Geoff Weston, I read your piece in U3A Matters with great interest as I believe that I
was involved with the first use of computing in the civil engineering industry. I worked
for John Laing Ltd. (now Laing O’Rourke) under John Mason who was Project
Surveyor. In ’58/’59 I was a very junior surveyor on the London to Yorkshire motorway
(M1) when a capable body was needed for a boring but important task. I drew, on
specially printed pro-forma sheets, cross sectional profiles of the construction at 100 foot
intervals (chainages) of our “B” section from Ampthill to North of Newport Pagnell,
about 650 in total. I added all the data points numerically and passed these sheets to the
boss who combined them with other three sections and sent them to Cadby Hall where
this enormous piece of kit called Leo worked out the total volumes of soil cut out, placed
in cuttings, spread as topsoil etc.etc. This was to check the Ministry of Transport’s
figures and I understand that there was a significant difference therefore value. I never
heard anything more about this and it seems to have escaped into the mists of time. By
coincidence, my grandfather, uncle and other relatives worked at Cadby Hall.
