Dead At 92, Business Computing Pioneer David Caminer

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.'"

Comments

Daily Telegraph - same story, no registration reqd

[Anonymous Coward]

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

I've said it before

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Output

[JustOK]

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

Re:So close

[petes_PoV]

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

No surprise, actually

[BadAnalogyGuy]

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.

Re:No surprise, actually

[erikharrison]

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.

Re:So close

[bar-agent]

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.

Re:Another "Inventor"

[JustOK]

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

This would be an American article then...

[The Famous Druid]

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.

Re:This would be an American article then...

[Anonymous Coward]

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....

   

Re:This would be an American article then...

[mangu]

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.

Re:Please hold the milk

[jd]

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))

Tea and bombs

[Dynamoo]

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.

Cup Of Brown Joy

[gregski]

Yes precisely this seriously:

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

Re:Please hold the milk

[Rapid Supreme 17]

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.