Milestone-Proposal talk:LEO: First Application of Digital Computing to Business Processes (November 1951)

Advocates and reviewers will post their comments below. In addition, any IEEE member can sign in with their ETHW login (different from IEEE Single Sign On) and comment on the milestone proposal's accuracy or completeness as a form of public review.

-- Administrator4 (talk) 12:56, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Advocates’ Checklist (Read Only; Do Not Edit)

Is the proposal for an achievement rather than for a person? If the citation includes a person's name, have the proposers provided the required justification for inclusion of the person's name?
Was the proposed achievement a significant advance rather than an incremental improvement to an existing technology?
Were there prior or contemporary achievements of a similar nature? If so, have they been properly considered in the background information and in the citation?
Has the achievement truly led to a functioning, useful, or marketable technology?
Is the proposal adequately supported by significant references (minimum of five) such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or citations to pages in scholarly books? At least one of the references should be from a peer-reviewed scholarly book or journal article. The full text of the material, not just the references, shall be present. If the supporting texts are copyright-encumbered and cannot be posted on the ETHW for intellectual property reasons, the proposers shall email a copy to the History Center so that it can be forwarded to the Advocate. If the Advocate does not consider the supporting references sufficient, the Advocate may ask the proposer(s) for additional ones.
Are the scholarly references sufficiently recent?
Does the proposed citation explain why the achievement was successful and impactful?
Does the proposed citation include important technical aspects of the achievement?
Is the proposed citation readable and understandable by the general public?
Will the citation be read correctly in the future by only using past tense? Does the citation wording avoid statements that read accurately only at the time that the proposal is written?
Does the proposed plaque site fulfill the requirements?
Is the proposal quality comparable to that of IEEE publications?
Are any scientific and technical units correct (e.g., km, mm, hertz, etc.)? Are acronyms correct and properly upper-cased or lower-cased? Are the letters in any acronym explained in the title or the citation?
Are date formats correct as specified in Section 6 of Milestones Program Guidelines? Helpful Hints on Citations, plaque locations
Do the year(s) appearing in the citation fall within the range of the year(s) included at the end of the title?
Note that it is the Advocate's responsibility to confirm that the independent reviewers have no conflict of interest (e.g., that they do not work for a company or a team involved in the achievement being proposed, that they have not published with the proposer(s), and have not worked on a project related to the funding of the achievement). An example of a way to check for this would be to search reviewers' publications on IEEE Xplore.

Independent Expert Reviewers’ Checklist

Is suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?
Is evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation?
Does proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?
Were there similar or competing achievements? If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed?
Have proposers shown a clear benefit to humanity?

In answering the questions above, the History Committee asks that independent expert reviewers apply a similar level of rigor to that used to peer-review an article, or evaluate a research proposal. Some elaboration is desirable. Of course the Committee would welcome any additional observations that you may have regarding this proposal.

Submission and Approval Log (For staff use only)

Submitted date: 15 April 2025
Advocate approval date:
History Committee approval date:
Board of Directors approval date:

Advocate comment:adjustments to the Citation -- Juan Carlos (talk) 14:37, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

“First” is a strong concept/word, and usually very difficult to prove. We don’t use it lightly. Please consider “Early” [ in the early 1900’s the US Census was tabulated using punched [Hollerith} cards and electromechanical equipment. That sounds like office computing to me . And IBM [Intl. BUSINESS Machines] had been active during the whole century.It seems the BIG difference in this case was the use of von Neuman “stored program” concept, and perhaps that could have been really a first; that deserves taking a careful look. We usually do not indicate months in the Title of Milestones, just the year; so “November” must disappear I suggest to change the Title into something like:

LEO: Early stored program computer applied to Business, 1951

It’s not nice to start the Citation with a Company’s name, and turning around the sentence I’ve come with an alternate redaction for the Citation below. If ythe proposer agrees, please change the text in the proposal, or we can keep trying to polish it.

The first computer dedicated to office work was built by J. Lyons, the largest catering company of the 20th century in UK. LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) was developed at Cadby Hall,London, building on the success of an experimental computer invented at Cambridge University. Computers had previously been used for military or scientific purposes. Realizing the demand for business computing, Lyons formed LEO Computers, which were used until 1981.

Advocate comment:Required supporting Documents -- Juan Carlos (talk) 19:46, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

The IEEE requires documents: "Supporting texts " to support the proposal. The proposal page details these requirements quite clearly. Those documents must be part of the proposal.

A nice documentary from the BBC with old people relating their memories is not enough. I suppose the engineers/scientists at Cambridge which developed EDSAC must have published about it. That paper would be a good start.

Advocate comment: Location for the plaque -- Juan Carlos (talk) 19:51, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

How active is the LEO society? Those computers are not used anymore.I mean their site is the place you are indicating to mount the plaque. Its purpose is to be seen by the public; I’m not familiar with London, but I’m afraid that’s not an aproppiate place.It is understandable the original buildings do not exist anymore, but you need to be more creative and find a solution.

The site 1) must be related to the achievement, AND 2) be visible and accesible to the public.