Ferranti-Packard
For several years in the post-war era, the company underwent a dramatic expansion and had several brushes with success in the computer market, but eventually shed various divisions and returned to being an electrical grid supplier once again.
On July 23, 2005 Siemens PTD purchased VA Tech's Transmission and Distribution Division (T&D) group for transformers and switchgear.
Ferranti Canada had first been set up in 1912, acting primarily as a sales and distribution arm for their British designed electrical products.
Howe, Minister of Armaments, started an ambitious plan to heavily industrialize the country, turning it almost overnight into what is today a G8 nation.
The letter made its way to the desk of Vincent Ziani de Ferranti, the then-current CEO of the family-held British company.
[2] He had been proposing a completely automated system for ships to pass around tactical data from radar and sonar, to help organize the defence of a convoy under attack by submarines.
During this period, some time in 1951, Ferranti Canada also considered commercializing the University of Toronto's experimental UTEC computer, which seemed considerably less complex than the Mark I being developed in England.
This effort also ended when in 1952, the University purchased a surplus Mark I originally intended for the UK's nuclear weapons program which had suffered massive budget cuts with a change of government.
In 1956, the company received a contract from the Canadian Post Office to develop an electronic mail sorting system, which they delivered later that year.
Oddly, the system was later adapted for cheque sorting by the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, who took delivery of an almost identical machine in 1958, based on reading MICR digits instead of bar codes.
[citation needed] There was some talk of developing the Ferranti system into a commercial line, but it became clear that as general purpose computers fell in price, a single mass-produced model would soon be able to outperform a custom-built design, even on cost.
Apparently due largely to not-invented-here problems, Ferranti in the UK decided to develop an entirely new system to fill this need, instead of using the Canadian version.
Meanwhile, Ferranti-Packard decided they should set up production for the Atlas machine as well, but after successfully securing loans from the government they were astounded to learn that the UK division refused to allow them access to the design.
The UK division then asked several Canadian engineers to move to England in an attempt to re-engineer the Orion based on ReserVec's transistorized circuits.
One was purchased by the DRB's station in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, another by the Toronto Stock Exchange,[7] one by Saskatchewan Power, and a final machine by a research facility in Dalkeith, bringing the total to five sales.
[9] The UK headquarters gave the invention little note, but it became somewhat successful in spite of this, and HQ eventually used it as a way to try to sell off the Canadian division in the 1970s.
Today, these displays can commonly be found in outdoor use, notably on highway signage and in the automotive application of destination signs for public service vehicles.
It was also installed at the Chicago Board of Trade, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, World Trade Center, United Airlines baggage handling system at DFW airport, as well as Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania Departments of Transportation and New York Port Authority as changeable message signs for traffic control.
The red bars allowed electronic re-orientation of the scanning system to set-off a white flash which temporarily burned the barcode image unto the photosurface of the scanner.
A single workstation version model, the Datatriever 1000, with integrated electronic US post-office certified attached weigh scales and a label printer, sold 400 units including controlling computers (DEC PDP-8) to Spiegels on one contract for 1.5 times FPs total annual income.
