Here’s a question for you. Which company was responsible for building the first business computer?
IBM, perhaps? Data General? DEC? or Lyons (the British tea company)?
Yes! Well guessed! It was Lyons.
The New York Times tells the story of David Caminer, who worked with Maurice Wilkes to create the LEO, and who died this month.
When I worked for ICL in the late 1970s, we were still manufacturing computers that ran the old LEO code from the 1950s presumably because it was cheaper to do this that write new software. They told me that the mercury delay lines used as storage elements in the original machines weren’t used in the new ones but I’m not so sure ……..