Pages 138-147 (the first page of this chapter and the last page of Chapter 9 are both numbered 138). This chapter begins with a description of the purchase by L J S's mother of a holiday home in Holland on Sea, Essex and spending Christmas 1953 there. L J S goes on to describe treatment for her bad back at hospital in Clacton, followed by consultation with a Mr Fairbank at Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge, and treatment there ‘in the warm pool at the new Addenbrooke’s’ [1960s], while continuing to teach at a yearly summer school on computers. She describes a visit by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh to Newnham College in 1954.
The chapter then reverts to discussion of computers, including the ‘Elliot number one machine’ in Cambridge and the ‘Ferranti’ machine at Manchester University. L J S comments on the ‘race between Manchester and Cambridge to see which machine would produce proper answers first’, concluding that ‘both machines started working at much the same time’.
In 1956, L J S was asked to work on the development of a computer at Harwell ‘in view of my knowledge of the Whittaker functions’. She had doubts about the job in any case but actually turned it down because they offered a lower salary than they would to a man in the same post.
On 21 January 1957 L J S presented a paper entitled ‘The two Edsacs’ to the Cambridge Women’s Research Club, comparing Edsac I and Edsac II. She undertook some work for the Department of Applied Economics, including early computerisation work for the London Stock Exchange. She also wrote a chapter on confluent hypergeometric functions for an American publication, undertaking the work in Cambridge in spite of being offered a year’s work in Washington.