Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Electronic data processing
The first commercial business computer was developed in the United Kingdom in 1951, by English Electric for the Joe Lyons catering organization. This was known as the 'Lyons Electronic Office' – or LEO for short. It was developed further and used widely during the 1960s and early 1970s. Early commercial systems were installed exclusively by large organizations. These could afford to invest the time and capital necessary to purchase hardware, hire specialist staff to develop bespoke software and work through the consequent (and often unexpected) organizational and cultural changes.
At first, individual organizations developed their own software, including data management utilities, themselves. Different products might also have 'one-off' bespoke software. This fragmented approach led to duplicated effort and the production of management information needed manual effort. High hardware costs and relatively slow processing speeds forced developers to use resources 'efficiently'. Data storage formats were heavily compacted, for example. A common example is the removal of the century from dates, which eventually lead to the 'millennium bug'...............
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