Presented at the Vintage Computer Festival (VCF) Pacific North West (PNW) March 24th 2019.
This talk will briefly cover the computers, technology and people from British computing history, including some of the more obscure and less well-known stories. We'll quickly review some British contributions to the early days of computers, then move on to the exciting times of the 70's & 80's. In those days the British home computing scene was the most active and innovative outside of the USA, but many British computers never made it to these shores and are largely unknown on this side of the pond. We'll finish up with some good places to see computers in the UK next time you visit.
5. George Boole, 1815-1864
• Largely self-taught mathematician, did not attend university
• Spent early part of his life as a schoolteacher
• 1844 - gold prize for his paper from the Royal Society
• 1849 - professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork
• 1854 – The Laws of Thought, introduced basic "boolean logic"
• 1937 – Rediscovered by Claude Shannon, MIT Master's Thesis
• AFAIK, the only guy to have a datatype named after him...
6. Early Days... but first, a few "translations"...
USA
• Vacuum Tube
• Rube Goldberg
• Mains Power - 110 V, 60 Hz
• TV - NTSC, 525 lines/60 fps
• Cable, 100+ channels
• AT&T (phones only)
• Zee
• NSA
UK
• (Thermionic) Valve
• Heath Robinson
• Mains Power - 240 V, 50 Hz
• TV - PAL, 625 lines/50 fps
• BBC (2) + ITV (2)
• GPO "Post Office" (mail + phone)
• Zed
• GCHQ
7. Allan Turing & Bletchley Park
• 1936 – the "decision problem" (related to "halting problem")
• Introduces the concept of the "Turing machine" a "universal computer"
• 1936/38 - Princeton PhD – met & worked with John von Neumann
• 1939 - Bletchley - the "Bombe", decoding the Enigma machine
• 1943 - The "Heath Robinson" - POC for Lorenz decoding
• 1943/45 – Colossus, 1600 (MK 1)/2400 (MK 2) valves
• Chief Engineer Tommy Flowers, GPO
• 10 built
• A "fixed program computer"
• … all dismantled/hidden (GCHQ) - top secret until mid-1980's
14. LEO Computers Ltd.
• Who were J. Lyons & Co?
• Giant food company, tea shops
• Forward looking business
• 1951 – LEO-1 (Lyons Electronic Office)
• Based on Cambridge EDSAC
• 6000 valves, mercury delay lines (64), 30 KW
• First computer specifically intended for business purposes
• 1961 – LEO III, LEO 260, LEO 360
• Transistors, microprogrammed, multitasking
• 1963 - LEO -> English Electric -> ICT -> ICL (1968)
26. EMI (Electrical and Music Industries)
• 1955/57 - EMI Electronic Business Machine (valve/drum)
• 1958/59 - EMIDEC 1100, first all transistor computer sold in UK
• 36-bit, 4KB ferrite core RAM, 24 sold, £200K
• Design led by Godfrey Hounsfield
• Next - EMIDEC 2400, NRDC funded
• 1968/75 - EMI Scanner (first CAT scanner)
• EMI -> ICT (1962) -> ICL (1968)
• 1979 – Sir Godfrey Hounsfield - Nobel Prize in Medicine
55. ARM (Acorn RISC Machine)
• Design by Steve Furber (floorplan) & Sophie Wilson (ISA)
• Follow-on from 6502 – WDC 65C816? 80286?
• Very small design team, hence RISC
• 1985 – ARM1, very low power consumption
• 1990 - Apple Newton, ARM Ltd. (Acorn, Apple, VLSI)
• 1997 – Nokia 6110
• 2007 - iPhone
• 100 billion ARM cores...
56.
57.
58. AMSTRAD
• 1968 - Alan Michael Sugar TRADing
• Well known in UK for consumer electronics
• 1984 – CPC 464 "Colour Personal Computer"
• Intended to be 6502, switched to Z80 due to BASIC
• 64KB RAM, 32KB ROM, integrated tape deck, sold with monitor
• Ferranti ULA problems -> LSI Logic -> SGS Italy (LSI)
• 1985 – AMSTRAD PCW "Personal Computer Word processor"
• Z80, CP/M, with monitor & printer, 8 million sold
• 1986 – Acquires Sinclair Research
• ZX Spectrum +2, Sinclair PC 200
• 1986/90 - IBM compatibles, portables
• PC 1512, PC 1640, PPC 512, PPC 640
• 2000 – "Sir Alan", 2005 - "The Apprentice", 2009 - "Lord Alan"
69. INMOS
• 1978 - Founded with £50M of UK government funding (NEB)
• Memory – USA - Colorado Springs, Richard Petritz, Paul Schroeder
• Transputer – UK - Iann Barron
• (Elliott 803/502, CTL Modular One)
• HQ Bristol, fab Newport, South Wales (1982)
• Memory – 16K SRAM, 64K DRAM
• 1984 - Transputer, CSP, occam, designer David May
• 1984 – acquired by Thorn EMI
• 1989 – sold to SGS-Microelectronics (STMicroelectronics)
70. Sinclair...
• 1985 - Anamartic
• Wafer Scale Integration (WSI)
• Some ideas from Ivor Catt... "spiral algorithm"
• 1989 – 40MB SSD wafer stack (2x 20MB/wafer)
• Planned - Transputer arrays on wafer...
• 1990 - PgC7000 Project
• QL replacement
• Transputers to emulate x86
• Chris Shelton (Nascom 1 designer)
• Async "ultra-RISC" design
• 1994 – licensed to MTI – in Seattle!
72. IBM Hursley Park - Research & Development
• 1959 - Hursley House, former home of Supermarine
• 1961 - SCAMP – first IBM microprogrammed machine
• 1962/64 - IBM 360/40 with TROS "Transformer Read Only Storage"
• 1967 - PL/I responsibility
• 1972 – IBM Future Systems (S/370 replacement - S/38, AS/400...)
• 1974 - CICS (Customer Information Control System) & ATM's (1967)
• 1979/82 - REXX – Mike Cowlishaw
• 1979 - Disk drives – "swing arm"
• 1987 - High end graphics - OS/2 Presentation Manager
74. Modern Times
• 2005 - XMOS
• 2005 – SpiNNaker
• 2010 – DeepMind Technologies
• 2014 – acquired by Google
• 2016 - AlphaGo
• 2012 - Raspberry Pi
• ARM processor, Linux variants, Windows, 20M+
• 2016 - BBC micro:bit
• Free to every 11/12 year old schoolkid in UK (1M+)
• ARM processor, USB/battery, 5x5 LEDs, 2 buttons, Python/Visual
• 2016 - ARM & Softbank
75. XMOS, 2005
• HQ in Bristol, UK (same as INMOS)
• xCORE Microcontroller
• 8/16 32-bit RISC cores plus "RTOS h/w"
• Deterministic & predictable timing, no "interrupts"
• Designed by Professor David May, ex-INMOS Transputer designer
• xC (C with CSP-like extensions) & xTIMEcomposer
• Audio & Voice processing, DSP, far-field, beamforming
• Alexa, who's riding the voice assistant wave?
76. SpiNNaker Project, 2005
• Spiking Neural Network Architecture
• Neuromorphic computing platform for the Human Brain Project (EU)
• 1 Million+ ARM cores, 7 TB RAM, 100 KW
• Custom chip 18 ARM cores + 128 MB SDRAM
• University of Manchester, Advanced Processor Technology Group
• Professor Steve Furber (original ARM designer)
• What happens with Brexit?
77.
78.
79.
80. Places to See Computers in the UK
• Science Museum, London, 2nd Floor
• Good, but nothing working, Babbage Difference Engine
• National Museum of Computing (NMoC), Bletchley Park (Milton Keynes)
• Good for early computers, some working, Colossus replica
• The Centre for Computing History, Cambridge
• The home of Acorn & ARM, Sinclair, good for home computers
• IBM Hursley Park (by arrangement only)
• Science and Industry Museum, Manchester (?)
• Manchester "Baby" working replica
• Museum of Computing, Swindon (?)
• Computer Sheds/Jim Austin Computer Collection, York (by arrangement ?)
• History of Science Museum, Oxford
• Not much, some bits of the Babbage Difference Engine, but interesting!
• Ada Lovelace's original "Notes"
These slides were presented at the Vintage Computer Festival (VCF) Pacific North West (PNW) in Seattle on March 24th 2019.
Babbage was the Lucasian Professor – before him came Isaac Newton, after, Stephen Hawking
Scale – left one 6" high, right one 3" high
Both in the Science Museum in London
Note the Difference Engine #2 is technically not a replica – it's the first one that was ever built, even though it took until 1991 to complete.
Daughter of Lord Byron
Translated a paper (about the Analytical Engine) by an Italian mathematician , Luigi Menabrea
"Diagram for the computation by the Engine of the Numbers of Bernoulli"
Possibly the world's first computer program
The Laws of Thought – very ambitious!
NTSC = National Television System Committee (or "Never Twice the Same Color")
PAL = Phase Alternating Line
GPO = General Post Office – in UK the GPO used to control phone service as well as mail service
NSA = National Security Agency
GCHQ = Government Communications Head Quarters
Movie - “The Imitation Game” - good movie but lots of “artistic license”
The Bombe – electromechanical machine for decoding Enigma
British did not invent The Bombe – Polish idea
More than 200 Bombes made during WW2, but most were *not* at Bletchley
There were also Bombes in USA – US Navy and US Army, were faster than UK Bombes
Lorenz was a more complex encryption machine used by the German High Command
Could not be decrypted by The Bombe
POC = Proof Of Concept
Tommy Flowers - secret to improved reliability - don't turn the valves off!
Bletchley Park was the Government Code & Cipher School GC&CS, forerunner of GCHQ
Algorithms have been around long before computers – named after a 9th century Arabic mathematician
German mathematician David Hilbert posed some questions to be answered about algorithms - one being the "decision problem"
Turing needed to invent the concept of a machine to execute algorithms so he could reason about them
This is the working replica machine at Bletchley Park.
All original machines are lost.
Notice how similar this is to telephone switching racks.
Optical tape reader on RHS.
After the war, the race was on to build “The Computer” for UK – they thought the UK would only need one computer
Lot of ex-radar guys coming off wartime government projects
Lots of war surplus electronics equipment could be repurposed
What was driving computer development?
Race for the British nuclear bomb
Commercialization of nuclear power
Start of the Cold War – boom in British aviation, jet engines, breaking the sound barrier, V-bombers, more developments in radar
All of this stuff needed lots of intensive calculations and computers were the solution
University of Cambridge
EDSAC was inspired by the USA EDVAC
EDVAC = Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer
EDSAC = Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator
1951 - Wilkes defines the concept of microprogram control & bit slicing
EDSAC 2 was the first microprogram control machine
NMoC = National Museum of Computing (at Bletchley Park)
Telecoms racks
Microprogramming is a systematic way to design the control section of a computer processor.
Break down a computers instructions into a smaller set of steps called "microinstructions"
Used by most mainframes of the time, IBM 360, 370, most of the minis, PDP-11, VAX, Data General, Motorola 68000 (but not most 8-bit MPU's)
Unfortunately this was taken to extremes – hence RISC
ICT = International Computers & Tabulators.
ICL = International Computers Ltd.
J.Lyons & Co. were like an early version of Starbucks – but no free WiFi...
LEO-1 was used "in-house" only for Lyons
LEO-2 & subsequent LEO computers were sold commercially
NPL = National Physical Laboratory
ACE = Automatic Computing Engine
MOSAIC = Ministry of Supply Automatic Integrator and Computer – Cold War
MOSAIC was installed at TRE = Telecommunications Research Establishment (Malvern, Radar)
Notice the wheels!
Pictures on RHS are the actual Pilot ACE in the Science Museum
Tom Kilburn & Freddie Williams – ex-Radar guys
POC = Proof of Concept
CRT = Cathode Ray Tube
Meg = Megacycle machine (1 MHz)
MUSE = “microsecond engine”
MU = Manchester University
Transistor computer – germanium transistors
More expensive than valves, less reliable – but less power and faster
“Baby" was Britain's first working stored program electronic computer
"Baby" working replica is in the Museum of Science & Industry, Manchester
Small – 550 valves, 1 ton, 3.5 KW
Tom Kilburn – Professor - went on to work on many of MU’s early computers
Freddie Williams never worked on another computer after “Baby”
RAM = Random Access Memory
FPU = Floating Point Unit
CERN = European Organization for Nuclear Research (French)
Ferranti-Packard 6000 was a design from Ferranti's Canadian subsidiary
Ferranti Mercury - CERN's first computer
FP 6000 later became the basis for the ICL 1900
Programming card for the Ferranti Pegasus
Not just “a computer” any more - different computers for different purposes
Various Argus machines – closer to a minicomputer
All different word lengths, technologies
Used for industrial & military applications
Not included in the ICL merger, Ferranti Computer Systems
Doubled the computer power in UK the day it was switched on
48 bit words
Atlas 2 - Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE), Aldermaston
Note the beer & sandwiches!
EMIDEC = EMI Digital Electronic Computer
NRDC = National Research Development Council
CAT = Computer Aided Tomography
EMI Electronic Business Machine – derived from Pilot ACE
1961 – The Beatles, funded development of CAT scanner?
ECL = Emitter Coupled Logic (very fast, same as in CDC6600/Cray etc. - but power hungry)
Elliott 401 pics from the Science Museum
Iann Barron with Transputer
Personal Computer World & Practical Computing magazines both came out in 1979.
Sigmoid curve somewhat illustrates the growth of the home computer market in UK.
Talking about UK computers – but there were some popular US computers in the UK market -
Commodore PET
TRS-80
Some Apple II – mostly for business
VIC 20 – later Commodore 64, Atari machines, Amiga
US machines very expensive, USD translated to GBP directly
UK less disposable income, mid-70’s not great economic times in UK
Power supply & video conversion costs
Very few S-100 systems (too costly)
SCRUMPI = for SC/MP, also "Scrumpy" is a type of Cider popular in the West Country, hence the country bumpkins in the ad!
Was also SCRUMPI 2 & 3
Sales were probably in the few 100’s
Designed by Chris Shelton
Single board with separate full keyboard
Kit form
Z80 @2 MHz + 2K SRAM, no BASIC
16 line X 48 char mono TV display
Tape interface
£197.50 ($400 then, $1,564 today)
UK's "Apple 1"?
(Apple 1 – 1976, famously $666.66)
12,000 units? (might include Nascom 2?)
Microcomputer Kit 14 – 14 chips on board
Based on a reference design from National Semiconductor
SC/MP evaluation board
Steve Furber worked on this project
15,000 kits sold
6502, 2 Eurocard, 1 KB RAM, CUTS, designed by Sophie Wilson
CUTS = Computer Users Tape Standard (also known as "Kansas City" tape standard)
Also – System 2/3/4/5 - Eurocard rack
Sold mainly for scientific & industrial applications, not targeted to hobbyist
65 GBP kit, 75 GBP assembled
No sales info
Single (bigger) board with separate keyboard
Kit form
Z80 @2 MHz/4 MHz & 8K DRAM, 8K Microsoft BASIC
16 line X 48 char mono TV display
Tape interface
£225 ($450 then, $1,454 today)
Single board with integrated keyboard
Kit form
6502 @1MHz, 4K SRAM, 8K Microsoft BASIC
16 line X 48 char mono TV display
Tape interface
UK Version of Ohio Scientific Superboard II (1978, $279 assembled)
£240 ($500 then, $1,553 today)
About 5000 kits sold
79 GBP kit, 91 GBP assembled - a bit like Acorn System 1
6502 @ 750 KHz (for TV), mono display, 1 K
Other expansion boards available – Eurocard?
10,000 units total
Notice the apparent size of the ZX80 in the ad compared with the TV and tape deck - in reality it's much smaller!
Kit 79.95 GBP Assembled 99.95 GBP under 100 GBP
Z80 @ 3.25 MHz, 1 KB RAM, Sinclair BASIC, mono display
50,000 units sold
Nice design, Allen Boothroyd, also designed BBC Micro & Electron & other Acorn computers
6502 1 MHz 2 KB CUTS mono/color display, Acorn BASIC (Sophie Wilson), Econet
Based on Acorn System 3 (keyboard)
120 GBP kit, 170 GBP assembled
Sales unknown?
SOC = Science of Cambridge
SR = Sinclair Research
CC = Cambridge Computer
Notorious for product delays, flaky products & high return rates (40% early Spectrums)
But – a lot of features for very low prices
“Sinclair time” = 1 Sinclair day = 6 real days
Sinclair C5 electric trike, made in Hoover (vaccuum cleaner) factory
Black Watch – first LED watch in UK, but easily destroyed by static from nylon carpets
Slightly improved ZX80, cost reduced – only 4 chips! ULA, MPU, RAM, ROM
GBP 49.95 kit, GBP 69.95 assembled (shaved 30 GBP off price of ZX80)
Z80 3.25 MHz 1 KB mono CUTS, better 8K Sinclair BASIC (+ floating point)
Ferranti ULA to reduce chips count significantly – also IP protection?
1.5 million sold
Sold in US as Timex Sinclair, 600K sold
Big market for memory expansion modules (16K)
Spectrum – named to emphasize color graphics capability, great for games
Z80 3.5 MHz 16 K CUTS color display 8K Sinclair BASIC
125 16K, 175 48K
5 million units (total, lifetime, all models)
Lots of official & unofficial clones, even with ULA!
QL = Quantum Leap “ZX83”
Moto 68008 7.5 MHz 128 KB Sinclair proprietary microdrives (2) continuous loop tapes, color display - not great performance
Sinclair QDOS in ROM, Super BASIC, office suite by PSION
2X Ferranti ULA’s
Very late delivery delays - “Quite Late”
150,000 sold, not very successful (IBM PC - 1981, impact 1982/83)
Dropped by AMSTRAD but not until he sold the old stock & made money back
Clones - CST (Cambridge Systems Technology) Thor & BT Merlin Tonto, ICL One Per Desk
Linus Torvalds (Linux) started out on this machine
CMOS Z80A 3.25 MHz 32 K memory card slots works on regular batteries BBC BASIC
First to use “super twist” LCD display, invented by Royal Signals & Radar Establishment, RSRE at Malvern, MOD held patents
Not cheap, quite successful, one of Sinclair’s better machines
Very influential book & TV documentary
Questions asked in parliament
Prompted BBC to respond
ARM = Acorn RISC Machine
RISC = Reduced Instruction Set Computer
1980 - BBC Computer Literacy Project, DTI (Department of Trade & industry) push to put BBC micro in all schools
1982 - “The Computer Programme” BBC2
Acorn Proton – became BBC Micro, model A & model B
6502 2 MHz 16K (A) 32K (B), CUTS, TV color, BBC BASIC (Sophie Wilson)
GBP 235 Model A, GBP 335 Model B
UK’s Apple 2
Second processors – Tube interface - 6502, Z80 (CP/M), NS 32016, Teletext, Prestel
1.5 million+ sold
1986 – BBC Master, 128K bank-paged RAM, ROM cartridge slots. Range of machines, including “Master Compact”. Also 80186 co-processor available via slot.
Cost reduced version of BBC Micro, same BBC BASIC
Note the ULA and the metal cover to keep it popping out of socket (due to thermal expansion)
Only 4x 64K x1 RAM chips, hence 2MHz RAM, 1 MHz 6502 (two accesses to memory required for each byte, compromised performance)
Some compromises to graphics (compared with BBC)
Announced 1982, delayed 1983 (Ferranti ULA problems), available 1984 in quantity
250K unsold in stock, missed Xmas 1983, financial troubles (& USA FCC certification), Olivetti takeover
(explain more about ARM chip later)
First home computer with a RISC (ARM) chip (Apple Power Mac came later 1994)
1987 – 300 & 400 series, ARM2 8 MHz, ARTHUR OS (later RISC OS) + BBC BASIC in ROM
Differ in amounts of memory, hard disk, expansion slots, BBC branding
Expensive – 800 GBP, desktop format, 3.5 floppy, separate keyboard, mouse
(completely proprietary)
“podules” (aka expansion cards)
1989 – BBC A3000 ARM2 8 MHz, cost reduced
Last BBC branded micro, red keys, RISC OS & BASIC in ROM
1992 - A3010/3020 - ARM250 the first ARM SoC (ARM3 CPU 12 MHz, I/O controller, video & sound, memory controller) - both with 3.5 floppy
SoC = System On Chip
3020 – hard disk, for education
Did OK in educational markets
Cambridge Workstation – repackaged BBC + NS32016 second processor
Was supposed to be a whole line but this was only one shipped
1992 - A4 - A4 is the standard paper size in UK
ARM3 24 MHz – first laptop with RISC (ARM) chip
2 MB, hard disk, 3.5 floppy, greyscale LCD
Acorn Pocket Book – rebadged PSION 3, not ARM chip (PSION 5)
RiscPC – slice design, pluggable CPU card, second processor card (486/586)
ARM610 CPU 30/33 MHz
ARM710 CPU 40 MHz (both made by VLSI)
1996 - StrongARM CPU (made by DEC) 200-300 MHz
(but unfortunately speed limited by system bus)
1998 - Phoebe 2100 – abandoned, only yellow cases sold
233 MHz StrongARM CPU (300 MHz planned), fix bus problems, more “PC compatible”, PCI bus, only one in Computer History Museum, Cambridge
WDC = Western Design Center (Phoenix, AZ)
Very low power – missing power connection story - 1/20th power consumption of contemporaries
Note – 32 bit processor in 84 pin quad package, more pins, more bandwidth
Nokia pushed ARM to license technology to Texas Instruments, start of their very successful licensing model
Bottom left – Steve Furber
Top right – Sophie Wilson
Bottom right is original floorplan pencil sketch of the first ARM chip by Steve Furber (in The Center for Computing History, Cambridge)
Documentary about the Sinclair/Acorn story - On YouTube
Barron of Beef pub, Sinclair vs Curry "altercation”
Sophie Wilson makes a guest appearance as the barmaid in the pub
Computers as "consumer products"
CPC 464 – 2 million sold, cheap, simple & solid machine
PCW - 8 million sold
Spectrum +2 with built in tape deck, next built in floppy
Also inherited QL
Sinclair PC200 – the last Sinclair branded machine
CPC 464 – 2 million sold
Sinclair PC 200 – almost IBM compatible, 8086, MSDOS, GEM
PPC 512 – portable, IBM compatible, NEC V30 (8088 clone)
Not S-100 bus systems
(was one company – Transam)
RM 380Z – Z80 4 MHz CP/M rack mount case, various boards
Pricey but govt subsidized 50% edu discount
Also 480Z – enhanced, cost reduced, case with keyboard
RAIR BB – 8085, CP/M, rebadged by ICL
Later – 8088, IBM compatible
Jupiter ACE – Z80 3.25 MHz 1 KB FORTH in ROM, designers worked for Sinclair (ZX81/Spectrum)
Mono, CUTS, around 5000 sold, also ACE 4000 (800 sold)
Dragon 32/64 - started by toy company - Mettoy - from Wales – hence Dragon name & logo
reference design, similar/compatible with TRS-80 color computer, bankrupt 1984, brief GEC takeover & branding
Unusual Motorola 6809, MS BASIC in ROM, probably about 200K sold?
(also sold version in US)
Grundy NewBrain – Z80 4 MHz 32 KB BASIC in ROM, TV (2 color), CUTS, CP/M
BBC Micro candidate – Newbury then Grundy, 50K+ sold
Was also candidate for Norwegian school micro but that fell through due to bankruptcy
Oric 1 – Tangerine - 6502 1 MHz 16 KB CUTS MS BASIC in ROM
210K+ sold, Atmos, cost reduced, better keyboard, some clones
Memotech MTX - Z80 32 KB CUTS 275 GBP
Aluminium case, full keyboard, good graphics
Soviet Union school micro, prepared red Russian language prototypes
Lost deal then bankrupt
ACT Apricot - 8086
Almost IBM compatible, MSDOS, CP/M 86, incompatible BIOS
Lynx - Z80A 4 MHz 48 KB Lynx BASIC & CP/M, hi res color graphics but slow, not great for games, not sure who their market was - 225 GBP
About 30K sold, quite a few in Europe
Enterprise - Z80A 4 MHz 64 KB built in joystick (also serves as “mouse”) BASIC in cartridge 2 ASICs one graphics “Nick” & one sound & memory “Dave”
Lots of names, including “Elan” and “Flan”
80,000 made – 20,000 shipped to Hungary, also Germany
Probably the last of the British 8-bit micros
Founded by David Potter (PSION = "Potter Scientific Instruments")
Started off as a software company for Sinclair – Spectrum, and QL office packages
Hand held devices
1.5 million Series 3, very successful, NEC V30H CPU (8088 clone)
Also PSION Series 5 with ARM chip
Evolved into Symbian (phones)
Univ. Of Surrey at Guilford satellite, heater story
CDI = Collector-Diffusion Isolation
ICT = International Computers and Tabulators
BTM = British Tabulating Machines
EE = English Electric
LEO = Lyons Electronic Office
STC = Standard Telephones & Cables
British rival to IBM, mostly sold to government & commonwealth countries
"Big Orange"
GEC = General Electric Corporation (UK), giant electrical engineering conglomerate
No relation to the USA GE
16/32 bit machines, minis, some 2900 based & last Motorola 88000 RISC
NEB = National Enterprise Board
CTL = Computer Technology Limited
CSP = Communication Sequential Processes, formal language invented by Tony Hoare
CSP - Professor Tony Hoare – invented QuickSort, the "null" reference, Oxford University Programming Research Group
Worked for Elliott Brothers Ltd. On ALGOL
MTI = Microprocessor Technology Inc.
Also Pandora & other projects, including Amiga rival
WWW = World Wide Web
CERN = European Center for Nuclear Research (in French...)
Supermarine were most famous for being the designers of the Spitfire
SCAMP = Scientific Computer and Modular Processer (sic)
CICS = Customer Information Control System
REXX is a bit similar to Python, an interpreted scripting language
CICS = Customer Information Control System
SCAMP = Scientific Computer and Modular Processer (sic)