Ron Marshall
I worked on Leo II at Cadby Hall and Leo III/1 at Hartree House as a technician.
I had become disillusioned with the Banking and Insurance industries which formed the
basis of my first work experience.
I joined Leo Computers in early 1960 – I had previously been working on teleprinters at
the GPO and Leo were looking for technicians to service the paper tape data entry
equipment. I was at Cadby Hall for some training prior to this. I worked – among others –
with Robin Stanley Jones and I think Maurice Blackburn was there as an Engineer at that
time.
I worked shifts maintaining the peripherals and received training on the mainframe. It
was an exciting time. I remember a visit by the Duke of Edinburgh and the programmers
had arranged for the mainframe to play ‘The Sailor’s Hornpipe’ for him! There was a later
visit by the Queen Mother who asked to see a computer.
I left Leo in 1963 – I had just got married and my new wife’s father invited me to join
him in his car retail business – big mistake! I re-joined what was now English Electric Leo
Marconi ( I think) in 1967 and once again worked at Hartree House. I became Technical
Support for London and also trained on the VM operating system.
My manager was John Francis and I seem to remember working with Dave Hewer
another Technician.I left what was now ICL in 1975 to emigrate to Canada – I had been
trained on the then new Cougar Solid State Memory Systems so my skills were in demand
in Canada. I worked first for ITEL where I trained on IBM 360 systems and peripherals
and then Storage Technology (STC later STK) where I became VP Customer Service until
1990.
I retired in 2005.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/c96r3t2tj4r83ci/Ron%20Marshall%20memoir.doc?dl=0
