A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Tea Shops and the World's First Office Computer by Georgina Ferry Buy at: Amazon

Pretty much the start of computing as we know it.

Almost all the computer work I've ever done has been "clerical" in some sense, as opposed to "scientific". It's hard to image now, but back in the late 40s no-one could really conceive of how computers could help out in the office. The pioneers at Lyons, a UK tea and cake company, are the origins of everything we do.

They were already cutting edge in the way they ran their company, but a desire to improve further led them to build their own range of computers. Not only did they build the hardware and write the software, they more or less invented consulting and integration. They were doing things back in the 1950s with valve based computers that we'd consider to be "big jobs" today.

This isn't a technical book. If you know something of the history of computing then there's ground you've read time and time again (Babbage, Turing, von Neumann, Bletchley Park), but it's intermixed with descriptions of teashop culture before and after the war. The business of tea shops and catering makes for an interesting read: there's something wonderful about phrases such as "the continuous choc ice plant" or the "Swiss roll bakery".

A sample: "LEO's senior engineer Ernest Kaye remembers enthusiastically describing the project to an Australian friend, happily outlining the work LEO could do and how it would make the drudgery of clerical work a thing of the past. "She listened very carefully, and at the end of it she said 'But we must destroy it!'"

One word of warning: I found myself wanting to drink tea and eat a lot of Bakewell Tarts every time I picked this book up.

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