True, the LEO was also used by British Steel and many other sectors of British industry and was also exported to South Africa (perceiving that you live there ian16th) where it was used successfully by one of the mining houses in Johannesburg for some years. One of the early programmers on the original LEO project, Leo Fantl having emigrated to SA to support the LEO computer. The LEO company was sold to the English Electric company of Lightning aircraft fame.
LEO history and dramatis personae to be found here
Note how many of the team and personnel were associated in one or way or another with aviation and the RAF and other services as well.
This very good book addresses some of the reasons why a palpably superior British product to the US equivalents at the time didn't sell as well as those peddled by the perfidious septics and flower pot men and was destined to become an interesting historical footnote in the story of the evolution of the commercial computer.
A Computer Called Leo
As an aside, the Ferranti Mark 1 was purchased by Avro and was used in the design of the Vulcan. By the time the TSR2 was being designed, an IBM mainframe was being used in running the aerodynamic simulations on the design (written in the newly developed Fortran language). As history notes, the TSR2 programme was scuppered by many of the same sad and stupid political reasons that scuppered the British lead in computer science (and so many other industries), including the negative role played by the USA in undermining its commercial competitors. One of my university lecturers worked on the TSR2 project but that is another story.
