My first exposure to IBM was at the 1964 New York City World's Fair. They were using EAM machines to find what the newspaper headline was on your birthday.
Yahoo Mail: Search, Organize, Conquer On Mon, Apr 28, 2025 at 18:33, Radoslaw Skorupka<00000471ebeac275-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote: According to wiki the first Leo was a prototype, it was LEO II was commercial version, but it happened several years later. However even the prototype (the only unit created) was later than Ferranti Mark 1. BTW: I'm really jealous you had access to it. :-) -- Radoslaw Skorupka Lodz, Poland W dniu 28.04.2025 o 11:25, Clement Clarke pisze: > I think the English Electric Leo may have been the first > commercial computer. It was invented to run Lyons Tea Shops in England. > > It was an interesting beast, and quite capable of multiprogramming 4 > programs at once. > > I worked on a LEO at Shell Oil in Melbourne before the IBM 360/65 > (with 640K memory) was purchased. > > And another interesting thing was that the programming staff of 50 (???) > were half men and half women. As a trainee then, my senior programmer was > a woman. I was the oldest of ten boys (no girls), so that was an > interesting experience. I guess the first programmer Ada Lovelace had to > wait a while to become recognised. > > > - *Recognition and Legacy:* > Her contributions weren't fully recognized until the 20th century, but > now she is celebrated as a pioneer of computer science. A programming > language Ada was even named in her honor. > > > However, UNIVAC may have been first? > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer) > > ============ > > I asked Google's AI (gemini.google.com): "Which was the first commercial > computer? LEO or UNIVAC?" > > After Gemini produced some history notes, the final paragraph was: > > *"Conclusion:* > > "While the first UNIVAC I was delivered earlier in 1951, the *LEO I was the > first to run a regular routine business job.* Therefore, depending on how > "first commercial computer" is defined (first delivered or first used for > business), either could be considered the first. However, *LEO is widely > acknowledged as the first computer used for commercial business > applications*. " > > Cheers, > > Clem Clarke > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
