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Electronic Brains About computers.
Lyons coffee
house first computer system ?
The remarkable
stories of four computer pioneers.
Monday to Friday 3.45-4.00pm 30 September to 3 October
2002 
A series of 4 programmes which tells the stories of some of the computer
pioneers in Britain, America and the Ukraine. Each is a little cameo of social
history of the early postwar years half a century ago, from a time when
"everything you did was new, no-one had ever done it before".
Fifty years ago the great catering company J Lyons, best known for its Teashops
and Corner Houses, ran the world's first real business computer program,
calculating the value of its bakery sales. Astonishingly Lyons had also
developed and built the computer itself, and it gave it the playful name of
"LEO" - short for Lyons Electronic Office. Across the Atlantic, two
rival teams were developing their own business computers, shortly to become
famous as the "Univacs", the name that came to mean
"computer" in 50's America. One group worked in an old barn,
overlooked by an ancient stuffed moose. Meanwhile in an abandoned monastery on
the edge of war-torn Kiev, another group worked night and day to build the
Soviet Union's first computer. And while all these electronic marvels were
taking shape, a genius at the London School of Economics was turning his
engineering skills to economics to create the world's first and only hydraulic
computer. It used coloured water in plastic tubes to model the national
economy, and it worked so well they even sold one to the Central Bank of
Guatemala.
Programme 1 - LEO the Lyons Computer
The first programme starts in the Piccadilly café which is still identifiable
as the first Lyons Teashop ever opened, at the end of the 19th Century. It
moves on to Hammersmith where a Lyons historian describes how the great Cadby
Hall factory complex needed an army of clerks to run it. LEO veterans explain
how the company that believed it could do anything decided to build a business
computer, and did so with considerable success. A former Teashops manageress
recalls what a difference it made to her work when all the daily orders were
computerised. And one of the telephonists who typed her orders into LEO
remembers the excitement of "feeding this marvellous machine". It was
so successful that Lyons did jobs for other companies and the government, like
working out the new tax tables on the night of the Chancellor's Budget. It also
calculated the distance between every one of British Rail's 5000 stations and
every other one. But the name died in the 60s, beaten by the perception that a
catering company couldn't build computers, and the disorganisation of Britain's
computer industry.
Listen again
to Programme 1
Programme 2 - Saluting the Moose
This programme joins a group of retired engineers who meet every Fall in
Connecticut to re-discover the forgotten history of the first American business
computer. They worked for Remington Rand, in a converted barn that still
"smelled of horses" and had a stuffed moose's head overlooking them
as they worked. Best known for its mechanical calculators before the war, the
move into computers was fiercely opposed by senior executives - few people in
those days thought businesses would ever need computers. But by 1949 they had
more orders for the first model, the Rand-409, than they could cope with.
Meantime two brilliant engineers, but hopeless businessmen, were building their
own machine over a clothes shop in Philadelphia. The widow of one of them,
mathematician Kathleen Mauchly, had the job title of "computer"
during World War II, when with dozens of other human computers she calculated
ballistics tables for the armed forces. She recalls the trials and the
successes of her husband's machine which was bought up by Rand when they ran
out of money. Renamed the "Univac" it burst into public consciousness
by correctly predicting a landslide victory for Eisenhower in the 1952
Presidential Election, beating all the human pundits - the computer operator on
duty that night takes us behind the scenes.
Listen again
to Programme 2
Programme 3 - Then we took the roof off
The Ukrainian city of Kyiv (Kiev) was over-run by the Nazis in World War 2,
liberated by the Soviet Army a couple off years later, and by 1945 was in a
terrible state. But while re-building started a small group of scientists and
engineers found an abandoned monastery in an idyllic setting on the outskirts
of the city, in a place called Feofania. There they built "secret
laboratory number 1" and started work on the Soviet Union's first
electronic computer. This was no copycat - few details of western projects were
in the public domain. Instead under the inspirational leadership of Sergei
Lebedev they built a computer that generated so much heat they knocked walls
down and took the roof off to try and keep it cool. You couldn't just buy a
printer in those days, so they cannibalised cash registers and turned them into
printers. It ran a sample program for the anniversary of the Revolution in 1950
and on Xmas Eve 1951 it started full-time operations. On location in Kyiv and
Feofania, the surviving members of the original team and the leading historian
of Soviet computers tell this remarkable story. And they talk about their
despair at a political decision in 1967 to copy IBM computers instead of keep
faith with their own designs.
Listen again
to Programme 3
Programme 4 - Water on the Brain
Shortly after World War II, a New Zealand engineer started a sociology degree
at the London School of Economics. Bill Phillips had already shown remarkable
courage and ingenuity, winning an award for bravery in the Far East, then
making electrical gadgets as a prisoner of war. He designed simple immersion
heaters for his fellow POWs' nightly cups of tea; the guards never worked out
why the camp lights dimmed around 10 o'clock. He made a simple radio (he'd have
been executed if caught) and heard news of the bombing of Hiroshima. At the LSE
he didn't take to sociology but economics fascinated him. He wrote an essay
comparing the national economy to a machine pumping coloured water round clear
plastic tubes. An older student persuaded him to build one, and it was an
immediate success. More than a dozen were made eventually, with Ford buying one
and another going to the Central Bank of Guatemala. Within a few years he was a
professor and became one of the giants among post-war economists. He died
young, but friends and colleagues recall this remarkable man. One
"Phillips Machine" is still working at Cambridge University, where
leading economist Brian Henry, who helped restore it, recalls seeing this
"ingenious teaching device" for the first time. Although he had already
studied economics for 3 years, that was the first time he actually understood
what the "circular flow of money" was all about, because he could see
it.
Listen again
to Programme 4
