Financial Times, March 12th, 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/e1afa168-ef79-11e5-9f20-c3a047354386 ,
“Another remarkable fact from Electronic Dreams: which UK company would you imagine was, by 1951, the world’s first to use a computer for business, and started making computers for other companies? It was J. Lyons and Co, the teashop chain. Its computer business, LEO, kept going until 1963. Lyons’ role as a computer manufacturing pioneer is the more astonishing — at least to anyone old enough to remember the ostensibly low-tech J. Lyons cafés — in that there was stiff competition from within the UK; companies such as Ferranti, Elliott Brothers, English Electric and British Tabulating Machinery were all selling British boffin-made computers globally.”