Eileen Smith Role in Lyons included filling out Lector Forms. I read your article in the
magazine with great interest having worked
for J Lyons and Strand Hotels. November 1962 I joined the company as a trainee
supervisor in the Corner Houses under the direction of Miss Clancy and Mrs Silverlock. It
was a 9 month programme followed by a posting to one of the units. I went to The Grill
and Cheese and The trolley Restaurants at the Tottenham Court
Branch. Miss Brett was the House Manager. As part of my training I had to learn how to
complete the Leo time sheets. I don’t remember too much other than we had to use a
particular strength of graphite pencil and only fill in the brackets[sausages[ very carefully.
If you went over the bracket then wrong payments were made.
I enjoyed my time with the company but moved on to manage a restaurant
having completed a 3 year full time programme on Hotel Management before
coming to London for work. I did a further 5 years with Strand Hotels before the takeover
by THF as a Personnel and Training Manager with the Albany Group.
I still have contacts with former Strand Hotel Colleagues and when the
Regent Palace closed its doors I attended the Grand Finale . We all came
away with a DVD of the history of the company which I think I still have
tucked away somewhere.
Hope this info. may be of some interest although I am not a computer boffin.
Tony Carrol Operator at Wills Tobacco
My involvement with LEO started when I was a schoolboy. I had taken my “O” levels and
was going into the 6th form but I wanted to mix Classics and Science and was told in no
uncertain terms that this was not possible. I could not just do Science as the only chemistry
exam I passed was by ignoring the H2O s etc and just concentrated on the maths. I thought
this was NOT chemistry. So I ended up doing Classics which did not suit me.
Through a friend of my mother’s I went for a job as a statistician but did not get it (thank
goodness) and then I heard that there ware vacancies for trainee computer operators in W.
D. & H. O. Wills. This sounded interesting and I was fortunate to be taken on and started
in September 1959 ( on £265 per annum ). I rapidly progressed up to Shift Leader and
stayed doing that role until 1969/70 the boss of the department (Bob Brett, with whom I
am still in touch today) wanted to move me to Systems and Programming. And so I moved
, thoroughly enjoying that time, and stayed in IT until I retired for the second time in
2003(?).
One interesting occurrence happened on 10th July 1968, but cannot be part of my talk on
LEO, was that our computer (a KDF9 by this time) was flooded to a depth of about two
feet. As luck would have it, the workload on another KDF9 had just been transferred onto
an IBM 360 (?) and this empty KDF9 was only about 7 or 8 miles from our site. We used
it for one month, burning out the motor on a brand new printer in that month, and then
returned to “our” KDF9 which had been successfully returned to life with, I believe, only
two new boards. I also remember that we only lost a few mag tapes.
