John Simmons

John Simmons was recruited as a first-class mathematics graduate from Cambridge in 1923, reporting  to George Booth, then Lyons’ Company Secretary as a statistician, with a goal to reform Lyons’ business practices. His powerful reputation in the business world was a key factor in the success in the LEO project. In 1932, Simmons was instrumental in innovations such as establishing a Systems Research Office, one of the first operations management departments in the country. Lyons developed LEO  as part of a move to ensure Lyons’ office systems were among the best in Britain.

In 1947, Simmons sent two colleagues to the USA to study advanced business practices, and helped George Booth to persuade the Lyons board to venture into computers. He had a passionate belief that such machines would be key to relieving Britain’s post-war ‘economic distress’, and used his own reputation to drive the project. Simmons suggested the computer be called LEO (Lyons Electronic Office), and published a book in 1962 titled ‘LEO and The Managers.’ He wrote, “LEO is to the thinking of a manager as a grammar book is to the words of a speaker. The use of LEO brings a new freedom and power to managerial thinking and decision making and … a means of unambiguous communication.”

Biographies – The Science Museum, The Centre for Computing History, Wikipedia