Minutes of the LEO Management Meeting, 23rd October 1959.

Transcript :

CONFIDENTIAL

Minutes of the LEO Management Meeting
Friday 23rd October 1959

PRESENT: Mr Anthony Salmon, Mr Simmons, Mr Thompson, Mr Barnes, Mr Caminer, Mr Pinkerton


Arising from the Marketing Progress Report

Fords, Aveley. Mr Caminer promised to let Mr Thompson have a statement of the specific needs of programming assistance. He said his report on the situation would be ready for Mr Bradley and Mr Beeson early next week. A meeting with Mr Thompson was to be arranged immediately after his holiday.

British Oxygen. Mr Caminer referred to the considerable re-organisation, which meant that, apart from Mr Barclay, we had to establish contact with an entirely new body of people. 
Mr Barnes said the drum for LEO II/7 was now promised in 10 days time.

Ilfords Ltd. Mr Thompson reported a very successful meeting on October 21st, and it was now thought that the computer would need to be installed in June or July.

Standard Motors. Mr Barnes reported that he thought it would be possible to get a single tape deck for about £2,800 less than a twin deck, but it remained to be seen whether this would be an economical arrangement.

Fords, Dagenham. It was agreed that at the moment there was no need to mention to Fords that their delivery might be deferred as a result of the recent delays. In any case LEO II/10 was to be allocated to Fords but the delivery need not be long after LEO II/9.

Glyn Mills. Mr Thompson reported that the position was improving all the time but we were still not in a position to offer them sufficient assurance to warrant a suggestion they should stop parallel running.

Blue Star. Mr Caminer agreed a plan should be made forthwith as to who should start making the appraisal and when.

Type of Computer to be delivered to principal prospects. It was agreed that we would expect to deliver LEO IIIs to all the customers names.


ITC
There was a discussion on the difficulties with the Powers printer and the modification of the drum that Mr Wright had written about. Mr Caminer reported that the delay was not as serious as might appear as it was only in relation to the statements. It was agreed we were doing all we could to help.

Free Appreciation Courses
With reference to the recent request from Mr Williams that we should give a free two-day course to the programmers of J Bibby & Sons Ltd, it was agreed that this could not be given by the programmers, and it might be a bad precedent to give at all. Mr Caminer agreed to enquire from J Bibby & Sons Ltd what their plans were and decide accordingly.

German Marketing
Mr Caminer reported that so far there had only been four acceptances for our executive course. Six were still considering and more invitations had been sent out.
It was agreed we should write to Siemens who had sent in a request for information about the course, telling them that this was for prospective customers and by invitation only.

Australian Market
It was suggested that we should make contact with Pye to see if they were interested in acting as our agents in Australia, making reference to a statement in the Annual Report that they were considering expanding their activities there.

Development
Mr Pinkerton reported a visit to ICT to see their latest developments. We are particularly interested in their new card feed running at 600 cards a minute, and it was agreed we should enter negotiations to try and obtain one when appropriate to try out at the factory.
He also mentioned the new printers running at 150 lines per minutes and 800 revs per minute, which we might be interested in as an alternative to the Bull and Analex respectively.
Reference was made to the recent discussions with Rotax about electronic systems for feed-back control on processes in oil refineries and similar large scale chemical engineering plants. It was agreed in a few years time this might be good as an outlet for development work, but not at the moment. In any case it was important that Rotax should get their requirements much clearer before we could consider it. Mr Caminer promised to impress this on Rotax.

Planning for cheaper production
Mr Anthony enquired as to what was being done in this respect. It was agreed that though we might be doing all possible at the moment, plans should be made to intensify this in due course. It was agreed that we should consider designating someone for this purpose at the earliest possible moment.

Excess stocks of LEO II components
It was agreed that excess components arising from earlier machines could be allocated to computers LEO II/11 and 12, and further excesses should be shown as "Surplus to present requirements".

Provenance :
Collected by Peter Bird.