The man who implemented the first business computer - effectively, the first corporate electronic systems analyst - died in London earlier this month.

I have to admit, I couldn’t have named him before stumbling across his obit online earlier today. And I never would have expected such a person to be a British employee at a tea company.

David Caminer, who died at 92 on 19 June, was the developer of a computer called LEO, which automated back-end processes for J. Lyons & Company, a tea company which also catered events and ran hotels.

The first program which ran on the Lyons Electronic Office - back in November 1951 - worked out costs, prices and margins for baked goods. According to the New York Times: “At that moment, Lyons was years ahead of IBM and the other computer giants that eventually overtook it.”

In that newspaper, Paul Ceruzzi, a historian at the American National Air and Space Museum, said: “Americans can’t believe this… They think you’re making it up. It really was true.”

It is pretty hard to believe some guy trying to make posh event catering more efficient could do what IBM had yet to, but (also according to the NYT) the LEO could calculate an employees pay in 1.5 second, something it took a trained clerk eight minutes to do. (How’s that for ROI?!)

It’s pretty hard to imagine that nearly sixty years ago someone had already automated business processes - an area we’re still working on today - and it wasn’t some geek at a tech firm, either.

Indeed, I hear over and over again how IT needs to stop being about tech and start being about how to improve business - maybe we just need more business people getting involved in the development side?

A new study from the smart people at CERN — that would be the big lab hidden away in the Swiss mountains where the web was invented — shows that their Large Hadron Collider (which does exactly what it says on the tin) will not kill us all in a rather spectacular way when the power-switch is flipped later this summer.

The LHC is a massive underground machine which will slam particles together to try to recreate the origins of our universe, which is one hell of a cool science project. But some are concerned — myself included — that this is going to have some sort of negative side effects, such as creating a black hole and ending the world.

I’m actually afraid this will happen, but my fears are completely unfounded as I know nothing about anything, let alone this. It just sounds scary to me, but in a cool sort of way. Some other dude actually sued CERN, saying they’re gonna make us all go the way of the dodo bird, which as far as lawsuits go, is wonderfully less frivolous than, say, spilled coffee being hot.

In response to the LHC suit, CERN scientists decided to look into things (they’d looked into this before, actually, thankfully) and produced the fascinatingly titled: “Astrophysical implications of
hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes”.

The authors of the study said they saw no basis for concerns that such black holes could “pose a risk to Earth on timescales shorter than the Earth’s natural lifetime.” Right, then.

“Indeed, conservative arguments based on detailed calculations and the best-available scientific knowledge, including solid astronomical data, conclude that there is no risk of any significance from such black holes,” they added.

Unless, of course, they’re wrong. So let’s hope they’re right.

Going forward, end-to-end, low-hanging fruit — what are the business-speak phrases you hate the most?

The BBC has rounded up a hilarious collection of readers’ most hated office jargon. There are some great ones in there; I quite like the “idea showers”…

As a business journalist, I come across a lot of these double-speak phrases (often in press releases). Everyone loves the infamous ‘world’s leading’ claim, but I prefer the more subtle descriptions. A software product paired with services becomes a ’solution’ — a solution to what, exactly? A deal between companies is called a ’strategic partnership.’ What would a non-strategic partnership be, a random hook-up?

The word ‘leverage’ just makes me cringe, as does ‘drill down,’ and any use of ‘2.0′ not preceded by ‘Web.’

I’m also a fan of anything called an ‘enabler’ and low-hanging fruit, which would be an awesome name for a band or a really good video game, I think. (You’re a monkey, or some jungle creature, and you run around plucking low-hanging fruit from trees for points. Someone make me a flash game of this.)

For example, and thankfully I just made this up: “Thanks to our world leading strategic partnership, this business-enabler, end-to-end solution will help users drill down to leverage metrics to target those low-hanging fruit.”

What does this mean?!?! Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Instead, how about: “Thanks to the deal, our new software will let customers better look at data and hopefully make more money.”

Which sentence makes you want to buy this imaginary product… bet it’s not the first. (If it is, you need help.)

What business jargon most makes you want to start throwing punches? And which do you find yourself using accidentally? Let us know in comments below or by emailing itpro@dennis.co.uk.

For some reason, women don’t think IT is a good job for them. There’re all sorts of reasons chucked around for why this might be — it’s seen as man’s work, it’s too hard for math-challenged girls, and computer science majors are smelly geeks.

While I’m far from an IT professional or a geeky type, I did somehow end up writing about such things and such people, so I’m clearly not afraid of the subject. (I am, for the record, scared of spiders, so don’t think it’s because I’m terribly brave or something.) I have a theory about why this might be.

When I was a wee little girl, my dad used to bring home his office laptop to his three daughters, so we could mess about on it and learn how to use it. I remember writing stories about unicorns in the green font, and playing games where you had to make a little dude jump up and down. And, I remember sitting at the kitchen table, dialling up to the internet — back when it still went over phone lines in North America — and holding my hands over my ears as the shrill beeps and squeaks connected things.

It never occurred to my dad or my mom that girls wouldn’t like computers. For context, my nickname was “princess”, I had a pink room with ballerina wallpaper, and I was obsessed - still am, shamefully - with ponies.

Despite such girlishness, my dad still figured we’d find techie stuff cool. He and my mom bought us the original Nintendo console when it first came out; they let my super cool grandmother sign us up for space camp in summer. Why wouldn’t girls like such stuff? (And OMG space camp was cool.)

So while I didn’t end up taking computer science as a major (I really was bad at math and can still barely add and subtract without effort), I’ve always been comfortable with tech and never really felt intimidated by it or the geeks around me.

To me, this is the key to getting women into IT for careers, and indeed, into removing gender bias in any area. Just treat anyone like they have a right to be there, as thought there’s no reason they shouldn’t be there, and they’ll be more willing to try and more likely to feel comfortable. Pretty straightforward, I think.

As the better children among you have surely noticed (and marked with cards and amusing, manly gifts), yesterday was Father’s Day. I might be a day late, but hey, thanks dad.

An etiquette guide has been released for Facebook by something called Debrett’s - which is apparently “Britain’s etiquette bible”. The politeness gurus have come up with a list of golden rules to keep virtual interactions from souring real friendships.

Here’s Debrett’s advice:

1. You don’t have to make friends with people you don’t know. Think before you poke. In case you didn’t realise you could ignore people…?

2. Wait 24 hours before accepting or removing someone as a friend. The delay will help you gather your thoughts. Probably good advice, especially when Facebooking drunk… which is a bad, bad idea.

3. Birthdays, engagements and weddings are not “virtual” events. Always send cards or phone friends when there is an important event. Do e-cards count? If not, I’m a bad friend. And daughter. And aunt. Crap. I’m a bad person.

4. Think before posting a friend’s photo what you would feel like if it was you. And if you think “hey, that’d be embarrassing” then you should just continue on posting, because that’s the whole point, isn’t it? …it’s not? Oh. Yeah, I’m a bad person.

5. Think carefully about your profile picture. Would you want it to be appearing in your local newspaper? This is a fair point, as those horrible media types scour the internet looking for photos of people when they’ve died in horrible ways or done something stupid. But then again, really, if you’re dead, does it really matter if the whole world knows you once got drunk and shaved your eyebrows? Not that I’ve done that; I’m not that bad of a person.

What would you add to this list? And, if you haven’t already, come join IT PRO on Facebook here.