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LEO pioneer Peter Hermon, who oversaw the know-how integration of airways BEA and BOAC to kind BA within the Nineteen Seventies, has died, aged 93.
Hermon’s profession in IT started when he joined J Lyons & Co in 1954. There, he lower his pc enamel as one in all a outstanding group of British pc pioneers who developed the world’s first business computer and the purposes to run on it.
He was chargeable for the set up of the primary of the second-generation LEO 2 computer systems for the Imperial Tobacco Firm in Bristol. The complexity of the tobacco firm’s pricing and credit score phrases led to the biggest and most complicated suite of applications but tried on the time.
This was adopted, in 1959, with the set up of an integrated sales accounting system, an idea years forward of its time, working on the primary of third-generation LEO 3 computer systems for Dunlop Rubber at Fort Dunlop, the place he labored till 1965.
Hermon then joined the airline BOAC, the place he developed a pc system that coated each side of the airline’s enterprise exercise, together with reservations, departure management, message switching, flight planning, crew rostering, engineering and monetary management. This advanced into the Boadicea undertaking, a community of computer systems linking cities across the globe from the US to New Zealand, from Finland to South Africa, to a central pc complicated in London.
When BOAC merged with BEA in 1972 to kind British Airways, Hermon was tasked with integrating two separate computer installations based mostly on IBM and Univac tools. He produced a report for the secretary of state for commerce and trade that led to the total integration of each airways to create British Airways in 1976.
A lot of the later pc successes at British Airways was credited by Hermon to his time with LEO. The workforce he constructed up at BA contained no fewer than 9 managers from LEO Computer systems, with many different ex-LEO individuals additional down the road
His final appointment at BA was as managing director of the airline’s European division. After BA, Hermon joined Tandem Computer systems as UK managing director. This was adopted by a brief stint at Lloyds of London.
He then moved on to Harris Queensway as a contract administration marketing consultant to deal with assignments for, amongst others, Saatchi and Saatchi, Argos and Credit score Lyonnais. In 1970, he was appointed a part-time adviser to the civil service on pc technique and later served on the federal government’s Central Laptop Company.
After retiring, Hermon contributed to a ebook on the event of the LEO pc, entitled within the UK Consumer-driven innovation and authored a two-volume Hill-walking in Wales, in addition to Lifting the veil, a plain-language information to the Bible.
Hermon married Norma Stuart Brealey in January 1954, the wedding lasting 57 years till her loss of life in 2011. They’d 4 youngsters: David, who predeceased him in 1976, Juliet, Robert and Caroline. Six grandchildren and 5 nice grandchildren additionally survive him. He was married for a second time in December 2016 to Patricia Cheek.
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