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Tea, Cake and Computers a Computer Called LEO: Lyons Teashops and the World’S First Office Computer by Georgina Ferry Fourth Estate: 2003

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Tea, Cake and Computers a Computer Called LEO: Lyons Teashops and the World’S First Office Computer by Georgina Ferry Fourth Estate: 2003 books and arts Tea, cake and computers A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Teashops and the World’s First Office Computer by Georgina Ferry Fourth Estate: 2003. 240 pp. £15.99 Anthony Ralston At first glance it seems astonishing that a Mane frame? LEO, the first business computer, was set up and run by company known mainly for operating cafes J. Lyons & Co., which operated a chain of tea shops in Britain. that served tea and cakes in Britain should not only have installed the first ever com- bedevilled the LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) ent manufacturer of puter for business applications, but should project for much of its lifetime. computers. In 1963, also have built it. But as Georgina Ferry LEO was,essentially,a copy of the EDSAC Leo Computers was makes clear in this book, it wasn’t really with a few hardware innovations and some merged with — but so surprising because J. Lyons & Co. had limited software advances. Its main claim effectively taken over become, under the leadership of John to fame is in the applications area. On by — the computer Simmons, a pioneer in the application of 29 November 1951, LEO ran the first ever division of English technology to management in the years business application, a program to calculate Electric, in the first before the Second World War. the value of Lyons’ output of bread, cakes of a series of mergers that eventually led It was therefore natural that two senior and pies. This was long before any similar to the creation of the last major British Lyons employees, Raymond Thompson and application in the United States,Prudential’s computer company, International Com- Oliver Standingford, should have been sent use of computers having been delayed by puters Ltd. to the United States in 1947 to study recent hardware problems. Over the following The story of LEO has already been told in developments in office automation and to years, LEO took over much of Lyons’ data- two more technical books: LEO: The First learn what they could about ENIAC (the processing work, and was used for some Business Computer by Peter Bird (Hasler, Electronic Numeric Integrator and Com- non-Lyons applications, including various 1994) and LEO: The Incredible Story of the puter), which had just been completed at the defence-related calculations. When LEO World’s First Business Computer by David University of Pennsylvania. (ENIAC was not executed defence programs, the Official Caminer et al. (McGraw-Hill, 1997); further the first electronic computer — the Colossus Secrets Act required it to be encircled by information can be found on the web at of Britain’s Bletchley Park deserves that red tape, with only authorized personnel www.leo-computers.org.uk. But Georgina accolade. However, Colossus was designed allowed near the computer. Ferry tells the story well, with less technical for a special purpose, codebreaking, and was It was particularly quixotic of Lyons not detail but with nice capsule histories of the still a secret in 1947. Indeed, even in the late only to build and install their own machine development of computing in Britain and 1970s, I could not find a British author to but also to go into the business of building the United States, particularly in the decade write an article on Colossus for an encyclo- and selling computers to others.An updated after the end of the Second World War. Her paedia that I was editing because it was still version, LEO II, still used valves; LEO III book is rather more accessible to the general covered by the Official Secrets Act.) was redesigned to incorporate semiconduc- reader than the others, and is a good read for Thompson and Standingford returned to tor technology. Ten LEO IIs were delivered anyone interested in LEO or, more generally, Britain imbued with the potential of com- to customers between 1957 and 1961, and in postwar computing in Britain. I puters for business management. They had 61 LEO IIIs were sold, mainly from 1962 Anthony Ralston is professor emeritus of computer learned that, in the United States, only the to 1966. By then, the manufacturing and science and mathematics at the State University of Prudential Insurance Company was think- marketing power of US companies, parti- New York at Buffalo, and an academic visitor in ing along similar lines. In late 1947 the pair cularly IBM, was severely impairing the the Department of Computing, Imperial College, visited the University of Cambridge, where ability of Lyons to compete as an independ- London SW7 2BZ, UK. Maurice Wilkes was building the EDSAC (the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), and they knew they had found in equal numbers. In later editions, how- what they needed. Although EDSAC had ever, he described the problem of the even been designed with scientific and engineer- The struggle for sex ratio as being “so intricate that it is safer ing calculations in mind, they believed that to leave its solution to the future”. Ronald its design could be adapted to Lyons’needs. sexual inequality Fisher took up this challenge in 1930, not- How this could be done wasn’t at all obvi- Sex Wars: Genes, Bacteria, and ing that every offspring has one mother and ous.Most scientific applications tended to be Biased Sex Ratios one father. Therefore, the sexes on average ‘compute-bound’ — lots of computing and by Michael E. N. Majerus fare equally well in passing their genes on to little input or output — whereas business or Princeton University Press: 2003. 280 pp. the next generation under an even sex ratio. data-processing applications tended to be $45, £29.95 Fisher realized that a mother that produces ‘input/output bound’,with lots of input and Göran Arnqvist an excess of the rarer sex (whichever this output but very little computing. Could a may be) will be favoured by natural selec- computer intended for the former be adap- In the first edition of On the Origin of tion. So, like a pendulum in motion that ted for the latter? The Lyons management Species, Charles Darwin made a brave and eventually comes to rest, the sex ratio will convinced themselves that it could,although essentially correct attempt to explain the stabilize at equal numbers of the sexes over serious problems with input and output striking rule that males and females occur evolutionary time. But there are many 616 © 2003 Nature Publishing Group NATURE | VOL 424 | 7 AUGUST 2003 | www.nature.com/nature books and arts exceptions to this rule, and understanding them has proved to be a challenge for evolu- New in paperback tionary biologists. These exceptions form the centre of Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, gravity of Sex Wars. Michael Majerus of the and Our Common Origins University of Cambridge starts off by walk- by Steve Olson ing us through the background and some of Mariner, $14; Bloomsbury, £7.99 the basics: asexual versus sexual reproduc- tion, sexual selection, the sex-determining Our Posthuman Future: Consequences mechanisms, the sex ratio and the various of the Biotechnology Revolution ‘economic’ factors that can lead to uneven by Francis Fukuyama K. WILDLIFE PRESTON-MAFHAM/PREMAPHOTOS sex ratios are all covered in the opening Profile, £8.99 sections. But the bulk of the book is about the various genetic conflicts that knock the The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, sex ratio off its evolutionary equilibrium. The Extraordinary Number of Nature, For a gene located on a nuclear autosome Art and Beauty — any chromosome except the sex chromo- Sex to die for: females of the ladybird Adalia by Mario Livio somes — life is as good in a male as it is 10-punctata distort the sex ratio by killing males. Review (Headline), £7.99 in a female, in terms of the probability of being transmitted to the next generation. find the lack of reference to many case studies Nexus: Small Worlds and the For extranuclear genes, however, males are and ideas, as well as some more technical Groundbreaking Theory of Networks a genetic dead-end because the sperm con- problems, quite annoying at times. They by Mark Buchanan tributes nothing but its nuclear genes to the might also find that the book loses the battle W. W. Norton, $14.95 fertilized zygote. Cytoplasmic genes located with a more exhaustive book on sex ratios — “Mark Buchanan gives a cogent and engaging in mitochondria or in endocellular micro- Sex Ratios, edited by I. C. W. Hardy (Cam- description of recent developments in complex organisms are expected to favour the female bridge University Press,2002) — that recently networks.” Sidney Redner Nature 418, line, through which they are transmitted to reached the bookshelves. If Sex Wars were 127–128 (2002). the next generation. less technical and more ‘popular’, it might This sets the stage for a battle between have found more enthusiastic readers. I The Monkey in the Mirror: Essays on the autosomal genes on one hand, and genes Göran Arnqvist is in the Department of Animal Science of What Makes Us Human with unequal transmission rates in the two Ecology, Evolutionary Biology Centre, by Ian Tattersall sexes on the other. I found the portrayal of University of Uppsala, Norbyvägen 18d, Harvest Books, £13 these opponents by Majerus very exciting, SE-752 36 Uppsala, Sweden. and his account of them offers many insights. These evolutionary law-breakers use a variety of intrusive tactics (including are explanations in simple language of how killing sperm containing Y chromosomes, the drugs affect various neurotransmitter transforming genetic males into functional The next happy pill mechanisms in the brain, and an introduc- females, or simply killing males), which all Better Than Prozac: Creating the tion to the concepts of controlled clinical bias the sex ratio towards females,sometimes New Generation of Psychiatric trials, the placebo effect and the mystery of even to the point when the ‘host’ is driven Drugs why it takes many weeks of treatment before close to the brink of extinction because of a by Samuel Barondes the maximum therapeutic benefits of many lack of males in the population.
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