Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Ferranti-Packard 6000
The FP-6000 was a second-generation mainframe computer developed and built by Ferranti-Packard, the Canadian division of Ferranti, in the early 1960s. It is particularly notable for supporting multitasking, being one of the first commercial machines to do so. Only six FP-6000s were sold before the computer division of Ferranti-Packard was sold off by Ferranti's UK headquarters in 1963, the FP-6000 becoming the basis for the mid-range machines of the ICT 1900, which sold into the thousands in Europe.
What was to become the FP-6000 had its genesis in a Royal Canadian Navy project starting in 1949 called DATAR. For DATAR, Ferranti-Packard (then still known as Ferranti Canada) built an experimental computer to share information among ships in a convoy. Although the prototype was a success, the failure rate of the vacuum tubes was a concern to everyone and Ferranti suggested they re-build the machine using transistors instead. DATAR ran out of funds before this conversion could take place, but Ferranti put the experience to good use in a series of one-off transistorized machines. One such example was a cheque sorting system built for the Federal Reserve Bank, itself a modification of a system developed to sort mail for the Canadian Post Office.
The developmental series eventually culminated in ReserVec. ReserVec was the first computerized reservation system to enter service when it took over all bookings for Air Canada in 1961. Ferranti initially had high hopes for the machine, thinking that it would be successful in Europe if sold by the UK headquarters' sales staff. As had happened many times in the past, however, the UK computer team suffered from a terminal case of not invented here, and decided it was better if they designed their own instead. Their project was never delivered, and ReserVec withered.
Ferranti-Packard was unwilling to simply let the development effort go to waste, and started looking for ways to commercialize the ReserVec hardware into a general purpose mainframe. Ferranti-Packard needed a launch customer to ensure at least one sale, and approached the Federal Reserve Bank again, offering a greatly expanded and more flexible system to replace the earlier custom-wired machine they had delivered only a few years earlier in 1958.
During the late 1950s, Ferranti's UK computer development department was heavily involved in the development of computer circuitry based on the use of magnetic amplifiers. These were a 1950s replacement for transistors; at that time transistors were extremely expensive and still had reliability issues. Magnetic amplifiers were larger than transistors but had the advantage of allowing a single amplifier to be shared among several circuits, lowering component counts. When newer transistors were introduced at lower price points, interest in magnetic amplifiers disappeared almost overnight.
Ken Johnson, an engineer at Ferranti's computer division in Manchester, noticed that it would be possible to wire these new transistors in the same way as the magnetic amplifiers, thereby reusing a single transistor for several tasks, and in turn, greatly lowering component costs. It appeared this concept, which he called "neuron" due to its multi-input/multi-output wiring being similar to the brain's neurons, would allow Ferranti to build computers at lower price points than their competition.
After the neuron concept was successful in a small test machine known as "Newt", in 1959 the company introduced two commercial machines based on neuron, one for the low-end and another midrange design. In 1960, the smaller design was delivered as the Ferranti Sirius, a desk-sized system for small businesses. It was an immediate success, undercutting the price of any similar design. The larger machine, the Ferranti Orion, was developed in parallel and formally announced in 1960 with the first unit shipping in 1961. A number of engineers from the Canadian office were sent to the UK to work on this machine.
Orion ultimately demonstrated that the neuron concept simply didn't work at larger sizes, the electrical current needed to activate the switching was high enough that when pushed through the long wires of a large machine they produced noise in the circuits and no solution could be found to eliminate it. Orion was being positioned as Ferranti's main offering for the 1960s, and its failure threw the company's computer division into disarray.
Hub AI
Ferranti-Packard 6000 AI simulator
(@Ferranti-Packard 6000_simulator)
Ferranti-Packard 6000
The FP-6000 was a second-generation mainframe computer developed and built by Ferranti-Packard, the Canadian division of Ferranti, in the early 1960s. It is particularly notable for supporting multitasking, being one of the first commercial machines to do so. Only six FP-6000s were sold before the computer division of Ferranti-Packard was sold off by Ferranti's UK headquarters in 1963, the FP-6000 becoming the basis for the mid-range machines of the ICT 1900, which sold into the thousands in Europe.
What was to become the FP-6000 had its genesis in a Royal Canadian Navy project starting in 1949 called DATAR. For DATAR, Ferranti-Packard (then still known as Ferranti Canada) built an experimental computer to share information among ships in a convoy. Although the prototype was a success, the failure rate of the vacuum tubes was a concern to everyone and Ferranti suggested they re-build the machine using transistors instead. DATAR ran out of funds before this conversion could take place, but Ferranti put the experience to good use in a series of one-off transistorized machines. One such example was a cheque sorting system built for the Federal Reserve Bank, itself a modification of a system developed to sort mail for the Canadian Post Office.
The developmental series eventually culminated in ReserVec. ReserVec was the first computerized reservation system to enter service when it took over all bookings for Air Canada in 1961. Ferranti initially had high hopes for the machine, thinking that it would be successful in Europe if sold by the UK headquarters' sales staff. As had happened many times in the past, however, the UK computer team suffered from a terminal case of not invented here, and decided it was better if they designed their own instead. Their project was never delivered, and ReserVec withered.
Ferranti-Packard was unwilling to simply let the development effort go to waste, and started looking for ways to commercialize the ReserVec hardware into a general purpose mainframe. Ferranti-Packard needed a launch customer to ensure at least one sale, and approached the Federal Reserve Bank again, offering a greatly expanded and more flexible system to replace the earlier custom-wired machine they had delivered only a few years earlier in 1958.
During the late 1950s, Ferranti's UK computer development department was heavily involved in the development of computer circuitry based on the use of magnetic amplifiers. These were a 1950s replacement for transistors; at that time transistors were extremely expensive and still had reliability issues. Magnetic amplifiers were larger than transistors but had the advantage of allowing a single amplifier to be shared among several circuits, lowering component counts. When newer transistors were introduced at lower price points, interest in magnetic amplifiers disappeared almost overnight.
Ken Johnson, an engineer at Ferranti's computer division in Manchester, noticed that it would be possible to wire these new transistors in the same way as the magnetic amplifiers, thereby reusing a single transistor for several tasks, and in turn, greatly lowering component costs. It appeared this concept, which he called "neuron" due to its multi-input/multi-output wiring being similar to the brain's neurons, would allow Ferranti to build computers at lower price points than their competition.
After the neuron concept was successful in a small test machine known as "Newt", in 1959 the company introduced two commercial machines based on neuron, one for the low-end and another midrange design. In 1960, the smaller design was delivered as the Ferranti Sirius, a desk-sized system for small businesses. It was an immediate success, undercutting the price of any similar design. The larger machine, the Ferranti Orion, was developed in parallel and formally announced in 1960 with the first unit shipping in 1961. A number of engineers from the Canadian office were sent to the UK to work on this machine.
Orion ultimately demonstrated that the neuron concept simply didn't work at larger sizes, the electrical current needed to activate the switching was high enough that when pushed through the long wires of a large machine they produced noise in the circuits and no solution could be found to eliminate it. Orion was being positioned as Ferranti's main offering for the 1960s, and its failure threw the company's computer division into disarray.