LEO in 1957. LEO 1 was already in operation, and LEO 2 under development in what had been a tea warehouse near Shepherds Bush. For the first few months I worked on the Input/Output system, which, I seem to remember, was called the Annexe. and fulfilled the same functions as the Channels in the later IBM 360 machines. But another part of the machine began to present problems, and I spent much of my two-year stay with the Company on the task of overcoming them. In both LEO 1 and LEO 2. the main memory consisted of mercury delay lines, using techniques originally developed for radar during World War 2. In LEO 1. the ultrasonic pulses circulating around the delay lines were of about 1 microsecond duration, but LEO 2 sought to be more ambitious, and reduced the pulse duration to 0.25 microseconds. This called for electronic circuits whose performance was close to the limits of what was then possible, and the design of these circuits was my main task. In the course of this work, the Research Department moved from Shepherds Bush to Minerva Road, and for the last few months of my time at LEO, I was Assistant Manager of the Research Department immediately under John Pinkerton. By the summer of 1957 LEO 2ﾒs storage problems had been overcome, and I felt that it was time to move on.

Thomas Raymond Thompson (TRT) – 1907-1976. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) includes a profile of T.R.T by Peter Bird, online May 2011. The Lyons Mail published an appreciation of TRT in its April 1976 issue.  This can be found in the Warwick University Simmons archive filed as 383-S4-14-2-9.jpg.  TRT was one of the giants of the LEO enterprise.  Frank Land published a personal recollections of TRT  in the Spring 2020 edition of LEO Matters, page 10. http://www.leo-computers.org.uk/images/LeoNewsletterSpring2020.pdf
http://www.kzwp.com/lyons.pensioners/obituary2T.htm
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/101160

The IT History Society includes a profile of TRT at
       http://www.ithistory.org/honor-roll/mr-thomas-raymond-thompson

papers. It has been copied by Neville Lyons and is available from him.  David Caminer in a handwritten note on John Simmons and TRT penned before the Guildhall Conference adds: Thompson was a very different personality from John Simmons. He was a very able organiser and an enthusiastic disciple. He had been Simmons’ right-hand man for more than 20 years. He was an enthusiast for what he was engaged upon and his enthusiasm was infectious. He and Simmons were an optimally matched pair: Simmons quiet and chill, Thompson sometimes noisy and often ebullient.

His speed of uptake was phenomenal. How much of the report of the seminal report of the trip to America came from him and how much from Standingford is not known, but his agile mind was certainly capable of picking it up all by himself. Frequently he raced ahead of anyone explaining something to him and became impatient if the other person didn’t keep up with him. He would put himself in the front row before the computer staff explaining  the construction or programming of the machine and could always be relied upon to jump out of his chair after a few minutes and declare ‘ What you mean to say is this!’ Sometimes he was right, but not always. 

His quick uptake and blatant enthusiasm meant that Thompson quite unconsciously thought that he was more responsible for some new ideas than he really was. Sometimes this was resented but more often the engineer or systems or programming person responsible was more than happy that the idea would now be carried forward with Thompson’s fire and energy behind it.

If he had a fault it was insensitivity. He had come from a humble background and was proud of his success, but he couldn’t quite understand that members of his staff could also be naturally bright without having been to Cambridge. … (almost notes at this stage)

He was equally .. about everything he did whether it was bridge or rugby or amateur dramatics. In the senior dining room in which he lunched he was well-known for ‘Thompson’s Laws of England.’

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/d8iq55jaz2uv7lmq9uge0/TRThompson-appreciation.doc?dl=0&rlkey=rk32m88gmzcajzz7pel35ufyx papers. It has been copied by Neville Lyons and is available from him.  David Caminer in a handwritten note on John simmons and TRT penned before the Guildhall Conference adds:  

John Tomlinson  Died 2012,  LEO Operator, 1962 LEO II/1, 1966 LEO III/1
Career in computing.  Worked on LEO III as a programmer on Postmaster Accounting System – 1970/71 – and later for ICL on Post Office System 4 computers.  After leaving Post Office joined ICL Dataskill. 
Then various jobs with Corning, Thorn/EMI and Electrolux where he became IT Manager. Subsequently became responsible for Information Security
First for Northumbria Police and then Leicester.

From Simon Tomlinson: My Dad was John Tomlinson who worked for Leo during the 60`s. I was a very small boy. We lived in Marlow and Dad used to commute to London to Leo. 
My Dad was far more intelligent than me and had a great sense of humour. I have a couple of copies of `Myopic` which reflect this! There are a few quotes of my cheeky replies to him from certain situations at home which are lovely to have in black and white. 
I can`t tell you much, apart from the few attached photo`s as I was so small, but I do remember one funny story. Apparently,  one night shift worker had an air bed so that he could have a bit of a kip after a pub visit earlier on in the shift. Everyone would work extra hard to cover their colleagues `free time`. but, one night everyone came running out of the store room gasping after the offending worker had let the stale air out of his air bed after it had been inflated several days earlier after a few pints and a couple of ciggies! Dad ended up running the computer department for Leicester City Council and we moved up here in 1972. It was regretted by Dad in hindsight, but that is all in the past.

From Bob Stevenson: I knew your father well. We both worked as operators/shift leaders on the Leo III/1 computer, at Hartree House in Queensway, which figures in 3 of the photos you have, and often went for meals together in Queensway or Westbourne Park, where there was a great choice of restaurants. When I was Chief Op. I was asked to nominate someone to go to a Moscow computer show and help demonstrate a Leo III computer. Naturally I proposed John, who had all the necessary skills and was probably a bit more presentable than some of the other ops! I also remember that John took home one of the large punched card machines that were being scrapped and set it up in his garage, presumably hoping to have a profitable home business. I don’t know how it went but he didn’t give up his day job.

Peter Titman, died 2019 – Ann Titman, Peter’s widow writes
“I am writing to let you know that my husband Peter Titman died on Sunday 16th November. He designed the magnetic core for Leo 111, if I remember rightly, working with Dr Pinkerton. He left to join IBM and had a successful career in computing”

Colin Tully – 1936-2007 Joined LEO in 1960 after graduating with a degree in Economics from Cambridge.   University. Became very much involved with Software Development including coding the LEO III Master Routine. Subsequently mixed an academic career with consultancy and practice at Standard Telephone and Cables.  Had stints as an academic researcher at York University, Cranfield and the London School of Economics, finishing his career as Dean and Professor at Middlesex University.  Maintained his interest in LEO and its achievements via the LEO Foundation and the LEO Computers Society.
See CCH
http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/content/52/3/388.short
http://www.leo-computers.org.uk/images/colintullytribute.pdf

Tributes to Colin have been contributed by many of his colleagues and friends including Darren Dalcher, Brian Randell, Nigel Dolby, Adrian Rymell, Taz Daughtrey, Ian wand, Ralph LandPatricia McQuade and John Lindsay.  They have been collected in one document in archived in Dropbox at https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5uljbewmvy15jy5zqs3r0/Colin-Tully-tributes-060108.doc?dl=0&rlkey=kq1ffmy4coiwr1om8p9g99put

Colin’s CV and other career details can be found in Dropbox at https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zw946gi2wboj6mdzj302i/Colin-Tully-CVs.doc?dl=0&rlkey=dwj1k5rt92ph1u5n439c0fiij