Philco
Philco (an acronym for Philadelphia Battery Company) is an American electronics industry, electronics manufacturer headquartered in Philadelphia. Philco was a pioneer in battery, radio, and television production. In 1961, the company was purchased ...
was one of the pioneers of transistorized computers. After the company developed the surface barrier
transistor
upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink).
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch e ...
, which was much faster than previous point-contact types, it was awarded contracts for military and government computers. Commercialized derivatives of some of these designs became successful business and scientific computers. The TRANSAC (Transistor Automatic Computer) Model S-1000 was released as a scientific computer. The TRANSAC S-2000 mainframe computer system was first produced in 1958, and a family of compatible machines, with increasing performance, was released over the next several years.
However, the mainframe computer market was dominated by
IBM. Other companies could not deploy resources for development, customer support and marketing on the scale that IBM could afford, making competition in this segment difficult after the introduction of the
IBM 360
The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems that was announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applica ...
family. Philco went bankrupt and was purchased in 1961 by
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...
, but the computer division carried on until the Philco division of Ford exited the computer business in 1963. The Ford company maintained one Philco mainframe in use until 1981.
The surface-barrier transistor
The
surface-barrier transistor
The surface-barrier transistor is a type of transistor developed by Philco in 1953 as an improvement to the alloy-junction transistor and the earlier point-contact transistor. Like the modern Schottky transistor, it offered much higher speed than ...
developed by Philco in 1953 had a much higher frequency response than the original point-contact transistors. The transistor was made of a thin crystal of germanium, which was electrolytically etched with pits on either side forming a very thin base region, on the order of 5 micrometers. Philco's process for etching was United States patent number 2,885,571. Philco surface-barrier transistors were used in
TX-0
The TX-0, for ''Transistorized Experimental computer zero'', but affectionately referred to as tixo (pronounced "tix oh"), was an early fully transistorized computer and contained a then-huge 64 K of 18-bit words of magnetic-core memory. Constru ...
, and in early models of what would become the DEC
PDP product line. Although relatively fast, the small size of the devices limited their power to circuits operating at a few tens of milliwatts.
Military and government
Between 1955 and 1957, Philco built transistor computers for use in aircraft, models C-1000, C-1100, and C-1102, intended for airborne real-time applications. By 1957, the C-1102 had been used by a civilian sector customer.
The BASICPAC AN/TYK 6V (first delivery in 1961), COMPAC AN/TYK 4V (not completed), and LOGICPAC systems were built for the US Army as transportable computer systems for use with their
Fieldata concept of integrated information management.
BASICPAC was a transistorized computer with up to 28,672 words of 38-bit
core memory
Core or cores may refer to:
Science and technology
* Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages
* Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding
* Core (optical fiber), the signal-carrying portion of an optical fiber
* Core, the central ...
(including sign and parity), available in several configurations from a minimum system, to a truck-borne mobile version, to a fully expanded system. Basic clock periods was 1 microsecond (which gives a
clock rate
In computing, the clock rate or clock speed typically refers to the frequency at which the clock generator of a processor can generate pulses, which are used to synchronize the operations of its components, and is used as an indicator of the pr ...
of 1
MHz
The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is sā1, meaning that one he ...
), with 12 microsecond memory access and a fixed-point multiplication taking 242 microseconds. Input/output was by paper tape reader and punch, or through a teletypewriter. With additional hardware, magnetic tape storage was also available, with up to seven I/O devices. The instruction set had 31 basic operation codes and nine opcodes for I/O
CXPQ
Philco was contracted by the US Navy to build the CXPQ computer. One model was completed and installed at the
David Taylor Model Basin
The David Taylor Model Basin (DTMB) is one of the largest ship model basins—test facilities for the development of ship design—in the world. DTMB is a field activity of the Carderock Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center.
Hist ...
. This design was later adapted to become the commercial TRANSAC S-2000.
[Kenneth Flamm, ''Creating the Computer: Government, Industry and High Technology'', Brookings Institution Press, 2010, , page 122] Only one CXPQ was built.
[
The CXPQ is a ]48-bit
In computer architecture, 48-bit integers can represent 281,474,976,710,656 (248 or 2.814749767Ć1014) discrete values. This allows an unsigned binary integer range of 0 through 281,474,976,710,655 (248 ā 1) or a signed two's complement ra ...
transistorized computer.
SOLO
In 1955, the National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...
through the US Navy contracted with Philco to produce a computer suitable for use as a workstation, with an architecture based on the vacuum-tube computer system called Atlas II already in use at the NSA, and similar to the commercial UNIVAC 1103
The UNIVAC 1103 or ERA 1103, a successor to the UNIVAC 1101, was a computer system designed by Engineering Research Associates and built by the Remington Rand corporation in October 1953. It was the first computer for which Seymour Cray was credi ...
. At the time, Philco was the largest producer of surface barrier transistors, which were the only type available with the speed and quantities required for a computer. The SOLO prototype was delivered in 1958, but required extensive debugging at NSA. Difficulties were encountered with core memory and power supplies. SOLO used paper tape
Five- and eight-hole punched paper tape
Paper tape reader on the Harwell computer with a small piece of five-hole tape connected in a circle ā creating a physical program loop
Punched tape or perforated paper tape is a form of data storage ...
and teleprinter machines for input and output.[David L. Boslaugh, ''When Computers Went to Sea: The Digitization of the United States Navy'', John Wiley & Sons, 2003, , pp. 112-113] SOLO cost about $1 million US, and contained 8,000 transistors. While the system was extensively used for training, testing, research and development, no additional units were ordered. SOLO was removed from active service in 1963. The design of the SOLO became commercialized as Philco's TRANSAC Model S-1000.
Commercial
S-1000
The TRANSAC S-1000 was a scientific computer with a 36-bit word length and 4096 words of core memory. It was packaged in a container about the size of a large office desk, and used only 1.2 kilowatts, much less than vacuum-tube-based computers of similar capacity.
In a 1961 survey, about 15 S-1000 computer installations had been identified.
It weighed about .
S-2000
The TRANSAC S-2000 was a large mainframe system intended for both business and scientific work. It had a 48-bit word length and supported calculations in fixed point, floating point and binary-coded decimal formats. The original S-2000 "TRANSAC" (Transistor Automatic Computer) released in 1958 was later designated Model 210; it was used internally at Philco. Similar to the Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer firm. CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, Burroughs Corporation, DEC, NCR, General Electric, Honeywel ...
Model 1604
Events
January–June
* January 1 – '' The Masque of Indian and China Knights'' is performed by courtiers of James VI and I at Hampton Court.
* January 14 – The Hampton Court Conference is held between James I of England ...
, it was a 48-bit fully transistorized computer. Three succeeding models were released in the series, all compatible with the software of the original model. The Model 211 was introduced in 1960, using micro-alloy diffused field-effect transistor
The field-effect transistor (FET) is a type of transistor that uses an electric field to control the flow of current in a semiconductor. FETs (JFETs or MOSFETs) are devices with three terminals: ''source'', ''gate'', and ''drain''. FETs contro ...
s, requiring significant redesign of circuits compared to the original.
The TRANSAC S-2000/Philco 210/211 weighed about .
By 1964, eighteen Model 210, eighteen Model 211 and seven Model 212 systems had been sold.[
After Philco was purchased by ]Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...
, the Model 212 was introduced in 1962 and released in 1963. It had 65,535 words of 48-bit memory. Initially made with 6-microsecond core memory, it had better performance than the IBM 7094
The IBM 7090 is a second-generation transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computer that was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 is the fourth member of the IBM 700/7000 ser ...
transistor computer. It was later upgraded in 1964 to 2-microsecond core memory, which gave the machine floating-point performance greater than the IBM 7030 Stretch
The IBM 7030, also known as Stretch, was IBM's first transistorized supercomputer. It was the fastest computer in the world from 1961 until the first CDC 6600 became operational in 1964."Designed by Seymour Cray, the CDC 6600 was almost three tim ...
computer. A Model 213 was announced in 1964 but never built. By that time competition from IBM had made the Philco computer operations no longer profitable for Ford, and the division was closed down.
The Model 212 could carry out a floating-point multiplication in 22 microseconds. Each word contained two 24-bit instructions with 16 bits of address information and eight bits for the opcode
In computing, an opcode (abbreviated from operation code, also known as instruction machine code, instruction code, instruction syllable, instruction parcel or opstring) is the portion of a machine language instruction that specifies the operat ...
. There were 225 different valid opcodes in the Model 212; invalid opcodes were detected and halted the machine. The CPU had an accumulator register of 48 bits, three general-purpose registers of 24 bits, and 32 index registers of 15 bits. Main memory size ranged from 4K words to 64K words. Only the first model had a magnetic drum memory; later editions used tape drives.
The Model 212 weighed about .
Software for the S-2000 initially consisted of TAC (Translator-Assember-Compiler), and ALTAC, a FORTRAN II-like language with some differences from the IBM 704
The IBM 704 is a large digital mainframe computer introduced by IBM in 1954. It was the first mass-produced computer with hardware for floating-point arithmetic. The IBM 704 ''Manual of operation'' states:
The type 704 Electronic Data-Pro ...
FORTRAN implementation. A COBOL
COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily us ...
compiler was also available, targeted at business applications.
The Philco 2400 was the input/output system for the S-2000. Operations such as reading cards or printing were carried out through magnetic tapes, thereby offloading the S-2000 from relatively slow input/output processing.[Stephen H. Kaisler, ''Birthing the Computer: From Drums to Cores'', Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017, , pages 232-237] The 2400 had a 24-bit word length and could be supplied with 4K to 32K characters (1K to 8K words) of core memory, rated at 3-microsecond cycle time. The instruction set was aimed at character I/O use.
The last Philco TRANSAC S-2000 Model 212 was taken out of service in December 1981, after 19 years service at Ford.[{{cite web , title=Retirement video for the Philco 212 Mainframe Computer , url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwOkVgGw1z8 , publisher=Computer History Museum , access-date=26 November 2018]
References
External links
The last S-2000 retirement at Ford, 1981
36-bit computers
History of computer companies
Military computers
Cryptography