Political Scene: 1949 NRDC

The UK Governments from 1945-1976 were a mixture of Labour and Conservative:

1945-1951    Labour         Clement Attlee
1951-1955    Conservative   Winston Churchill
1955-1957    Conservative   Anthony Eden (resigned 1957 after Suez)
1957-1959    Conservative   Harold Macmillan 
1959-1963    Conservative   Harold Macmillan (retired)
1963-1964    Conservative   Sir Alec Douglas-Home 
1964-1970    Labour         Harold Wilson
1970-1974    Conservative   Edward Heath
1974-1976    Labour         Harold Wilson

1949: NRDC

The National Research and Development Corporation (NRDC) was set up in May 1949 under Lord Halsbury by the Atlee Labour Government that ran from 1945-1951. NRDC's role was to foster the commercial exploitation of British inventions and stimulate the development of the British computer industry.

One of its early acts was the licensing of the Manchester University Williams Tube memory invention to IBM for the IBM 701.

In December 1949, Lord Halsbury organised a Conference for the punched-card machine manufacturers and the electronics companies to work together to develop a data-processing machine. The companies involved showed little interest in combining their efforts in what might be a lucrative data-processing computer industry

To encourage the companies interested in evolving the new computer industry, NRDC placed a number of contracts:

• 1951: £400K, Ferranti and Manchester University developing the Mark 1*
• 1953: £500K, Elliott Brothers, later Ferranti to develop the Elliott 401 and the Ferranti Pegasus
• 1955: £620K, EMI to develop its EMIDEC 2400 computer with magnetic core memory and transistor technology (part of ICT in 1962)
• 1956: Design objectives for the Univac STRETCH and LARC were presented at the Eastern Joint Computer Conference in the USA. NRDC was unclear as to whether or not to compete
• 1957: Jack Howlett (AERE Harwell) and John Corner (AWRE) made the case for a super-computer as by 1960 the AEA would need a computer comparable to LARC and STRETCH
• 1957: NRDC agrees to put £1M into a high-speed computer project under its control with several centres involved
• 1958: Second Harwell Computer Conference produced a specification of the supercomputer required by AEA and recommended that the Manchester MUSE (Musecond Engine) project should be assessed as to whether it fitted the need.
• 1958: Ferranti decide to to go ahead independently of NRDC with a cooperative project with Manchester University. MUSE was renamed as ATLAS.
• 1959: Lord Halsbury retired from NRDC

In October 1964, NRDC's role with respect to the computer industry was taken over by the Ministry of Technology when the Labour Government of Harold Wilson took power.

Despite NRDC's efforts to create a viable UK computer industry with a few major players, the market was split between a range of companies (Ferranti, English Electric, Elliott Brothers, Standard Telephones & Cables, etc). The scientific computers in use by UK Universities in 1965 were:

• Arrived before 1963
  • English Electric Deuce: 1
  • Ferranti Pegasus: 1
  • Stantec Zebra: 4
  • IBM 1620: 2
  • Elliott 803: 12
  • Ferranti Mercury: 1
  • Ferranti Sirius: 3
• Arrived after 1963:
  • IBM 7090: 1
  • English Electric KDF9: 8
  • Ferranti Atlas: 3
• At least five universities did not have a computer at all

The IBM 7090 at Imperial College was larger than all the earlier computers put together.

The eight KDF9s recommended by the Flowers Report were each less powerful than the IBM 7090 but combined probably were five times its power.

Most university machines were not operated on a 24/7 basis so the Chilton Atlas when fully operational exceeded the power of all the existing university computers in 1965 apart from the other Atlas computers.