Entries tagged with 'David Caminer'
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Tea Shop Business Computer Pioneer Passed Away

David Caminer, who helped develop the world's first business computer, passed away two weeks ago at age 92. What in the world does this have to do with food? As an employee of J. Lyons & Company, Caminer helped the famous British tea shop chain computerize its commercial operations for its over 200 teahouses in London with the LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) computer, which helped do things like standardize cost-effective cups of tea. In other words, a tea company developed their own hardware and software in 1951: LEO performed its first calculation on Nov. 17, 1951, running a program to evaluate costs, prices and margins of that week’s baked output. At that moment, Lyons was years ahead of I.B.M. and...

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2 Comments | Posted by Emily Koh, June 30, 2008 at 5:15 PM
Tagged: computers, David Caminer, England, history, Lyons, tea, technology