LEO Archive Catalogue
Please note that the LEO Archive catalogue is an on-going project. All items within the collection are catalogued but not all descriptions and images are complete.
Access to the LEO archive is available online and in-person. If you would like to arrange a visit to view documents at the museum for your own private study, please contact the archivist at leo@computinghistory.org.uk.
Please state in your email the documents you wish to see by quoting the reference numbers found in the archive catalogue. On arrival, a Copyright Declaration form must be signed and the archivist will retrieve your selected documents for you to view. This is a pencil only archive but laptops and photographs are permitted.
If you wish to use images or documents from the archive in published works then a Copyright Declaration form must be signed before scanned copies are released.
Copyright Notice
Every effort has been made by the Centre for Computing History to trace the copyright owners of each document in the LEO archive. It is the researchers responsibility to obtain copyright permission before receiving copies and publishing their work. However, we are here to help and can release images if a Copyright form has been completed and answer any questions you have.
For all LEO enquiries please contact the archivist at leo@computinghistory.org.uk
David Tresman Caminer joined Lyons as a management trainee before the Second World War and was responsible for the deployment of LEO in the Lyons business. Most of his papers have been donated by David's daughter Hilary and form a major part of the archive. The LEO-related papers are mostly digitised. Caminer's most prominent achievement however, in 1980, was implementing the computer and communications infrastructure for the European Economic Community (precursor to the European Union (EU)) in Luxembourg. This work was recognised with his appointment as OBE for services to the computer industry. Caminer's papers from this time are also lodged at the Centre for Computing History, although only a small amount has been digitised as part of the LEO project.
Ernest Lenaerts started work for J. Lyons & Co. in the late 1920s doing clerical work, but later became a principal engineer on LEO I, having trained as a wireless mechanic during the war. In late 1947, Lyons seconded him to Cambridge both to learn about emerging computer technology and to help in the design of EDSAC. When Lyons commenced building LEO I he joined John Pinkerton in the design team. The notebooks he kept during his engineering work on LEO I are believed to be the only surviving contemporary written account of the installation and development of the computer at Cadby Hall in the early 1950s and they are amongst the most historically important papers in the archive.
Frank Land today is the LEO Computers Society's historian, with responsibility both for Leopedia and for the Society's oral history interview programme, amongst other things. In 1952, he had joined Lyons as a programmer on LEO I, going on to lead LEO Computers' sales and systems consultancy team, which he did for 15 years before joining the London School of Economics in 1967 to establish the UK’s first university programme in information systems.
John Daines was born 1943 in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. After A Levels he attended numerous company and computer courses over the following 40 years. John joined LEO Computers Ltd October 1961 as an operator in the LEO II/5 Bureau. In 1964 he transferred to the Minerva Road factory as an operator running acceptance tests on LEO III and thereafter System 4 until January 1968. He then went to the Winsford factory in Cheshire and afterwards to Kidsgrove to get the first large 4/70 machines tested for National Giro, DHSS, UKAEA. In January 1969 he moved into software development, supporting the “J” operating system for System 4 and then development on the New Range that subsequently became ICL 2900. From 1972 he worked in ICL’s Local Government unit for nearly 30 years in support, project management, sales consultancy on land and property information systems, business planning and also consultancy on business process re-engineering. Redundant March 2002 after 40 years with the same company. Member of the British Computer Society (MBCS) since 1964.
The remainder of the LEO archive consists of miscellaneous materials relating to the history of the LEO computer collected by the committee and members of the LEO Computers Society and loaned to the museum for inclusion in the archive. Much of this material has been digitised.
At the Centre for Computing History we also have a small LEO collection of our own, mostly consisting of physical artefacts and these are also presented here for ease.
