The Additron was an electron tube designed by Dr.

Josef Kates Josef Kates, born ''Josef Katz'', (May 5, 1921 in Canada, – June 16, 2018) was a Canadian engineer whose achievements include designing the first digital game-playing machine, and the world's first automated traffic signalling system.Engelmann, ...

, circa 1950, to replace the several individual electron tubes and support components required to perform the function of a single bit digital

full adder An adder, or summer, is a digital circuit that performs addition of numbers. In many computers and other kinds of processors adders are used in the arithmetic logic units (ALUs). They are also used in other parts of the processor, where they are ...

. Dr. Kates developed the Additron with the intention of increasing the likelihood of success and reliability while reducing the size, power consumption and complexity of the University of Toronto Electronic Computer, (

UTEC UTEC (University of Toronto Electronic Computer Mark I) was a computer built at the University of Toronto (UofT) in the early 1950s. It was the first computer in Canada, one of the first working computers in the world, although only built in a pro ...

) The Additron neither went into production at the Canadian

Rogers Vacuum Tube Company Rogers Vacuum Tube Company (formally named Radio Manufacturing Corporation Limited) was founded as the Standard Radio Manufacturing Corporation in 1925 by Edward Rogers (1900–1939) to sell Rogers "Batteryless" radios using vacuum tube technology. ...

, where the prototypes were built, nor was it used in the UTEC machine. It did make a widely publicized appearance at the 1950

Canadian National Exhibition The Canadian National Exhibition (CNE), also known as The Exhibition or The Ex, is an annual event that takes place at Exhibition Place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on the third Friday of August leading up to and including Canadian Labour Day, ...

operating an electronic game of

Tic-Tac-Toe Tic-tac-toe (American English), noughts and crosses (Commonwealth English), or Xs and Os (Canadian or Irish English) is a paper-and-pencil game for two players who take turns marking the spaces in a three-by-three grid with ''X'' or ''O''. T ...

, dubbed ''

Bertie the Brain ''Bertie the Brain'' was an early computer game, and one of the first games developed in the early history of video games. It was built in Toronto by Josef Kates for the 1950 Canadian National Exhibition. The four meter (13 foot) tall computer al ...

'', to show the marvels of electronic computing. The tube was registered with the Radio Television Manufacturing Association on 20 March 1951 as type 6047.

Patents

References

Adders (electronics) Digital electronics Vacuum tubes History of computing hardware {{Compu-hardware-stub