[1] Designed to be used in smaller offices without a dedicated programming staff, the Sirius used decimal arithmetic instead of binary, supported Autocode to ease programming, was designed to fit behind a standard office desk, and ran on UK standard mains electricity (then 240 V) with no need for cooling.
It was also fairly slow, with instruction speeds around 4,000 operations per second, and had limited main memory based on delay lines, but as Ferranti pointed out, its price/performance ratio was difficult to beat.
[2] The amplifiers used the saturation points and hysteresis curves of a magnetic core to sum a number of inputs and settle to a single output state.
When they were first being studied, transistors were expensive and unreliable devices, but the introduction of new manufacturing techniques in the late 1950s started to address both of these problems.
[4] One group working on the magnetic amplifier design was Gordon Scarrott's team at Ferranti R&D labs in West Gorton, Manchester.
[9] Convinced that Neuron was a major advance, Ferranti R&D proposed a much larger machine based on the same logic, one that would have even greater price advantages over traditional designs.
The new machine was aimed at the business market, not their traditional high-performance niche, and Prudential plc signed up as a launch customer while several other large insurance firms followed.
Engineers at other Ferranti offices were concerned about the Neuron-based design from the start, but were never able to convince management to stop the effort.
[6] When Orion failed, these teams were able to convince Prudential that they could deliver a machine five times as fast at the same price point within three years.
Output consisted of two ten-digit displays using nixie tubes on the front of the machine, which also featured a large electric clock.
It required 5 amps of standard 50 Hz 240 V mains power, the only concern being that it was "free from excessive fluctuations".
This size was chosen to allow it to be placed directly behind a standard office desk, and the power supply was positioned so it projected into the knee-hole area.
The reader and input box were normally placed on the desk, while the paper tape punch, a relatively large machine, was separate and sized to provide an even desktop.