How did you learn to fly?

[deering]

I was born in Hillingdon. Lived in the area till we got married, in '64, and moved to Staffordshire. When I started work in computers I was working in North Acton, for Leo Computers (Lyon's Bakeries own computer company) -- they made the first commercial digital computer in the world, remarkably enough! IBM were still doing card tabulators wnen the Leo I was built!).
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Pete

This is my first post on this site and it's completely off-topic; but, Pete you've just warped me back 45 years. I started my career in computing by programming a LEO III: Cleo and Intercode. It's always good when I come across someone who knows what they were.

Thanks for the memories.

Jim.

(My two kids were born in Hillingdon Hospital).

[Peter Dowson]

Pete you've just warped me back 45 years. I started my career in computing by programming a LEO III: Cleo and Intercode. It's always good when I come across someone who knows what they were.

Hey, 45 years? It was 45 years ago last month that I left the Leo factory in North Acton and moved up to the English Electric place in Kidsgrove -- they offered us a house to rent when we got married! Couldn't have afforded a place in London in any case, and hated commuting. Worked on the KDF9 then.

You must have been in Hartree House programming when I was in North Acton devising bootstraps for the newer versions they were building then -- the Leo 326, the one with the denser circuit boards! My stuff was all either binary (punched by hand on paper tape with a unipunch), to bootstrap in a hex-converter, then on a teletype in hex to boot in an assembler, then assembly code. No high level languages -- we didn't even have an operating system. Wrote our own, for engineers!

(My two kids were born in Hillingdon Hospital).

As was I! Small world, eh?

Pete