Brian Hobson: I am glad that you, (Hilary Caminer), were able to attend our recent
“LEO do” as chaotic as it was! You asked if I would explain the origins of our group and
also to help you understand our Lyons/LEO relationship as it seemed rather confusing.
I will do my best. The meeting started when Norman Beasley retired from Lyons
in/around 1982. Norman had been a member of Lyons/Leo from the early days and was
Operations manager on LEO 1, LEO II/1, and LEO III/7 before becoming Computer
Consultant to the Lyons group of companies.
Norman lived in Chalfont St Giles (I think this is correct) and Peter Bird (Lyons
Programming Manager) and Alex Tepper (Lyons Operations manager) would go to visit
him fairly frequently. Carol Hurst, who was at our meeting, also lived nearby and had
also left Lyons would join the others making a foursome. In my Lyons career I started in
Operations as an operator (employed by Norman) and later became a consultant working
with Norman. When Alex Tepper was promoted to Head of Computing for Lyons I
became Operations manager and joined the gathering.
All Lyons computer staff are quite a close knit group and various members moved into
senior positions within other companies within the group as Accountants or Head of
Computing, etc. Tony Thompson, who you met, became Chief Accountant for various
companies, Alan King (now passed away) became head of Lyons Maid computing. They
joined in our meetings and gradually as time went on our group has continued but with
varying members, as old ones passed away others came to know of us and joined. Peter
Bird was the mainstay organiser as he had the most contacts. Cyril Lanch is a fairly
newcomer to our group but did not step back quick enough when volunteers were sought
to carry on Peter’s organising! Hopefully that explains our group, now for the
LEO/Lyons feelings – difficult!
History of Lyons and computers. Lyons built a computer to do work for Lyons Electronic
Office (LEO), staff working on the computers were Lyons staff. With the success of
computers Lyons formed a computer company LEO Computers Ltd but the staff although
working for LEO were still Lyons staff at heart. When the company LEO was sold the
computers remained at Lyons and were operated by Leo staff until they chose to remain
at Lyons or were replaced by new Lyons staff.
Lyons computer history goes from LEO I through Leo II/1, LEO III/7, LEO 326/46 and
eventually to IBM computers. Our attachment to LEO may be explained by the fact that
the original computers were still in use at Lyons long after LEO had been sold and in
many instances the staff working them were the original staff. When LEO was sold the
computer department became LEO and METHODS, then Lyons Computer Services Ltd
(LCS My best analogy would be: If you had a daughter and she got married she would
still be your daughter and a member of your family although she would have joined
another family, you would continue to be proud of her. The same is how our computer
department feel.
When LEO was sold the computer department became LEO and METHODS, then Lyons
Computer Services Ltd (LCS), and finally Lyons Information Systems Ltd (LIS).
As you may now gather we were very proud of our heritage but so was the computer
industry. We as a Computer Bureau (which we had been from day 1 of computers)
strived to continue to be at the forefront of computer usage and computer and peripheral
manufacturers were very keen to be associated with us offering us very competitive deals
to use their equipment. Our computer department was frequently put under the
microscope by the main Lyons Board as the newer family Board members felt that
computing was expensive but on every occasion the auditing companies, including IBM,
were in awe as to how we are able to do so much with so little and still lead the
world. An example of this was back when Lyons had a fire on the Xeronic Printer in the
LEO III/7 computer room. We made an arrangement with the Post Office (as it was then)
to use their LEO III (overnight) in Charles House which was just across the road from
us. Our shift of 6 operators replaced a shift of 20+ operators.
I cannot remember the trade magazine that did a piece on us as we were the first company
to wire an entire building with various departments on different floors to use Local Area
Networks linked into the mainframe. Also, one of our external customers was a large
American personal tax company which had a large computer centre in the States but
wanted a worldwide centre based in London. We installed a duplicate of their system
onto our computer, they provided no computing staff as all maintenance etc. would be
done from the States we only had two user/managers with us. Their system was difficult
for their users to manage and I spent a lot of time supporting them because of the
complexity of their system.
Eventually I volunteered to improve it for them and wrote a few simple programs
and restructured their system making it much more efficient (saving hours a day of
machine and their input time). The computer staff in America were interested in what I
had done and came over to see for themselves, they were amazed and the CEO asked
permission to adopt our version of their system to replace their own!
My own involvement with Lyons started while I was at school. My brother, Colin, whom
you met was an operator at Lyons on LEO II/1 (but employed by LEO Computers) and I
used to go with him to work some evenings or when I was not at school. I was able to
help operate the LEO II computer (unofficially of course) and met the engineers on the
LEO III/7. When Colin moved to Hartree House I also used to go there as well and
helped out on the LEO III installed there. I loved the job and it really appealed to me so
when I left school (in 1966) I went for interviews at Lyons and ICT (as it was
then). Norman interviewed me and offered me the job (it helped that I knew several of
the staff by name which impressed him!). I worked my way up from trainee operator to
Ops Manager until the closure of the company in 1991. I won’t bore you with my life
history of the roles I held and of the changes in company structure that I made over the
years as most of this was during our IBM period.
I hope that this gives you some insight into our little group and our attachment to LEO
and why we feel a little side-lined when at the LEO Computer Society gatherings Lyons
seems to be irrelevant. Maybe that is changing now but at the few meetings I went to
over the years that is how it seemed which is why I have never bothered joining
