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Burroughs Corporation
The '''Burroughs Corporation''' was a major United States|American manufacturer of Office supplies|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 history of computing|computing. At its start it produced mechanical adding machines, and later moved into programmable ledgers and then computers. And while it was one of the largest producers of mainframe computers in the world, Burroughs also produced related equipment as well, including typewriters and Printer (computing)|printers.
Early history
File:Burrough's Adding Machines, 1914.jpg|thumb|1914 advertisement
In 1886 the American Arithmometer Company was established in St. Louis, Missouri to produce and sell an adding machine invented by William Seward Burroughs I|William Seward 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.
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 general ledger|ledgers. It could store 9, 18 or 27 Trial balance|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 Electrodynamics Corporation. 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 (computers)|memory. These were popular as branch Computer terminal|terminals 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 B1700.
A force in the computing industry
Burroughs was one of the eight major United States computer companies (with IBM, the largest, Honeywell, NCR Corporation, Control Data Corporation, General Electric, RCA and UNIVAC) through most of the 1960s. Yet in terms of sales, Burroughs was always a distant second to International Business Machines|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." [
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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 drives, computer paper, and even typewriter ribbons.
Developments and innovations
The Burroughs Corporation developed three highly innovative computer architecture|architectures, 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:
- The Burroughs large systems machines starting with the B5000 in 1961, the B5500 was to follow a few years later; followed by the 6500/6700 in the later 1960s and the B7700 in the mid 1970's. The architecture of these machines were similar: stack machines designed to be programmed in an extended Algol 60. Their operating systems, called MCP (MCP (Burroughs Large Systems)|Master Control Program—the name later borrowed by the screenwriters for ''Tron (film)|Tron''), were programmed in ESPOL (Executive Systems Programming Oriented Language, a minor extension of Algol) almost a decade before Unix, and the command interface developed into a compiled Structured programming|structured language with procedures called WFL (Work Flow Language).
Many computer scientists 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 viruses 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. And Burroughs built the backbone switching systems for SWIFT for Worldwide Financial Telecommunications which sent its first message in 1977. Unisys is still the provider to SWIFT today.
- Burroughs produced the Burroughs B2000|B2000 or "medium systems" computers aimed primarily at the business world. The machines were designed to execute COBOL efficiently. This included a BCD (Binary Coded Decimal) based arithmetic unit, storing and addressing the main memory using base 10 numbering instead of Binary numeral system|binary. The designation for these systems was the B2000-49xx followed by V-Series.
- Burroughs produced the Burroughs B1700|B1700 or "small systems" computers that were designed to be microprogrammed, with each process potentially getting its own virtual machine designed to be the best match to the programming language chosen for the program being run.
- The smallest general-purpose computers were the B700 "microprocessors" 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 Machine|accounting machines including both stand-alone systems such as the Burroughs Sensimatic|Sensimatic, L500 and B80, and dedicated terminals including the TC500 and specialised check processing equipment.
- In the early 1980s Burroughs began producing personal computers, the B20 and B25 lines. These ran the Convergent Technologies Operating System|BTOS operating system, which Burroughs licensed from Convergent Technologies (Unisys)|Convergent Technologies. These machines implemented an early Local Area Network to share a hard disk between workgroup users.
Burroughs also made military computers, such as the D825, in its Great Valley Laboratory in Paoli, Pennsylvania. The D825 was, according to some scholars, the first true multiprocessor computer.[Enslow, Philip H., Jr., "Multiprocessor Organization - A Survey", Computing Surveys, Vol. 9, March 1977, pp.103-129.]
Merger
In September 1986, Burroughs Corporation merged with Sperry Corporation to form Unisys. Interestingly, the origins of both Sperry and Burroughs were in Philadelphia. Unisys has continued to evolve as did its predecessor, and as the market for mainframe computers shrank, Unisys has emphasized other product lines.
References in popular culture
Burroughs B205 hardware has appeared as props in many Hollywood TV and movie productions from the 1960s onwards. For example a B205 front panel|console was often shown in the TV series ''Batman (TV series)|Batman'' as the ''Bat Computer''; also as the computer in ''Lost in Space''. B205 tape drives were often seen in shows such as ''The Time Tunnel'' and ''Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (TV series)|Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea''.
Notes
References
- 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.http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/randy.carpenter/folklore/v3n1.html
- Gray, George. "Burroughs Third-Generation Computers, Unisys History Newsletter, Volume 3, Number 5, October 1999. http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/randy.carpenter/folklore/v3n5.html
- 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).
External links
- Burroughs Corporation Records Charles Babbage Institute 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 Institute University of Minnesota. The searchable photo database permits browsing and retrieval of over 550 historical images.
- Burroughs B 5000 Conference Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 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 Institute University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Auerbach discusses his employment from 1949-1957 with the Burroughs Corporation, including a number of projects he managed at Burroughs, including computer equipment for the SAGE project, BEAM I computer, the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile System, a magnetic core encryption communications system, and a missile guidance computer used for the Atlas missile.
- Oral history interview with Robert V. D. Campbell. Campbell his position at Burroughs (1949-1966) as director of research and in a staff position for program planning.
- Oral history interview with Carel Sellenraad Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 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 Institute University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Smith reviews his 46 1/2 year career at Burroughs Adding Machine Company (later Burroughs Corporation).
- "Early Burroughs Machines", University of Virginia'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
Category:Defunct computer companies of the United States
Category:Companies established in 1886
Category:Companies based in St. Louis, Missouri
Category:Companies disestablished in 1986
Category:Defunct companies based in Missouri
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