Raymond Thompson was a senior manager at J. Lyons and Co. who, together with colleague Oliver Standingford, was sent to the United States in 1947 to investigate new business methods developed there during the war. Their fact-finding trip, redirected on the advice of an ENIAC developer to visit researchers at Cambridge University, led to Lyons commissioning the LEO computer, and Thompson went on to oversee its construction alongside Standingford and David Caminer. LEO ran its first business application in 1951, making it the first computer used for commercial business processing.
Facts
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What did Raymond Thompson learn on the 1947 trip to America that led Lyons toward a computer?
They found computing work in America aimed at academic and military uses rather than business. Goldstine pointed them to the Cambridge EDSAC project.
In 1947 the Lyons board sent two senior managers, Thompson and Oliver Standingford, to America to study the advances in commercial business processing made during the war, including research into electronic computers. They found that serious computing work there was concentrated almost entirely on academic and military uses such as ballistic calculations. ENIAC was not working when they visited. Herman Goldstine, a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study, told them of a computer project just starting at Cambridge University and offered to put them in touch with Douglas Hartree. On their return they met Hartree and the EDSAC designer Maurice Wilkes, and their report to Lyons recognized the potential of the new technology.
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Nationality
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Also in Geography Atlas: the nationality of this subject.
Also in Geography Atlas: the nationality of this subject.
Sources
1. Wikidata: Raymond Thompson
- Wikidata Q302573, resolved via en.wikipedia pageprops (wave rule R-L)
- Wikidata Q302573 P569 (date of birth)
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