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Dead At 92, Business Computing Pioneer David Caminer

Posted by timothy on from the 92-and-holding dept.

Brooklyn Bob points out this fascinating obituary of David Caminer, the first systems analyst. "The tea company he worked for developed their own hardware and software — in 1951! Quoting New Scientist: 'In today's terms it would be like hearing that Pizza Hut had developed a new generation of microprocessor, or McDonald's had invented the Internet.'"

21 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Daily Telegraph - same story, no registration reqd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2188963/David-Caminer.html

  2. I've said it before by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And I'll say it again. The British take their tea very seriously. It should surprise nobody that a tea company would be working on microcomputers. After all, these are the same companies that started wars and colonized new lands.

    1. Re:I've said it before by moosesocks · · Score: 3, Insightful

      According to Douglas Adams, in the future, computers will be making beverages for us that are "almost but not quite, entirely unlike tea"

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      -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
  3. McDonalds? by DeadDecoy · · Score: 3, Funny

    Is it me or does it just a bit off-putting to use an analogy to equate some of the world's more innovative pioneers with the mc'nugget?

  4. Output by JustOK · · Score: 5, Funny

    The first output was something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

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    rewriting history since 2109
  5. Re:So close by petes_PoV · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Why haven't you heard of him?

    My guess is because he was on the commercial side of the business (though the FT referred to him as a "systems analyst" in their obit. yesterday). From the little I know of academic teachings, it's not considered trendy to focus on such areas - particularly as he didn't program in Java

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
  6. No surprise, actually by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The best solutions don't come from engineers sitting around brainstorming. It's almost exclusively domain-specific knowledge that only practitioners have that makes good systems good. Lyons needed account tracking software for their tea and bakery business, and it's likely that there was simply no idea at IBM or any other "computer" shop that such a need existed.

    Engineers are pretty much replaceable cogs in software development. It's the people who have real world needs that require real world solutions that bring these things into existence.

    1. Re:No surprise, actually by erikharrison · · Score: 4, Interesting

      While I recognize and agree with the point you're trying to make, I think it's a bit overstating the case to call engineers replaceable cogs. If you're working withing a relatively solved problem domain, and we're talking about a certain minimal level of skill, then this is true.

      But in _this_ case we're talking about a completely nascent problem space. Caminer's brilliance was recognizing that computers could solve the problem. Yet it still took John Pinkerton with heaps of assistance from the Math Lab at Cambridge to design and build a computer with operating system sufficient to the task.

  7. Tea company? by HJED · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The article said the company owned tea shops not that it was a tea company.

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    null
  8. Re:So close by bar-agent · · Score: 4, Funny

    From the little I know of academic teachings, it's not considered trendy to focus on such areas - particularly as he didn't program in Java

    Yeah, he probably programmed in T.

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    i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
  9. Re:Please hold the milk by Colin+Smith · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sorry,you can't possibly love English tea, at least not the real stuff. English tea cannot be drunk black. It is stewed in a teapot for 30 minutes specifically to turn the stomach lining to leather.
     

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    Deleted
  10. Re:Another "Inventor" by JustOK · · Score: 4, Funny

    Super-size your internet, drive-thru downloads, I'm lovin' it.

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    rewriting history since 2109
  11. This would be an American article then... by The+Famous+Druid · · Score: 4, Informative

    From TFA: So it was only natural it would look at the electronic brains that scientists in the United States were developing for scientific and military purposes as a way to streamline its own empire

    Why do Americans have this urge to claim the credit for everything?

    The Germans built a computer during WWII, and the brits built Colossus computers to break German codes. The University of Manchester built their first computer in 1948, and another in 1949, even the aussies had built CSIRAC in 1949, two years before LEO, and yet the NY times has to claim the LEO was based on what 'American Scientists' were doing.

    There's a whole big world out there, and America doesn't have a monopoly on innovation.

    Deal with it.

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    Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
    1. Re:This would be an American article then... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      As far as I recall the history, they didn't ask Americans anything. They were examining business methods round the world, and had discussions with other businessmen - both in America and Europe - as a matter of course. Computers (or Electronic Brains!) were being thought about at the time, and Lyons staff wrote a report saying that they should be investigated.

      So a meeting was held with Maurice Wilkes of Cambridge, and the upshot was that Lyons sponsored the manufacture of the first commercially designed computer (and, more importantly, the first Business and System Analysts). There was no particular pressure or direction from any other company or country.

      Oh, and another error - Lyons was NOT a tea company. It was a chain of restaurants, placed in city centres; they were called 'Lyons Corner Houses' because Joe Lyons, the owner, figured that a corner position got trade from two streets simultaneously. They typically served the office lunchtime trade - their waitresses were known as 'Nippies', because of their fabled speed of service. Tea would have been served, or coffee, and cakes, sandwiches or light meals. It's like calling McDonalds a Dairy Farmer because they serve milk shakes....

         

    2. Re:This would be an American article then... by mangu · · Score: 4, Informative

      Why do Americans have this urge to claim the credit for everything?


      People in most nations seem to have this urge. Brazilians claim the airplane was invented by a Brazilian and Italians claim the telephone was invented by an Italian.


      When you consider a "computer" as a generic machine capable of performing calculations, maybe it could be claimed the Greeks did it, but if you limit your definition to an electronic equipment doing calculations by binary logic, then it's true, an American has the earliest claim.

  12. Re:Please hold the milk by jd · · Score: 4, Funny

    The water must also be poured onto the leaves at 98.2'c, and preferably still be above 95' when it hits the stomach lining. This helps in the leather-making process. (You don't want it too much colder, say in the 60' temperature range, or you'll get cancer. (pubmed report))

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    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  13. Re:What on earth would they do with this computer? by westlake · · Score: 3, Insightful
    these machines had about as much memory as a sheet of notebook paper, and were glacially slow at calculations. What kind of tasks could be worth the expense of building one?

    glacially slow by what standard? the mechanical adding machine? you could have half your office staff performing routine calculations with all the opportunities for error that implied.

  14. Tea and bombs by Dynamoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's not about tea - but as the New Scientist says, the exact equivalent to Lyons is something like Pizza hut. Lyons were the absolute masters of logistics in their time - they ran a huge network of outlets to a consistent quality with a very large turnover. So, they were really an ideal company to experiment with this new technology. Lyon's logistical expertise was such that during the Second World War they ran one of the largest bomb making factories in the world, just a couple of miles from where I live. One in seven bombs dropped on Germany came from the Lyons factory at Elstow.

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    Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
  15. Cup Of Brown Joy by gregski · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yes precisely this seriously:

    http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eELH0ivexKA

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    I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. - Mark Twain
  16. uhh by nomadic · · Score: 3, Funny

    The tea company he worked for developed their own hardware and software -- in 1951! Quoting New Scientist: 'In today's terms it would be like hearing that Pizza Hut had developed a new generation of microprocessor, or McDonald's had invented the Internet.'"

    Uhhh...actually we didn't really need a redefinition in "today's terms." I mean, it's still like hearing a tea company developed their own hardware and software.

  17. Re:Please hold the milk by Rapid+Supreme+17 · · Score: 4, Funny

    This makes sense, seeing as you'd need that leather lining to stomach English cooking. To those about to mod me down, I love Yorkshire pudding! Please take that into consideration before you obliterate me.