Bob Day – Died 2018. Bob was recruited in 1960 by Leo Fantl to join the newly formed LEO/Rand Mines collaborative venture in Johannesburg, South Africa. Bob, of Afrikan descent, was one of a handfulrecruited, all of high quality joining within that first period. Bob stayed in a senior role until his retirement.
Leo Fantl writes “Bob Day was a typical South African. With an outstanding secondary education record, he joined the Post Office as a technical apprentice, and completed his training as the top performer for the whole country. Bob is mainly Afrikans but totally bilingual . When he took our appreciation course, he had never done any programming, but I still remember his hostile stare during my lectures –and how I leaned over him while he was writing his test, to see if he was actually writing sense. He got 100 per cent.’ (User-Driven Innovation, p.300)
John Godwin writes: “In the nineteen sixties LEO III/2 at the Johannesburg bureau was the first commercial multi-processing machine in the country. Along with Leo Fantl and their colleagues they (Bob Day and Joe Crouch) changed the way the Mines and other large companies ran their businesses. Today everyone is a computer expert, but then they really were. I am glad I knew them, true trail blazers”.