Abstract
The first investigation into the possibility of applying an Elliott 402 computer to commercial data processing was published in 1954 (see [1]). There then appear to have been at least two events that persuaded Borehamwood that the 402 was not, after all, a suitable architecture for business applications and that new, specially designed, hardware would be required [2]. The first event was Andrew St Johnston’s unsuccessful attempt to sell an Elliott 402 to the Mars confectionary company. During this exercise, it was realised that the transfer of large amounts of data was a critical issue and that the 402 was not up to this task. The second event was the approach to Borehamwood in May 1954 by the Long Range Weapons Establishment (LRWE), who urgently needed a computer that was also required to deal with very large volumes of data.
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Lavington, S. (2011). NCR, the 405 and Commercial Data Processing. In: Moving Targets. History of Computing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-933-6_9
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