John Humpheries House. Leo and Greenwich Council's early entry (and exit) to the world of computers

 

This is about how Greenwich Council’s IT department led the world in the early 1960s

One day in the mid 1960s I was sitting at my desk in Waterloo at Power Laundry and Cleaning News magazine when my boy-friend rang me up to say he had a new job. It was based in Greenwich and it was about computers.  Now this is when 90 % of the population had never heard of computers and of the 10% who had, half were extremely suspicious.  I was in the remaining 5% and was about to move myself to a job with Computer Weekly. On the basis of the job offer we began to look for somewhere to live in Greenwich.

Now, many people will not know that the first business computers in the world were developed by J. Lyons & Co.– that’s right, Joe Lyons of the ice cream, sponge cakes and Corner Shops.  There are now lots of sites online telling the story of how Lyons nearly became the first international mega computer company.   They had done a deal with Cambridge University to fund the development of the University’s first computer EDSAC. and the spin off was they could use the technology for a business computer application – and by 1951 they had a prototype.  The Leo – Lyons Electronic Office.  It had less processing power than a clock or hearing aid today but in the 1950s what it could do was unbelievable, in fact, I guess, one of its problems was that many people actually didn’t believe it.

Before 1965 Greenwich was the Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich and nothing whatsoever to do with Woolwich. It consisted of Greenwich, Charlton and Kidbrook and was a progressive Labour Borough with a new art deco town hall to demonstrate its commitment to modernity.  The Town Clerk and Borough Treasurer was John Humphries – with a track record of applying new systems to the basic processing of local government information. He was to be a major figure in setting up what became the London Boroughs’ Joint Computer Committee with other south London Boroughs.  In Greenwich there was a vacant ‘development site’ at the bottom end of Stockwell Street – the current site of the University of Greenwich Architecture Department. 

Many Greenwich people will remember John Humphries House – a blue ‘modern’ office block pulled down only a few years ago for the University building.   Rob Powell did a lot of interesting research on it before it was pulled down https://www.greenwich.co.uk/magazine/05426-john-humphries-house/.   I don’t know who the architect was –but this building was the first ever British local government computer centre, it may also have been the world’s first purpose built computer centre, - although we don’t have the research to support that claim.   The machine that went in it was a Leo ordered from Leo Computers at a cost of £202,008. It was the fourth installation of LEO’s third generation machine and was known as LEOIII/4. 

A team of young men were recruited to set it up and design the programmes it would run.  In those days there were no readymade programmes or even any consultants. If you wanted to do something you had to work out the programming yourself. It was all sequential and on paper tape – no random access in those days.  One of the young men concerned was the late Harry Pearman and he wrote a retrospective piece about it for the Greenwich Industrial History Newsletter a few years ago. He said “The first application was Rate Accounting and this was followed by Payroll, General Ledger Accounting, Job Costing, Stock Control, Creditor Payments, Miscellaneous Debtors, Transport, Housing Rents, Electoral Registration, Library Cataloguing and Land Use Registration” 

There was a second computer – another Leo – in the Kingsland Road in Hackney. I understand that this had been an initiative which had begun in Haringey. There was also the associated London Management Services Unit with grand ideas.  The whole of local government could be computerised, and every possible application would be set up and all run centrally.  I suspect that at that point some other and very different people began to panic – what sort of monster was this???  what dangers did it present??

We moved to Greenwich. My husband was sent for training at Kingsland Road and while he was there Greenwich – which has become the London Borough of Greenwich by then - pulled out of the scheme.  I honestly don’t know what happened next , except that the Library Department was very proud of its computerised accessions list – but it was just a list, no indexing, no random access.‘

As the years went by the Council gradually moved all its offices to Woolwich and set up a new IT department there. John Humpheries House was viewed as a site rather than as an asset.  It was used by various departments and eventually demolished.   Right up until the end there was a sign in the car park which reserved spaces for staff of the ‘London Boroughs’ Joint Computer Committee’, but, then, even that was thrown away.

So – the revolution in machine applications for bulk records and routine transactions came to Greenwich for a short while, but then went away.  What may have been the world’s first purpose built computer centre has been demolished. 

Greenwich has been called ‘the home of time’ because of the work and role of the Royal Observatory,  there have been attempts to call it ’the home of communication’ because of the telecom heritage at Enderby Wharf and Siemens,  and it could also, I suppose, potentially have been ‘the home of computer applications’. 

Oh well.