“It’s said that I’m the first female commercial programmer. It’s really rather nice to feel a pioneer,” Mary Coombs – who has died aged 93 – once said about her trailblazing career as a software developer for Lyons Electronic Office (LEO), one of the earliest business computers.
She was born Mary Blood in Muswell Hill, London, in 1929, the daughter of Ruth and William Blood. Her father was a GP. Looking back at her school days, she remembered: “The subject I was best at was undoubtedly maths,” yet she went on to read French and history at what was then Queen Mary College, University of London.
