What if the latest technology news came not out of
Microsoft or
Apple but instead from
McDonald's or
Pizza Hut? It would be surprising news, to say the least. Even so, it turns out that one of the biggest advances in computer tech for business was developed by an English food company back in 1951, and its principal designer, David Caminer, died on June 15 at the age of 92.
Caminer is credited by Guinness World Records with creating the world's first business computer on behalf of his employer, J. Lyons & Co, which operated a chain of bakeries and food shops. While other companies, such as
IBM, soon overtook the British firm (due to what Caminer said was arrogance and a failure to appreciate the rapid pace of technology by his employer), it is Caminer who gets the credit for devising the business machine. Its first task was to calculate costs, prices and margins of that week's baked output.
Caminer's goal was to speed up the logistics and payroll process for Lyons, which besides running stores also served events at Wimbledon and Windsor Castle. While it took an accountant eight minutes to calculate an employee's pay, the computer, called LEO (short for Lyons Electronic Office), needed only 1.5 seconds. Although the LEO 1 has less than 100,000th the power of a current desktop personal computer it did have all those cool vacuum tubes. They hummed.
What was one thing Caminer did have in common with other great technology inventors? No college degree. (But to all you kids out there, Switched says "Be cool. Stay in school.")
The real innovation of Caminer's machine was that it could be loaded with different programs to work on different tasks. And thus modern business computing was born. [Source:
The Seattle Times]
