International Computers and Tabulators or ICT was a British computer manufacturer, formed in 1959 by a merger of the

British Tabulating Machine Company __NOTOC__ The British Tabulating Machine Company (BTM) was a firm which manufactured and sold Hollerith unit record equipment and other data-processing equipment. During World War II, BTM constructed some 200 "bombes", machines used at Bletchley ...

(BTM) and

Powers-Samas Powers-Samas was a British company which sold unit record equipment. In 1915 Powers Tabulating Machine Company established European operations through the Accounting and Tabulating Machine Company of Great Britain Limited, in 1929 renamed Powe ...

. In 1963 it acquired the business computer divisions of

Ferranti Ferranti or Ferranti International plc was a UK electrical engineering and equipment firm that operated for over a century from 1885 until it went bankrupt in 1993. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The firm was known ...

. It exported computers to many countries and in 1968 became part of International Computers Limited (ICL).

Products

The ICT 1101 was known as the

EMIDEC 1100 The EMIDEC 1100 computer (became the ICT 1101 in 1962) was produced by the Computing Services Division of EMI Laboratories in the UK under the leadership of Godfrey Hounsfield in 1958, (first delivered in 1959) after one year's development. I ...

computer before the acquisition of the

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British Transnational corporation, transnational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in March 1 ...

Computing Services Division who designed and produced it. The ICT 1201 computer used

thermionic valve A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric potential difference has been applied. The type known as a ...

technology and its main memory was drum storage. Input was from 80-column

punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...

s and output was to 80-column cards and a

printer Printer may refer to: Technology * Printer (publishing), a person or a company * Printer (computing), a hardware device * Optical printer for motion picture films People * Nariman Printer (fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist * James ...

. Before the merger, under BTM, this had been known as the HEC4 (

Hollerith Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine for punched cards to assist in summarizing information and, later, in ...

Electronic Computer, fourth version). The drum memory held 1K of 40-bit words. The computer was programmed using binary machine code instructions. When programming the 1201, the machine code instructions were not sequential but were spaced to allow for the drum's rotation. This ensured the next instruction was passing under the drum's read heads just as the current instruction had been executed. The

ICT 1301 The ICT 1301 and its smaller derivative ICT 1300 were early business computers from International Computers and Tabulators. Typical of mid-sized machines of the era, they used core memory, drum storage and punched cards, but they were unusual in t ...

, and its smaller cousin the ICT 1300, used

germanium Germanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ge and atomic number 32. It is lustrous, hard-brittle, grayish-white and similar in appearance to silicon. It is a metalloid in the carbon group that is chemically similar to its group neighbors s ...

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 ...

s and

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 centra ...

. Backing store was

magnetic drum 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 of ...

, and optionally one-inch-, half-inch- or quarter-inch-wide

magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magne ...

. Input was from 80-column punched cards and optionally 160-column punched cards and punched paper tape. Output was to 80-column punched cards, printer and optionally to punched paper tape. The first customer delivery was in 1962, a 1301 sold to the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

. One of their main attractions was that they performed British currency calculations ( pounds, shillings and pence) in hardware. They also had the advantage of programmers not having to learn

binary Binary may refer to: Science and technology Mathematics * Binary number, a representation of numbers using only two digits (0 and 1) * Binary function, a function that takes two arguments * Binary operation, a mathematical operation that ta ...

octal The octal numeral system, or oct for short, is the radix, base-8 number system, and uses the Numerical digit, digits 0 to 7. This is to say that 10octal represents eight and 100octal represents sixty-four. However, English, like most languages, ...

arithmetic as the

instruction set In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ' ...

was pure decimal and the arithmetic unit had no binary mode, only decimal or pounds, shillings and pence. Its

clock A clock or a timepiece is a device used to measure and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month and the ...

ran at 1 MHz. The London University machine still exists (January 2006) and is being reinstated to working condition by a group of enthusiasts. The ICT 1302, used similar technology to the 1300/1301 but was a

multiprogramming In computing, multitasking is the concurrent execution of multiple tasks (also known as processes) over a certain period of time. New tasks can interrupt already started ones before they finish, instead of waiting for them to end. As a result ...

system capable of running three programs in addition to the

Executive Executive ( exe., exec., execu.) may refer to: Role or title * Executive, a senior management role in an organization ** Chief executive officer (CEO), one of the highest-ranking corporate officers (executives) or administrators ** Executive dir ...

. It also used the 'Standard Interface' for the connection of

peripheral A peripheral or peripheral device is an auxiliary device used to put information into and get information out of a computer. The term ''peripheral device'' refers to all hardware components that are attached to a computer and are controlled by the ...

s allowing much more flexibility in peripheral configuration. The 'Standard Interface' was originally prototyped on the 1301 and went on to be used on the 1900 series. The ICT 1400 was a first generation computer using thermionic valves, but was overtaken by transistor technology in 1959 and no sales were made.. The ICT 1500 series was a design bought in from the

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

Corporation, who called it the RCA 301. RCA also sold the design to

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', '' ...

in Germany and

Compagnie des Machines Bull Bull SAS (also known as Groupe Bull, Bull Information Systems, or simply Bull) is a French computer company headquartered in Les Clayes-sous-Bois, in the western suburbs of Paris. The company has also been known at various times as Bull General ...

in France who called it the Gamma 30. It used a six-bit

byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...

and had core stores of 10,000, 20,000 or 40,000 bytes. The

ICT 1900 series ICT 1900 was a family of mainframe computers released by International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) and later International Computers Limited (ICL) during the 1960s and 1970s. The 1900 series was notable for being one of the few non-American c ...

was devised after the acquisition of Ferranti's assets which brought in the new

Ferranti-Packard 6000 The FP-6000Ferranti Packard: Pioneers in Canadian Electrical Manufacturing Norman R Ball, John N Vardalas was a second-generation Mainframe computer, mainframe computer developed and built by Ferranti-Packard, the Canadian division of Ferranti, ...

machine from Ferranti's Canadian subsidiary, which was considerably more advanced than the existing 130x line. It was decided to adapt this machine to use the 'Standard Interface', and it was put on the market as the ICT 1904, the first in a range of upward-compatible computer systems. In 1968 ICT merged with

English Electric Computers English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

, itself formed from the prior mergers of English Electric Leo Marconi (EELM) and

Elliott Automation Elliott Brothers (London) Ltd was an early computer company of the 1950s–60s in the United Kingdom. It traced its descent from a firm of instrument makers founded by William Elliott (instrument maker), William Elliott (1780 or 1781-1853) in ...

. The resulting company became International Computers Limited (ICL). At the time of the merger

was in the process of making a line of large IBM System/360-compatible mainframes based on the

RCA Spectra 70 The RCA Spectra 70 was a line of electronic data processing (EDP) equipment manufactured by the Radio Corporation of America’s computer division beginning in April 1965. The Spectra 70 line included several CPU models, various configurations ...

, which was sold as the ICL System-4. Both 1900 and System-4 were eventually replaced by the

ICL 2900 Series The ICL 2900 Series was a range of mainframe computer systems announced by the British manufacturer ICL on 9 October 1974. The company had started development under the name "New Range" immediately on its formation in 1968. The range was not de ...

which was introduced in 1974.

External links

Oral history interview with Arthur L. C. Humphreys (1981)

Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

, University of Minnesota. Humphreys, a former managing director of ICL, reviews the history of the British computer industry, including the merger in 1959 of

and the Powers Samas company into International Computers and Tabulators, Ltd. (ICT), and the merger in 1968 of

Limited and ICT into ICL.
Boards from the ICT 1301
– archived in November 2006
ICT 1301 Resurrection Project
–

The National Museum of Computing The National Museum of Computing is a museum in the United Kingdom dedicated to collecting and restoring historic computer systems. The museum is based in rented premises at Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire and opened in 2007. ...

Two articles on the HEC4 at Morgan Crucible Co
– archived in April 2014

References

{{Authority control Computer companies of the United Kingdom * Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct manufacturing companies of the United Kingdom Defunct technological companies of the United Kingdom Former defence companies of the United Kingdom Computer companies established in 1959 Electronics companies established in 1959 Manufacturing companies established in 1959 Manufacturing companies disestablished in 1968 1959 establishments in England 1968 disestablishments in England British companies established in 1959 British companies disestablished in 1968