17 Jul
2007
17 Jul
'07
1:27 a.m.
I just caught a part of a TV program showing pictures
of and the use of
a computer called LEO.
It was made by and belonged to a UK company called Lyons.
They imported and sold tea, ran a chain of tea shops and restaurants,
made and sold ice cream.
Leo eventually became ICL, I worked for them (ICL) on LEO III-26 at Charles
House in London on payroll and utility billing, my experience was on Ampex
TM2's & 4's which the Leo's uesd. The "scope" was on the
engineers panel and
was for monitoring the memory, it displayed as blocks of 4 bits - 0000 0000
0000 - forget how many coloumns, in a strange variant of hexadecimal, but
the days before hexadecimal became the norm. There is an interesting website
for LEO's at - http://www.leo-computers.org.uk/pageone.htm - including all
the installations.