Where was the world's first business computer installed?

The Lyons Electronic Office (LEO) is recognised as the first business computer in the world. It was the product of two types of genius. First, there was the genius of what is now known as computer science: in the late 1940s cutting-edge work was being carried out at Cambridge University by Prof. Maurice Wilkes developing the "Electronic delay storage automatic calculator" (EDSAC). Second, there was the business genius of J. Lyons & Co., a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1884: in the early 20th century Lyons was pre-eminent in British high streets and had built up a sprawling empire. How was the empire to develop further?

In 1947 Wilkes' work on the ESDAC computer project came to the ears of Lyons management. Lyons offered funding for Wilkes to adapt this research to their problem. So the LEO project was born.

From the late 19th century onwards J. Lyons & Co. had developed a huge site at Cadby Hall, Hammersmith Road, West Kensington. This accommodated its head office, several bakeries, and an ice cream factory and eventually became LEO's home.

LEO went live in 1951, thirty years before the IBM PC, 60 years before the iPad.