In article ,
"Andrew Mawson" writes:
"Martin" wrote in message
...

On Wed, 16 May 2018 21:19:58 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

On 16/05/18 20:55, bert wrote:
End of an era
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ot7sw7v9nd...orton.jpg?dl=0

I'm old but alas ICL means nothing to me - I was a DEC fan and sadly HP
grabbed them yonks ago....

HP didn't grab them, they bought what was left after DEC went bust.

ICL West Gorton was originally Ferranti West Gorton. ICL was formed from ICT
and bits of Ferranti and government money. I can remember the ICY sign
coming down on their office at Putney Bridge and the ICL sign going up. Late
1960's I think

ICT also got the data processing parts of English Electric and
Elliot Automation and Marconi, as the government tried to merge all
the data processing expertise into one British company in the hope
it would create a company which could compete in the world.

Likewise, all the process control and military computing from
English Electric and Marconi was merged into Elliott Automation,
which became Marconi Elliott Computer Systems briefly, and then
GEC Computers a year later. GEC later also absorbed the process
control and military computing from Ferranti (I think that's all
that was left of Ferranti by then).

The agreements around these government driven mergers forbid
ICT (ICL) from building process control systems, and forbid
Elliott Automation (GEC) from building data processing systems
for some years afterwards, so they would both concentrate on
their areas of expertise and not try to compete with each other.

--
Andrew Gabriel
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