David Caminer died at the ripe old age of 92, but he has left a rich legacy behind. He worked in one of the legendary chain of British tea shops Lyons, but his calling came when he a found the earliest ways to use a computer for business purposes, including standardizing flavorful, cost-effective cups of tea. The Leo Computers Society, whose purpose is to keep alive the memory of LEO, the computer Mr. Caminer helped develop for J. LYONS & CO, announced his death. Guinness World Records certifies LEO as the world's first business computer. LEO performed its first calculation on Nov. 17, 1951, running a program to calculate costs, prices and margins of that week's baked output. Lyons was years ahead of IBM and the other companies that eventually overtook it. Mr. Caminer was appointed to the Order of the British Empire in 1980 for developing a computer system for the European Common Market.

Lyons was the first company to computerize its commercial operations as it had more than 200 teahouses in London and its suburbs. To keep tabs on the company's vast operations, it was only natural Lyons would look at the "electronic brains" that scientists in the United States were developing as a way to streamline its own empire. Mr. Caminer's role was finding ways to retain traditional clerical rigor while speeding up the company's logistics and finances many times over. As a result LEO or Lyons Electronic Office was developed. It was "the first dedicated business machine to operate on the 'stored program principle,' meaning that it could be quickly reconfigured to perform different tasks by loading a new program."

Via - Fark

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