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Ferranti or Ferranti International plc by the time of its collapse, was a major UK electrical engineering and equipment firm, known primarily for their defence electronics and power grid systems.
Ferranti is also famous in the computer industry for building the second commercial computer, the Ferranti Mark I, which went on sale in 1949 and started their computer business which lasted into the 1970s. They had influential collaborations with the University computing departments at Manchester and Cambridge, which resulted in the development of the Mercury and Atlas machines (Manchester); and the Atlas 2 (Cambridge) aka Titan machine.
History
Beginnings
Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti went into this business in 1882 when he set up shop in London designing various electrical devices. Ferranti bet on AC early on, and was one of the few experts in this system in the UK. In 1887 the London Electric Supply Corporation (LESCo) hired Ferranti for the design of their power station at Deptford. He designed the building, the generating plant and the distribution system. On its completion in 1891 it was the first truly modern power station, supplying high-voltage AC power that was then "stepped down" for consumer use on each street. This basic system remains in use today around the world.Rapid Growth
Success followed and Ferranti started producing electrical equipment for sale. Soon the company was looking for considerably more room. Prices in the London area were too high, so the company moved to Hollinwood in Oldham in 1896. Ferranti Ltd. was established in 1905. By the end of the decade Ferranti had amassed 176 patents for such things as the alternator, high-tension cables, circuit breakers, transformers and turbines.Through the early part of the century power was supplied by small companies, typically as an offshoot of plant set up to provide power to local industry. Each plant supplied a different standard, which made the mass production of electrical equipment for home users rather difficult. In 1910 Ferranti started an effort to standardize the power supply, which eventually culminated in the National Grid in 1926.
New factories were set up in the north-west at Moston, Wythenshawe, Cheadle Heath and Gorton which were happy for the jobs. Eventually they set up branch-plants in Edinburgh, Dalkeith and Aberdeen as well as several British Commonwealth countries, including Canada, Australia and Singapore, as well as Germany and the U.S..
Ferranti manufactured many "white goods" Televisions, Radios etc. at its Moston plant, in addition Ferranti Instruments, again based at Moston developed various items for scientific measurements, including one of the first cone and plate viscometers.
Electronics and Computers
During World War II, Ferranti became a major supplier of electronics, and were heavily involved in the early development of radar in England. In the post-war era this became a large segment of their company, with various branches supplying radar sets, avionics and other military electronics, both in England and their various international offices.In the late 1940s Ferranti joined with various university-based research groups to develop computers. Their first effort was the PEGASUS, a vacuum tube-based system of which 38 were sold.
In collaboration with the University of Manchester they built a new version of the famous Manchester Mark I that replaced many tube components with solid state versions (although not all of them), which allowed the speed to be increased dramatically as well as increasing reliability. Ferranti offered the result commercially as the Mercury starting in 1957, and eventually sold nineteen in total. Although a small part of Ferranti's empire, the computer division was nevertheless highly visible.
Work on a completely new design, the Atlas, started soon after the delivery of the Mercury, aiming to dramatically improve performance. The machine first ran in 1962, and Ferranti eventually built three machines in total. A version of the Atlas modified for the needs of the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory led to the Titan (or Atlas 2), which was the mainstay of scientific computing in Cambridge for nearly 8 years.
By the early 1960s their mid-size machines were no longer competitive, but efforts to design a replacement were bogged down. Into this void stepped the Canadian division, Ferranti-Packard, who had used several of the ideas under development in England to very quickly produce the Ferranti-Packard 6000. By this time Ferranti's own computer division had been merged into International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) in 1963. After studying several options, ICT selected the FP 6000 as the basis for their ICT 1900 line which sold into the 1970s.
The deal setting up ICT excluded Ferranti from the commercial sector of computing; but left the industrial field free. The FP 6000 became the basis for the Ferranti Argus 500.
Both the ICT 1900 series and the Argus 500 had 24 bit words. The assembler was almost identical, but with slightly different mnemonics. (1900 assembler was called PLAN, Ferranti Argus assembler was called APRIL.) The ICT 1900 series advanced with a COBOL compiler, to become a successful commercial computer for many years.
The Argus 500 had Fortran, and later CORAL compilers. It had huge success in real time applications, from Command and Control centres, to industrial control.
In the early 1970s Ferranti moved on by designing the Argus 700; this also achieved international success for industrial and military applications.
Other computers included the F1600B, F1600D, and F1600E (all with 24-bit words), and one of the first 16-bit processors, the F100L.
Dissolution
Ferranti concentrated on their defence sales from the late 1980s. The Bloodhound SAM, for which they developed radar systems, was a key money earner.Ferranti purchased International Signal and Control (ISC), a Pennsylvania based defence contractor, in 1987 and was renamed Ferranti International plc. Ferranti was reorganised, divisions which were set up include:
- Ferranti Computer Systems
- Ferranti Defence Systems Integration
- Ferranti Dynamics
- Ferranti Satcomms
- Ferranti Technologies
- International Signal & Control
Unknown to Ferranti, ISC's business primarily consisted of illegal arms sales started at the behest of various US clandestine organizations. On paper the company looked to be extremely profitable on sales of high-priced "above board" items, but in fact these profits were essentially non-existent. With the sale to Ferranti all illegal sales ended immediately, leaving the company with no obvious cash flow.
In 1989 the Serious Fraud Office started criminal investigation regarding alleged massive fraud at ISC. In December 1991 James Guerin, founder of ISC and co-Chairman of the merged company, pleaded guilty before the federal court in Philadelphia to fraud committed both in the USA and UK. All offences which would have formed part of any UK prosecution were encompassed by the US trial and as such no UK trial proceeded.
The massive financial and legal difficulties that resulted forced Ferranti into bankruptcy in December 1993.
The computer section was bought out of bankruptcy by a Thompson-CSF subsidiary called SYSECA. It traded on as Ferranti-SYSECA, until the Ferranti name was finally dropped about 1996.
Break-up of the Ferranti Empire
- Ferranti Computer Systems – acquired out of administration by SYSECA Thales Information Systems, and renamed Ferranti-SYSECA Ltd, later the Ferranti was dropped. The department dealing with airport systems was bought by Datel in around 1995 and continued to trade under the name Ferranti Airport Systems FASL until it was bought by Ultra Electronics.
- Ferranti Defence Systems Integration – acquired by GEC-Marconi out of administration
- Ferranti Dynamics – acquired by GEC-Marconi in 1992
- Ferranti Instruments – dissolved. Some minor assets acquired by Ravenfield Designs
- Ferranti Satcomms – acquired out of administration by Matra Marconi Space in 1994
- Ferranti Technologies – Independent company
- Ferranti Air Systems – acquired by Datel then turned into an independent company. Later bought by Ultra Electronics
- 50% share of Ferranti Thomson Sonar Systems – acquired by GEC-Marconi
- Ferranti Helicopters – acquired by British Caledonian Airways in April 1979 to become British Caledonian Helicopters which was in turn acquired by Bristow Helicopters in 1987
- Note: GEC had acquired certain defence businesses of Ferranti in 1990
Remaining Uses of the Ferranti Name
A number of uses of the Ferranti name remain in use. In Edinburgh, the Ferranti Edinburgh Social Club (FESC) and Ferranti Mountaineering Club are still in existence. While these organisations no longer have any formal ties with the companies which subsumed the Ferranti companies which operated in Edinburgh, they still operate under the old names.
Trivia
- Tim Berners-Lee, acknowledged as the founder of the World Wide Web, is the son of two designers of the Ferranti Mark I.
Defunct companies of the United Kingdom | Defunct computer hardware companies
External Links
"Ferranti"