There are a lot of connections between J Lyons and Hammersmith.
Sir Joseph Lyons lived on Hammersmith Road and I often walk past his Blue Plaque.
The plaque might also have credited Sir J with founding the Territorial Force prior to the First World War. The first Lyons office and factory was also in Hammersmith on a site (Cadby Hall) that eventually extended to thirty acres and employed 30,000. More recently, in 2002, a war memorial to Lyons employees was moved to Margravine Cemetery from their premises in Greenford. There is a picture of it in my post Yellow Menace.
Now for stuff that I did not know. After WW II the Lyons Board thought that the company might benefit from innovations developed in America during the war. Two senior managers investigated the potential benefits of building a computer, in the course of which they discovered that similar work was being done closer to home, at Cambridge. The upshot was that in 1951 LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) was being used for a prosaic task; bakery valuations. Soon it was being used for inventory and payroll. The former was the first instance of a computer providing an integrated management information system. The latter they used not just for their own needs but they calculated payrolls for other companies, including Ford in the UK.
Now for a digression. Do you think the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey was called HAL as an homage to LEO? It’s a lovely idea but the reason, denied by both author of the book, Arthur C Clarke, and director of the film, Stanley Kubrick, may be more subversive. The letters HAL are the letters preceding IBM.
Sir Samuel Salmon, Chairman of Lyons, had time to serve as Mayor of Hammersmith in 1968/69. The company played a big part in the history of Hammersmith throughout most of the 20th century and now is forgotten by a younger generation. I have no regrets, there are new businessses in Hammersmith every bit as innovative as Lyons.
In The Weekend FT magazine there was an interview with David Harding, co-founder of pioneer hedge fund AHL in 1987. This was sold to Man and in 1997 he set up his own fund, Winton (his middle name). He manages some $30 billion from his office in Hammersmith.
Another example is Citroën House on Shepherds Bush Road, new home to Dunnhumby. You can read about this young and successful company in A Hundred Years Young. LEO, it transpires, was the precursor of a transformation of Hammersmith into a high-tech hub and this is one of the ways in which the UK will find a place in the globalised economy.