I had never heard of the LEO computer system or Lyons Electronic Office before yesterday, but saw an article about it on Slashdot.org. They were built for Lyons Tea Company in England and went into use 60 years ago on November 17, 1951.

What caught my eye was this image from the LEO Society website of the early computer systems' interface.

To me those dial thingies look exactly like the TARDIS console controls. I wonder if anyone knows if this might be where the designer of the console drew inspiration or even cast-off parts to build the console prop? Perhaps even the LEO acronym inspired the TARDIS acronym?

Elvis, those large meters look like could definitely have found their way onto the Hartnell Console (or they could have come from the Hartnell Console - that's the trouble with time travel... you can never keep things straight as to which came first ). Too bad they didn't think to take a closer photo of those meters (or at least the panel they were on). The details on the meters would have been very interesting to see and really give us something to compare the console meters to.

And that panel in the upper right side bears strong similarities to that metal-plate panel on the Pertwee console (early days, ca. "Inferno").

Nice catch on that!

Dino.

Plausible: very plausible. After all, the Daleks were inspired by something as simple as a salt/pepper shaker (hence their nicknames as "pepper pots", which also happens to be Ironman's girlfriend's name: Patricia "Pepper" Potts: go figure).

I can see someone looking at a vacuum tube's innards and thinking, 'Hmm... you know, I bet we can make that central part of the console look like something similar to this'.

Dino.

The Pilot episode TARDIS console room actually featured several large blow-up photos of radio tubes, didn't it? In the fault locator area.

Yes, yes it did :-)

Also the thread on Celetions console reveals the perspex cover of the rotor was originally intended to have a curved dome very much like the valve you have pictured

I am glad someone else thinks the same as me   I have always seen a connection between vacuum tubes and Hartnell's tardis console. I didn't post anything because i thought everyone would say i was speaking the obvious, (I get scared of rejection on the internet). Well I am glad that is sorted.

Looking even closer, i cannot think of any other way they would have come up with the central column without this.
There is definitely some connection.
-FDN