Electrical and Musical Industries — Computing on a Shoestring

Abstract

Electrical and Musical Industries (EMI) and Ferranti were very different firms but in essentially many of the same markets. Ferranti was dominated by a large family shareholding and family control, while EMI was a more conventional, listed company without those influences. However, while Ferranti was wedded to electronic capital goods, EMI, while a leader in this field, also had larger consumer electronics and, more importantly, software interests for these devices — i.e., it was the UK’s major integrated producer, making the tape decks which recorded, then played the music of their artists, such as the Beatles. Despite these differences, EMI succumbed to essentially the same pressures that led to Ferranti leaving the computer industry. It too lacked the ability to provide the resources to exploit the technology it had developed. As another concentrically diversified firm, it had problems in supporting multiple growth paths and could not justify the resources for the commercial mainframe computer industry — although this was clearly going to be the major source of demand for civilian capital electronics.