Mary Coombs

Programmer for the world's first business computer.

Mary Coombs was a programmer for LEO, the Lyons Electronic Office that was the world's first business computer.

In this film she shares her inspirational story. Produced by Google as part of a series of short films highlighting women's involvement in the early days of computing.

“I was on the selection course and I was the only women of ten candidates; a few months later I was asked to join the division working on LEO computers. As it turns out I became the first female commercial computer programmer ”

Mary Coombs

Teaching Point: How significant was Mary’s gender during her selection for programming the LEO computer?