Sibyl Rock at the console of an ElectroData Datatron computer in 1955 The ElectroData Corporation is a defunct computer company located in

Pasadena, California Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. I ...

. ElectroData originated as a part of Consolidated Electrodynamics Corporation (CEC), which manufactured scientific equipment.

Clifford Berry Clifford Edward Berry (April 19, 1918 – October 30, 1963) helped John Vincent Atanasoff create the first digital electronic computer in 1939, the Atanasoff–Berry computer (ABC). Biography Clifford Berry was born April 19, 1918, in Gladbr ...

and Sibyl M. Rock developed an

analog computer An analog computer or analogue computer is a type of computer that uses the continuous variation aspect of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities (''analog signals'') to model the problem being solved. In c ...

to process the output of CEC's

mass spectrometer Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique that is used to measure the mass-to-charge ratio of ions. The results are presented as a '' mass spectrum'', a plot of intensity as a function of the mass-to-charge ratio. Mass spectrometry is us ...

. Berry then urged CEC to develop a digital computer as a follow-on. In 1951 CEC enlisted

Harry Huskey Harry Douglas Huskey (January 19, 1916 – April 9, 2017) was an American computer design pioneer. Early life and career Huskey was born in Whittier, in the Smoky Mountains region of North Carolina and grew up in Idaho. He received his bache ...

, who managed the development of the SWAC computer on the project. In May 1952, CEC pre-announced the "CEC 30-201" computer, a

vacuum tube computer A vacuum-tube computer, now termed a first-generation computer, is a computer that uses vacuum tubes for logic circuitry. Although superseded by second-generation transistorized computers, vacuum-tube computers continued to be built into the 1960 ...

with a magnetic-

drum memory Drum memory was a magnetic data storage device invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria. Drums were widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s as computer memory. For many early computers, drum memory formed the main working memory ...

. That same year CEC reorganized computer development into a separate Computer Division. In 1954 the division was spun off into a separate public company named ElectroData. In 1954 the first model of the computer, now named the Datatron 203 shipped to the

Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...

in Pasadena. The purchase price was $125,000. The company shipped seven more 203 systems in 1954 and thirteen in 1955. By 1956 ElectroData was the third-largest computer manufacturer in the world, but was unable to generate enough revenue to meet the demands of growing the business. That year

Burroughs Corporation The Burroughs Corporation was a major American manufacturer of business equipment. The company was founded in 1886 as the American Arithmometer Company. In 1986, it merged with Sperry UNIVAC to form Unisys. The company's history paralleled many ...

, at that time a manufacturer of electro-mechanical office equipment, made a deal to acquire ElectroData in a

stock swap In corporate finance a stock swap is the exchange of one equity-based asset for another, where, during the merger or acquisition, the swap provides an opportunity to pay with stock rather than with cash; see . Overview The acquiring company e ...

, and renamed it the ElectroData Division of Burroughs Corporation. The Datatron was renamed the

Burroughs 205 Burroughs may refer to: * Former spelling of boroughs *Burroughs, Georgia, a historically African American community now a neighborhood of Savannah, Georgia * Burroughs Corporation, a maker of adding machines and computers * Burroughs (surname), pe ...

References

{{Reflist 1954 establishments in California 1956 disestablishments in California American companies established in 1954 American companies disestablished in 1956 Computer companies established in 1954 Computer companies disestablished in 1956 Defunct computer companies of the United States