GEC Computers

Starting life as Elliott Automation, in 1967–68 the data processing computer products were transferred to ICT/ICL and non-computing products to English Electric as part of a reorganisation of the parent company forced by the British Government.

One of the largest of these were X.25 packet switch systems, which resulted from a research collaboration with NERC.

In the late 1970s, Post Office Telecommunications developed Prestel on the GEC 4000 series, and this resulted in sales for similar applications all over the world.

[1] By 1980, OS4000 was becoming popular in UK academic and research organisations as a multi-user system, with installations at Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, Daresbury Laboratory, Harwell Laboratory, NERC, Met Office, CERN, in many university physics and/or engineering departments, and as the main central computer service at University College London (Euclid) and Keele University.

Many new technology companies trying to enter the market struggled when required to provide this type of service, and GEC Computers started taking on third-party field service support for many other companies, including some which competed with GEC Computers' own products.

Throughout the 1980s, GEC Computers expanded from its Borehamwood offices into three large purpose-built factory units in the Woodside Estate, Dunstable.

At the company's peak in the early 1980s there were about 1,600 employees, mainly based in the original Elliott building at Borehamwood, and at Dunstable.

However, there was only a window of a few years before the World Wide Web displaced Videotex systems, and the last of the company's main markets ended.