Burroughs
Encyclopedia
The Burroughs Corporation was a major American manufacturer of business equipment. The company was founded in 1886 as the American Arithmometer
Company and was assimilated in the 1986 merger that resulted in the creation of Unisys
. The company's history paralleled many of the major developments in computing
. At its start it produced mechanical adding machine
s, and later moved into programmable ledgers and then computers. And while it was one of the largest producers of mainframe computer
s in the world, Burroughs also produced related equipment as well, including typewriter
s and printers.
to produce and sell an adding machine
invented by William Seward Burroughs
(grandfather of Beat Generation
author William S. Burroughs
). In 1904, six years after Burroughs' death, the company moved to Detroit and changed its name to the Burroughs Adding Machine Company. It soon was the biggest adding machine company in America.
. It could store 9, 18 or 27 balances
during the ledger posting operations and worked with a mechanical adder named a Crossfooter. The Sensimatic developed into the Sensitronic which could store balances on a magnetic stripe which was part of the ledger card. This balance was read into the accumulator when the card was inserted into the carriage. The Sensitronic was followed by the E1000, the E2000, E4000, E6000 and the E8000, which was computer system supporting magnetic tape
, card reader/punches and a line printer
.
In time, Burroughs was selling more than adding machines, including typewriters. But the biggest shift in company history came in 1953; the Burroughs Adding Machine Company was renamed the Burroughs Corporation and began moving into computer products, initially for banking institutions. This move began with Burrough's purchase, in June 1956, of the ElectroData Corporation in Pasadena, California
, a spinoff of the Consolidated Engineering Corporation which had designed test instruments and had a cooperative relationship with Caltech
in Pasadena. ElectroData had built the Datatron 205 and was working on the Datatron 220. The first major computer product that came from this marriage was the B205 tube computer. In the late 1960s the D2000, D4000 range was produced (also known as the TC500—Terminal Computer 500) which had a golf ball printer and a 1K (80 bit) disk memory. These were popular as branch terminal
s to the B5500/6500/6700 systems, which sold well in the banking sector, where they were often connected to non-Burroughs mainframes. In conjunction with these products, Burroughs also manufactured an extensive range of cheque processing equipment, normally attached as terminals to a larger system such as a B2700 or B1700.
, the largest, Honeywell
, NCR Corporation
, Control Data Corporation
, General Electric
, RCA
and UNIVAC
) through most of the 1960s. In terms of sales, Burroughs was always a distant second to IBM. In fact, IBM's share of the market at the time was so much larger than all of the others, that this group was often referred to as "IBM and the Seven Dwarfs." By 1972 when GE and RCA were no longer in the mainframe business, the remaining five companies behind IBM became known as the BUNCH
, an acronym based on their initials.
At the same time, Burroughs was very much a competitor. Like IBM, Burroughs tried to supply a complete line of products for its customers, including Burroughs-designed printers, disk drives, tape drive
s, computer printing paper, and even typewriter ribbon
s.
In the 1950s, Burroughs had worked with the Federal Reserve Bank on the development and computer processing of magnetic ink character recognition
(MICR) especially for the processing of bank cheques. Burroughs made special MICR/OCR sorter/readers which attached to their medium systems line of computers (2700/3700/4700
) and this entrenched the company in the computer side of the banking industry.
, based on the design philosophy of "language directed design". Their machine instruction sets favored one or many high level programming languages, such as ALGOL
, COBOL
or FORTRAN
. All three architectures were considered "main-frame" class machines:
Many computer scientist
s consider these series of computers to be technologically groundbreaking. Stack oriented processors, with 48 bit word length where each word was defined as data or program contributed significantly to a secure operating environment, long before spyware
and virus
es affected computing. And the modularity of these large systems was also unique: multiple CPUs, multiple memory modules and multiple I/O
and Data Comm processors permitted incremental and cost effective growth of system performance and reliability. In industries like banking, where continuous operations was mandatory, Burroughs large systems penetrated most every large bank, including the Federal Reserve Bank
. And Burroughs built the backbone switching systems for SWIFT Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
which sent its first message in 1977. Unisys is still the provider to SWIFT today.
Burroughs also made military computers, such as the D825 (the "D" prefix signifying it was for defense industrial use), in its Great Valley Laboratory in Paoli, Pennsylvania
. The D825 was, according to some scholars, the first true multiprocessor computer. Paoli was also home to the Defense and Space Group Marketing Division.
to form Unisys
. For a time, the combined company retained the Burroughs processors as the A and V systems lines. However, as the market for large systems shifted from proprietary architectures to common servers, the company eventually dropped these product lines.
.
Arithmometer
An Arithmometer or Arithmomètre was a mechanical calculator that could add and subtract directly and could perform long multiplications and divisions effectively by using a movable accumulator for the result. Patented in France by Thomas de Colmar in 1820 and manufactured from 1851 to 1915, it...
Company and was assimilated in the 1986 merger that resulted in the creation of Unisys
Unisys
Unisys Corporation , headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, United States, and incorporated in Delaware, is a long established business whose core products now involves computing and networking.-History:...
. The company's history paralleled many of the major developments in computing
History of computing
The history of computing is longer than the history of computing hardware and modern computing technology and includes the history of methods intended for pen and paper or for chalk and slate, with or without the aid of tables...
. At its start it produced mechanical adding machine
Adding machine
An adding machine was a class of mechanical calculator, usually specialized for bookkeeping calculations.In the United States, the earliest adding machines were usually built to read in dollars and cents. Adding machines were ubiquitous office equipment until they were phased out in favor of...
s, and later moved into programmable ledgers and then computers. And while it was one of the largest producers of mainframe computer
Mainframe computer
Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...
s in the world, Burroughs also produced related equipment as well, including typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
s and printers.
Early history
In 1886, the American Arithmometer Company was established in St. Louis, MissouriSt. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
to produce and sell an adding machine
Adding machine
An adding machine was a class of mechanical calculator, usually specialized for bookkeeping calculations.In the United States, the earliest adding machines were usually built to read in dollars and cents. Adding machines were ubiquitous office equipment until they were phased out in favor of...
invented by William Seward Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs I
William Seward Burroughs I was an American inventor born in Rochester, New York.Burroughs was the son of a mechanic and worked with machines throughout his childhood. While he was still a small boy, his parents moved to Auburn, New York, where he and his brothers were educated in the public school...
(grandfather of Beat Generation
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
author William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
). In 1904, six years after Burroughs' death, the company moved to Detroit and changed its name to the Burroughs Adding Machine Company. It soon was the biggest adding machine company in America.
Evolving product lines
Burroughs developed a range of adding machines with different capabilities, gradually increasing in their capabilities. A revolutionary adding machine was the Sensimatic, which was able to perform many business functions semi-automatically. It had a moving programmable carriage to maintain ledgersGeneral ledger
The main accounting record of a business which uses double-entry bookkeeping. It will usually include accounts for such items as current assets, fixed assets, liabilities, revenue and expense items, gains and losses. Each General Ledger is divided into debits and credits sections. The left hand...
. It could store 9, 18 or 27 balances
Trial balance
A trial balance is a list of all the nominal ledger accounts contained in the ledger of a business. This list will contain the name of the nominal ledger account and the value of that nominal ledger account. The value of the nominal ledger will hold either a debit balance value or a credit value...
during the ledger posting operations and worked with a mechanical adder named a Crossfooter. The Sensimatic developed into the Sensitronic which could store balances on a magnetic stripe which was part of the ledger card. This balance was read into the accumulator when the card was inserted into the carriage. The Sensitronic was followed by the E1000, the E2000, E4000, E6000 and the E8000, which was computer system supporting magnetic tape
Magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders...
, card reader/punches and a line printer
Line printer
The line printer is a form of high speed impact printer in which one line of type is printed at a time. They are mostly associated with the early days of computing, but the technology is still in use...
.
In time, Burroughs was selling more than adding machines, including typewriters. But the biggest shift in company history came in 1953; the Burroughs Adding Machine Company was renamed the Burroughs Corporation and began moving into computer products, initially for banking institutions. This move began with Burrough's purchase, in June 1956, of the ElectroData Corporation in Pasadena, California
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
, a spinoff of the Consolidated Engineering Corporation which had designed test instruments and had a cooperative relationship with Caltech
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...
in Pasadena. ElectroData had built the Datatron 205 and was working on the Datatron 220. The first major computer product that came from this marriage was the B205 tube computer. In the late 1960s the D2000, D4000 range was produced (also known as the TC500—Terminal Computer 500) which had a golf ball printer and a 1K (80 bit) disk memory. These were popular as branch terminal
Computer terminal
A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying data from, a computer or a computing system...
s to the B5500/6500/6700 systems, which sold well in the banking sector, where they were often connected to non-Burroughs mainframes. In conjunction with these products, Burroughs also manufactured an extensive range of cheque processing equipment, normally attached as terminals to a larger system such as a B2700 or B1700.
A force in the computing industry
Burroughs was one of the eight major United States computer companies (with IBMIBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, the largest, Honeywell
Honeywell
Honeywell International, Inc. is a major conglomerate company that produces a variety of consumer products, engineering services, and aerospace systems for a wide variety of customers, from private consumers to major corporations and governments....
, NCR Corporation
NCR Corporation
NCR Corporation is an American technology company specializing in kiosk products for the retail, financial, travel, healthcare, food service, entertainment, gaming and public sector industries. Its main products are self-service kiosks, point-of-sale terminals, automated teller machines, check...
, Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation was a supercomputer firm. For most of the 1960s, it built the fastest computers in the world by far, only losing that crown in the 1970s after Seymour Cray left the company to found Cray Research, Inc....
, General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
, RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
and UNIVAC
UNIVAC
UNIVAC is the name of a business unit and division of the Remington Rand company formed by the 1950 purchase of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, founded four years earlier by ENIAC inventors J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, and the associated line of computers which continues to this day...
) through most of the 1960s. In terms of sales, Burroughs was always a distant second to IBM. In fact, IBM's share of the market at the time was so much larger than all of the others, that this group was often referred to as "IBM and the Seven Dwarfs." By 1972 when GE and RCA were no longer in the mainframe business, the remaining five companies behind IBM became known as the BUNCH
BUNCH
The group of mainframe computer competitors to IBM in the 1970s became known as the BUNCH: Burroughs, UNIVAC, NCR, Control Data Corporation, and Honeywell...
, an acronym based on their initials.
At the same time, Burroughs was very much a competitor. Like IBM, Burroughs tried to supply a complete line of products for its customers, including Burroughs-designed printers, disk drives, tape drive
Tape drive
A tape drive is a data storage device that reads and performs digital recording, writes data on a magnetic tape. Magnetic tape data storage is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and long archival stability.A tape drive provides...
s, computer printing paper, and even typewriter ribbon
Typewriter ribbon
A typewriter ribbon is an expendable module serving the function of transferring pigment to paper in various devices for impact printing. Such ribbons were part of standard designs for hand- or motor-driven typewriters, teleprinters, stenotype machines, computer-driven printers and many mechanical...
s.
In the 1950s, Burroughs had worked with the Federal Reserve Bank on the development and computer processing of magnetic ink character recognition
Magnetic ink character recognition
Magnetic Ink Character Recognition, or MICR, is a character recognition technology used primarily by the banking industry to facilitate the processing of cheques and makes up the routing number and account number at the bottom of a check. The technology allows computers to read information off...
(MICR) especially for the processing of bank cheques. Burroughs made special MICR/OCR sorter/readers which attached to their medium systems line of computers (2700/3700/4700
Burroughs B2000
The Burroughs B2500-B4900 series of computers were also known as Burroughs Medium Systems. They were manufactured by Burroughs Corporation in Pasadena, California, United States, and were aimed straight at the business world with an instruction set optimized for the COBOL programming language....
) and this entrenched the company in the computer side of the banking industry.
Developments and innovations
The Burroughs Corporation developed three highly innovative architecturesComputer architecture
In computer science and engineering, computer architecture is the practical art of selecting and interconnecting hardware components to create computers that meet functional, performance and cost goals and the formal modelling of those systems....
, based on the design philosophy of "language directed design". Their machine instruction sets favored one or many high level programming languages, such as ALGOL
ALGOL
ALGOL is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in the mid 1950s which greatly influenced many other languages and became the de facto way algorithms were described in textbooks and academic works for almost the next 30 years...
, COBOL
COBOL
COBOL is one of the oldest programming languages. Its name is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language, defining its primary domain in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments....
or FORTRAN
Fortran
Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
. All three architectures were considered "main-frame" class machines:
- The Burroughs large systems machines started with the B5000 in 1961. The B5500 came a few years later; followed by the B6500/B6700 in the later 1960s, the B7700 in the mid 1970s, and the A series in the 1980s. It continues, today, as the UnisysUnisysUnisys Corporation , headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, United States, and incorporated in Delaware, is a long established business whose core products now involves computing and networking.-History:...
ClearPath MCP line of computers. The architecture of these machines were similar: stack machineStack machineA stack machine may be* A real or emulated computer that evaluates each sub-expression of a program statement via a pushdown data stack and uses a reverse Polish notation instruction set....
s designed to be programmed in an extended Algol 60ALGOL 60ALGOL 60 is a member of the ALGOL family of computer programming languages. It gave rise to many other programming languages, including BCPL, B, Pascal, Simula, C, and many others. ALGOL 58 introduced code blocks and the begin and end pairs for delimiting them...
. Their operating systemOperating systemAn operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s, called MCP (Master Control ProgramMCP (Burroughs Large Systems)The MCP is the proprietary operating system of the Burroughs large systems including the Unisys Clearpath/MCP systems....
—the name later borrowed by the screenwriters for TronTron-Film:*Tron , a franchise that began in 1982 with the Walt Disney Pictures film Tron** Tron , a 1982 science fiction film by Disney, starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan, Dan Shor and David Warner...
), were programmed in ESPOLESPOLESPOL was a superset of ALGOL 60 that provided capabilities of what would later be known as Mohols, machine oriented high order languages, such as interrupting a processor on a multiprocessor system...
(Executive Systems Programming Oriented Language, a minor extension of ALGOL), and later in NEWP (with further extensions to ALGOL) almost a decade before UnixUnixUnix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
. The command interface developed into a compiled structured languageStructured programmingStructured programming is a programming paradigm aimed on improving the clarity, quality, and development time of a computer program by making extensive use of subroutines, block structures and for and while loops - in contrast to using simple tests and jumps such as the goto statement which could...
with declarations, statements and procedures called WFL (Work Flow LanguageWork Flow LanguageWork Flow Language, or WFL is the process control language for the Burroughs large systems, including the Unisys ClearPath/MCP series, and their operating system Master Control Program. Developed soon after the B5000 in 1961, WFL is the ClearPath equivalent of the Job Control Language on IBM...
). Burroughs probably learned a lot on multiprocessor architecture developing the ILLIAC IVILLIAC IVThe ILLIAC IV was one of the most infamous supercomputers ever built. One of a series of research machines, the ILLIACs from the University of Illinois, the ILLIAC IV design featured fairly high parallelism with up to 256 processors, used to allow the machine to work on large data sets in what...
computer with the Univercity of Illinois in the early 1960's. The ILLIAC had up to 128 parallel processors while the B6700 & B7700 only accommodated a total of 7 CPU's and/or IO units (the 8'th unit was the memory tester).
Many computer scientist
Computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....
s consider these series of computers to be technologically groundbreaking. Stack oriented processors, with 48 bit word length where each word was defined as data or program contributed significantly to a secure operating environment, long before spyware
Spyware
Spyware is a type of malware that can be installed on computers, and which collects small pieces of information about users without their knowledge. The presence of spyware is typically hidden from the user, and can be difficult to detect. Typically, spyware is secretly installed on the user's...
and virus
Virus
A virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. Viruses infect all types of organisms, from animals and plants to bacteria and archaea...
es affected computing. And the modularity of these large systems was also unique: multiple CPUs, multiple memory modules and multiple I/O
I/O
I/O may refer to:* Input/output, a system of communication for information processing systems* Input-output model, an economic model of flow prediction between sectors...
and Data Comm processors permitted incremental and cost effective growth of system performance and reliability. In industries like banking, where continuous operations was mandatory, Burroughs large systems penetrated most every large bank, including the Federal Reserve Bank
Federal Reserve Bank
The twelve Federal Reserve Banks form a major part of the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States. The twelve federal reserve banks together divide the nation into twelve Federal Reserve Districts, the twelve banking districts created by the Federal Reserve Act of...
. And Burroughs built the backbone switching systems for SWIFT Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication operates a worldwide financial messaging network which exchanges messages between banks and other financial institutions...
which sent its first message in 1977. Unisys is still the provider to SWIFT today.
- Burroughs produced the B2500 or "medium systems" computers aimed primarily at the business world. The machines were designed to execute COBOLCOBOLCOBOL is one of the oldest programming languages. Its name is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language, defining its primary domain in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments....
efficiently. This included a BCD (Binary Coded Decimal) based arithmetic unit, storing and addressing the main memory using base 10 numbering instead of binaryBinary numeral systemThe binary numeral system, or base-2 number system, represents numeric values using two symbols, 0 and 1. More specifically, the usual base-2 system is a positional notation with a radix of 2...
. The designation for these systems was Burroughs B2500 through B49xx, followed by Unisys V-Series V340 through V560. - Burroughs produced the B1700Burroughs B1700The Burroughs B1000 Series of computers consisted of three major generations which were the B1700, B1800, and B1900 series machines originally introduced in the 1970s and continued later on....
or "small systems" computers that were designed to be microprogrammed, with each process potentially getting its own virtual machineVirtual machineA virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". Modern virtual machines are implemented with either software emulation or hardware virtualization or both together.-VM Definitions:A virtual machine is a software...
designed to be the best match to the programming languageProgramming languageA programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
chosen for the program being run. - The smallest general-purpose computers were the B700 "microprocessorMicroprocessorA microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
s" which were used both as stand-alone systems and as special-purpose data-communications or disk-subsystem controllers. - Burroughs also manufactured an extensive range of accounting machinesAccounting MachineAn accounting machine, or bookkeeping machine or recording-adder, was generally a calculator and printer combination tailored for a specific commercial activity such as billing, payroll, or ledger...
including both stand-alone systems such as the Sensimatic, L500 and B80, and dedicated terminals including the TC500 and specialised check processing equipment. - In 1982, Burroughs began producing personal computerPersonal computerA personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
s, the B20 and B25 lines with the Intel 8086Intel 8086The 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and mid-1978, when it was released. The 8086 gave rise to the x86 architecture of Intel's future processors...
/8088Intel 8088The Intel 8088 microprocessor was a variant of the Intel 8086 and was introduced on July 1, 1979. It had an 8-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers and the one megabyte address range were unchanged, however...
family of 8-bit chips as the processor. These ran the BTOSConvergent Technologies Operating SystemThe Convergent Technologies Operating System, also known variously as CTOS, BTOS and STARSYS, was a modular, message-passing, multiprocess-based operating system.-Overview:...
operating system, which Burroughs licensed from Convergent TechnologiesConvergent Technologies (Unisys)Convergent Technologies was an American computer company formed by a small group of people who left Intel Corporation and Xerox PARC in 1979....
. These machines implemented an early Local Area NetworkLocal area networkA local area network is a computer network that interconnects computers in a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, or office building...
to share a hard diskHard diskA hard disk drive is a non-volatile, random access digital magnetic data storage device. It features rotating rigid platters on a motor-driven spindle within a protective enclosure. Data is magnetically read from and written to the platter by read/write heads that float on a film of air above the...
between workgroupWorkgroup (Computer networking)A workgroup is Microsoft's terminology for a peer-to-peer Windows computer network.Microsoft operating systems in the same workgroup may allow each other access to their files, printers, or Internet connection...
users. These microcomputers were later manufactured in KunmingKunming' is the capital and largest city of Yunnan Province in Southwest China. It was known as Yunnan-Fou until the 1920s. A prefecture-level city, it is the political, economic, communications and cultural centre of Yunnan, and is the seat of the provincial government...
, ChinaChinaChinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
for use in China under agreement with Burroughs.
Burroughs also made military computers, such as the D825 (the "D" prefix signifying it was for defense industrial use), in its Great Valley Laboratory in Paoli, Pennsylvania
Paoli, Pennsylvania
Paoli is a census-designated place in Chester County near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It is situated in portions of two townships: Tredyffrin and Willistown...
. The D825 was, according to some scholars, the first true multiprocessor computer. Paoli was also home to the Defense and Space Group Marketing Division.
Merger
In September 1986, Burroughs Corporation merged with Sperry CorporationSperry Corporation
Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the twentieth century...
to form Unisys
Unisys
Unisys Corporation , headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, United States, and incorporated in Delaware, is a long established business whose core products now involves computing and networking.-History:...
. For a time, the combined company retained the Burroughs processors as the A and V systems lines. However, as the market for large systems shifted from proprietary architectures to common servers, the company eventually dropped these product lines.
Re-emergence of the Burroughs name
In 2010, UNISYS sold off its Payment Systems Division to Marlin Equity Partners, a California-based private investment firm, which incorporated it as Burroughs Payment Systems based in Plymouth, MichiganPlymouth, Michigan
Plymouth is a city in Wayne County of the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 9,132 at the 2010 census. The City of Plymouth is an enclave completely surrounded by Plymouth Charter Township, Michigan.-Geography:...
.
Further reading
- Barton, Robert S. "A New Approach to the Functional Design of a Digital Computer" Proc. western joint computer Conf. ACM (1961).
- Gray, George. "Some Burroughs Transistor Computers", Unisys History Newsletter, Volume 3, Number 1, March 1999.
- Gray, George. "Burroughs Third-Generation Computers", Unisys History Newsletter, Volume 3, Number 5, October 1999.
- Hauck, E.A., Dent, Ben A. "Burroughs B6500/B7500 Stack Mechanism", SJCC (1968) pp. 245–251.
- McKeeman, William M. "Language Directed Computer Design", FJCC (1967) pp. 413–417.
- Organick, Elliot I. "Computer System Organization The B5700/B6700 series", Academic Press (1973)
- Wilner, Wayne T. "Design of the B1700", FJCC pp. 489–497 (1972).
- Wilner, Wayne T., "B1700 Design and Implementation", Burroughs Corporation, Santa Barbara Plant, Goleta, California, May 1972.
External links
- Burroughs Corporation Records Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Collection contains the records of the Burroughs Corporation, and its predecessors the American Arithmometer Company and Burroughs Adding Machine Company. Materials include corporate records, photographs, films and video tapes, scrapbooks, papers of employees and the records of companies acquired by Burroughs. CBI's Burroughs Corporation Records includes over 100,000 photographs depicting the entire visual history of Burroughs from its origin as the American Arithmometer Corporation in 1886 to its merger with the Sperry Corporation to form the Unisys Corporation in 1986. - Burroughs Corporation Photo Database at the Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
University of Minnesota. The searchable photo database permits browsing and retrieval of over 550 historical images. - "Burroughs B 5000 Conference, OH 98", Oral history on 6 September 1985, Marina del Ray, California. Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. ( PDF version) The Burroughs 5000 computer series is discussed by individuals responsible for its development and marketing from 1957 through the 1960s in a 1985 conference sponsored by AFIPS and Burroughs Corporation. - Oral history interview with Isaac Levin Auerbach Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
University of Minnesota. Auerbach discusses his work at Burroughs 1949–1957 managing development for the SAGE projectSemi Automatic Ground EnvironmentThe Semi-Automatic Ground Environment was an automated control system for tracking and intercepting enemy bomber aircraft used by NORAD from the late 1950s into the 1980s...
, BEAM I computer, the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile System, a magnetic coreMagnetic coreA magnetic core is a piece of magnetic material with a high permeability used to confine and guide magnetic fields in electrical, electromechanical and magnetic devices such as electromagnets, transformers, electric motors, inductors and magnetic assemblies. It is made of ferromagnetic metal such...
encryption communications system, and Atlas missile. - Oral history interview with Robert V. D. Campbell. Discusses his work at Burroughs (1949–1966) as director of research and in program planning.
- Oral history interview with Alfred Doughty Cavanaugh Cavanaugh discusses the work of his grandfather, A. J. Doughty, with William Seward BurroughsWilliam S. BurroughsWilliam Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
and the Burroughs Adding Machine Company. - Oral history interview with Carel Sellenraad Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
University of Minnesota. Sellenraad describes his long association with Burroughs Adding Machine Company, and the impact of World Wars I & II on the sales and service of calculators, and adding and bookkeeping machines in Europe. - Oral history interview with Ovid M. Smith Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
University of Minnesota. Smith reviews his 46½ year career at Burroughs Adding Machine Company (later Burroughs Corporation). - "Early Burroughs Machines", University of VirginiaUniversity of VirginiaThe University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
's Computer Museum. - Older Burroughs computer manuals online
- Burroughs computers such as the D825 at BRL
- An historical Burroughs Adding Machine Company/Burroughs site
- Unofficial list of Burroughs manufacturing plants and labs
- Ian Joyner's Burroughs page
- The Burroughs B5900 and E-Mode: A bridge to 21st Century Computing - Jack Allweiss