Mary Coombs: Initially feminine business pc programmer

“It’s said that I’m the to start with female industrial programmer. It’s really somewhat pleasant to feel a pioneer,” Mary Coombs – who has died aged 93 – at the time mentioned about her trailblazing vocation as a computer software developer for Lyons Digital Workplace (LEO), a single of the earliest organization computer systems.

She was born Mary Blood in Muswell Hill, London, in 1929, the daughter of Ruth and William Blood. Her father was a GP. Looking again at her college times, she remembered: “The subject matter I was finest at was without doubt maths,” yet she went on to browse French and record at what was then Queen Mary Higher education, College of London.

Coombs taught English and attended secretarial classes in Switzerland, returning in 1952. When she observed that the training article she preferred was not available, she took a non permanent occupation at J Lyons & Co, the food items business famed at the time for its 250 tea retailers throughout the British Isles.

Lyons could have appeared an not likely applicant to be a pioneer in business enterprise computing. Nevertheless, it grew to become a person of the initially businesses to make use of desktops to compute component quantities and expenditures. Dependent on the Digital Hold off Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) project at Cambridge University, the Lyons Digital Business (LEO) was a substantial device by today’s specifications, using up 2,500 sq ft of room at Cadby Corridor in Hammersmith, west London.

Coombs was the only girl out of a dozen internal candidates who applied to work on LEO. “It was a straightforward – well, [a] type of intelligence take a look at, actually, to see regardless of whether you could manipulate points, get the job done out the logic of items and so on,” she recalled of the interview method. Out of the 12 who used, only she and her colleague Frank Land ended up taken on, beginning work as programmers in 1952.

With a little quantity of memory, creating computer software for LEO was a challenging affair, demanding in depth understanding of its digital valve-based mostly components as properly as its binary “machine language”. She recalled: “LEO only supplied 2 kilobytes [2000 characters] of house into which you had to cram all your recommendations. Existence was a continuous problem to basically get a done programme.”

On 1 situation, Coombs found out the strange lead to of a bug in the system, later on recalling: “I can try to remember one particular particularly lengthy evening when it held heading incorrect, and we were being there all night, due to the fact you experienced to have a programmer included in this, the engineers couldn’t do it on their very own … and we eventually uncovered that the management lift, which went up to the fifth ground … was interfering [electronically].”

Lyons before long realised it could supply its computing facilities to other organizations and organisations, establishing LEO Personal computer Ltd in 1954. Coombs grew to become included in initiatives for British Oxygen, Ford Motor Enterprise and Glyn, Mills & Co (now aspect of the Royal Lender of Scotland), and supplied payroll solutions to the British Military and Royal Air Pressure.

Coombs pursued her programming get the job done on the LEO II (1957) and LEO III (1962). In 1963, LEO turned part of English Electric powered, and in 1968 a division of Global Personal computers Restricted (ICL). She continued functioning with ICL, enhancing manuals for their computer system devices, until finally the conclude of the Sixties.

Pursuing her retirement from ICL, Coombs returned to instruction, educating at a major college from 1976 to 1985. She subsequently worked as a consumer for a h2o procedure company.

The legacy of this crucial pioneering time period of enhancement in British computing is conserved by the LEO Computer systems Modern society, a charity, which mentioned in a assertion: “Mary was the world’s 1st female company laptop or computer programmer, becoming a member of the LEO crew in 1952,” incorporating: “Mary was a good friend of the culture and will be regrettably skipped.”

She married John Coombs, a pc programmer, in 1955. He died in 2012. They experienced a daughter, Anne, who died in childhood, and adopted a few children, Andrew, Paul and Gillian.

Mary Coombs, pc programmer, born 4 February 1929, died 28 February 2022