burroughs corporation burroughs inc burroughs corporation logo industry hardware founded 1886h eadquarters plymouth township michigan key people william seward burroughs i website wwwburroughscom the burroughs corporation was a major american manufacturer of business equipment the company was founded in 1886 as the american arithmometer company and after the 1986 merger with sperry univac was renamed unisys the companys history paralleled many of the major developments in computing at its start it produced mechanical adding machines and later moved into programmable ledgers and then computers it was one of the largest producers of mainframe computers in the world also producing related equipment including typewriters and printers early history 1914 advertisement an early burroughs adding machine desktop model in use around 1910 in 1886 the american arithmometer company was established in st louis missouri to produce and sell an adding machine invented by william seward burroughs grandfather of beat generation author william s burroughs in 1904 six years after burroughs death the company moved to detroit and changed its name to the burroughs adding machine company it was soon the biggest adding machine company in america evolving product lines the adding machine range began with the basic handcranked p100 which was only capable of adding the design included some revolutionary features foremost of which was the dashpot the p200 offered a subtraction capability and the p300 provided a means of keeping 2 separate totals the p400 provided a moveable carriage and the p600 and topoftherange p612 offered some limited programmability based upon the position of the carriage the range was further extended by the inclusion of the j series which provided a single finger calculation facility and the c series of both manual and electrical assisted comptometers in the late 1960s the burroughs sponsored nixitube provided an electronic display calculator burroughs developed a range of adding machines with different capabilities gradually increasing in their capabilities a revolutionary adding machine was the sensimatic which was able to perform many business functions semiautomatically it had a moving programmable carriage to maintain ledgers it could store 9 18 or 27 balances during the ledger posting operations and worked with a mechanical adder named a crossfooter the sensimatic developed into the sensitronic which could store balances on a magnetic stripe which was part of the ledger card this balance was read into the accumulator when the card was inserted into the carriage the sensitronic was followed by the e1000 e2000 e3000 e4000 e6000 and the e8000 which were computer systems supporting card readerpunches and a line printer later burroughs was selling more than adding machines including typewriters but the biggest shift in company history came in 1953 the burroughs adding machine company was renamed the burroughs corporation and began moving into computer products initially for banking institutions this move began with burroughs purchase in june 1956 of the electrodata corporation in pasadena california a spinoff of the consolidated engineering corporation which had designed test instruments and had a cooperative relationship with caltech in pasadena the first major computer product that came from this marriage was the b205 tube computer in the late 1960s the l and tc series range was produced eg the tc500terminal computer 500 which had a golf ball printer and in the beginning a 1k 64 bit disk memory these were popular as branch terminals to the b550065006700 systems and sold well in the banking sector where they were often connected to nonburroughs mainframes in conjunction with these products burroughs also manufactured an extensive range of cheque processing equipment normally attached as terminals to a larger system such as a b2700 or b1700 a force in the computing industry burroughs was one of the nine major united states computer companies in the 1960s with ibm the largest honeywell ncr corporation control data corporation cdc general electric ge digital equipment corporation dec rca and sperry rand univac line in terms of sales burroughs was always a distant second to ibm in fact ibms market share was so much larger than all of the others that this group was often referred to as ibm and the seven dwarfs by 1972 when ge and rca were no longer in the mainframe business the remaining five companies behind ibm became known as the bunch an acronym based on their initials at the same time burroughs was very much a competitor like ibm burroughs tried to supply a complete line of products for its customers including burroughsdesigned printers disk drives tape drives computer printing paper and even typewriter ribbons in the 1950s burroughs worked with the federal reserve bank on the development and computer processing of magnetic ink character recognition micr especially for the processing of bank cheques burroughs made special microcr sorterreaders which attached to their medium systems line of computers 270037004700 and this entrenched the company in the computer side of the banking industry developments and innovations the burroughs corporation developed three highly innovative architectures based on the design philosophy of languagedirected design their machine instruction sets favored one or many high level programming languages such as algol cobol or fortran all three architectures were considered mainframe class machines the burroughs large systems machines started with the b5000 in 1961 the b5500 came a few years later when large rotating disks replaced drums as the main external memory media these b5000 series systems used the worlds first virtual memory multiprogramming operating system they were followed by the b6500b6700 in the later 1960s the b7700 in the mid 1970s and the a series in the 1980s the underlying architecture of these machines is similar and continues today as the unisys clearpath mcp line of computers stack machines designed to be programmed in an extended algol 60 their operating systems called mcp master control programthe name later borrowed by the screenwriters for tron were programmed in espol executive systems programming oriented language a minor extension of algol and later in newp with further extensions to algol almost a decade before unix the command interface developed into a compiled structured language with declarations statements and procedures called wfl work flow language many computer scientists consider these series of computers to be technologically groundbreaking stack oriented processors with 48 bit word length where each word was defined as data or program contributed significantly to a secure operating environment long before spyware and viruses affected computing and the modularity of these large systems was also unique multiple cpus multiple memory modules and multiple io and data comm processors permitted incremental and cost effective growth of system performance and reliability in industries like banking where continuous operations was mandatory burroughs large systems penetrated most every large bank including the federal reserve bank and burroughs built the backbone switching systems for society for worldwide interbank financial telecommunication swift which sent its first message in 1977 unisys is still the provider to swift today burroughs produced the b2500 or medium systems computers aimed primarily at the business world the machines were designed to execute cobol efficiently this included a bcd binary coded decimal based arithmetic unit storing and addressing the main memory using base 10 numbering instead of binary the designation for these systems was burroughs b2500 through b49xx followed by unisys vseries v340 through v560 burroughs produced the b1700 or small systems computers that were designed to be microprogrammed with each process potentially getting its own virtual machine designed to be the best match to the programming language chosen for the program being run the smallest generalpurpose computers were the b700 microprocessors which were used both as standalone systems and as specialpurpose datacommunications or disksubsystem controllers burroughs also manufactured an extensive range of accounting machines including both standalone systems such as the sensimatic l500 and b80 and dedicated terminals including the tc500 and specialised check processing equipment in 1982 burroughs began producing personal computers the b20 and b25 lines with the intel 80868088 family of 16bit chips as the processor burroughs collaborated with university of illinois on a multiprocessor architecture developing the illiac iv computer in the early 1960s the illiac had up to 128 parallel processors while the b6700 b7700 only accommodated a total of 7 cpus andor io units the 8th unit was the memory tester burroughs made military computers such as the d825 the d prefix signifying it was for defense industrial use in its great valley laboratory in paoli pennsylvania in 1964 burroughs had also completed the d830 which was another variation of the d825 designed specifically for realtime applications such as airline reservations burroughs designated it the b8300 after trans world airlines twa ordered one in september 1965 a system with three instruction processors was installed at twas reservations center in rockleigh new jersey in 1968 the system which was called george with an application programmed in jovial was intended to support some 4000 terminals but the system experienced repeated crashes due to a filing system disk allocation error when operating under a large load a fourth processor was added but did nothing to resolve the problem the problem was resolved in late 1970 and the system became stable unfortunately the decision to cancel the project was being made at the very time that the problem was resolved twa cancelled the project and acquired one ibm system360 model 75 two ibm system360 model 65s and ibms pars software for its reservations system twa sued burroughs for nonfulfillment of the contract but burroughs countersued stating that the basic system did work and that the problems were in twas applications software the two companies reached an outofcourt settlement burroughs developed a halfsize version of the d825 called the d82 cutting the word size from 48 to 24 bits and simplifying the computers instruction set the d82 could have up to 32768 words of core memory and continued the use of separate instruction and io processors burroughs sold a d82 to air canada to handle reservations for trips originating in montreal and quebec this design was further refined and made much more compact as the d84 machine which was completed in 1965 a d84 processormemory unit with 4096 words of memory occupied just 14 cubic feet this system was used successfully in two military projects field test systems used to check the electronics of the air force general dynamics f111 aardvark fighter plane and systems used to control the countdown and launch of the armys pershing 1 pershing 1a missile systems merger in september 1986 burroughs corporation merged with sperry corporation to form unisys for a time the combined company retained the burroughs processors as the a and vsystems lines however as the market for large systems shifted from proprietary architectures to common servers the company eventually dropped the vseries line although customers continued to use vseries systems as of 2010 reemergence of the burroughs name burroughs payment systems in plymouth michigan 2011 in 2010 unisys sold off its payment systems division to marlin equity partners a californiabased private investment firm which incorporated it as burroughs payment systems based in plymouth michigan references in popular culture burroughs b205 hardware has appeared as props in many hollywood television and film productions from the late 1950s for example a b205 console was often shown in the television series batman as the bat computer also as the computer in lost in space b205 tape drives were often seen in series such as the time tunnel and voyage to the bottom of the sea craig ferguson american talk show host comedian and actor was a burroughs apprentice in cumbernauld scotland allweiss jack a evolution of burroughs stack architecture mainframe computers 2010 barton robert s a new approach to the functional design of a digital computer proc western joint computer conf acm 1961 gray george march 1999 some burroughs transistor computers unisys history newsletter 3 1 archived from the original on october 1 2016 gray george october 1999 burroughs thirdgeneration computers unisys history newsletter 3 5 archived from the original on september 26 2017 hauck ea dent ben a burroughs b6500b7500 stack mechanism sjcc 1968 pp245251 martin ian l 2012 too far ahead of its time barclays burroughs and realtime banking ieee annals of the history of computing 342 pp519 issn10586180 draft version mayer alastair jw the architecture of the burroughs b5000 20 years later and still ahead of the times acm computer architecture news 1982 archived at the southwest museum of engineering communications and computation glendale arizona mckeeman william m language directed computer design fjcc 1967 pp413417 organick elliot i computer system organization the b5700b6700 series academic press 1973 wilner wayne t design of the b1700 fjcc pp489497 1972 wilner wayne t b1700 design and implementation burroughs corporation santa barbara plant goleta california may 1972 wikimedia commons has media related to burroughs corporation burroughs corporation records charles babbage institute university of minnesota minneapolis collection contains the records of the burroughs corporation and its predecessors the american arithmometer company and burroughs adding machine company materials include corporate records photographs films and video tapes scrapbooks papers of employees and the records of companies acquired by burroughs cbis burroughs corporation records includes over 100000 photographs depicting the entire visual history of burroughs from its origin as the american arithmometer corporation in 1886 to its merger with the sperry corporation to form the unisys corporation in 1986 burroughs corporation photo database at the charles babbage institute university of minnesota the searchable photo database permits browsing and retrieval of over 550 historical images burroughs b 5000 conference oh 98 oral history on 6 september 1985 marina del ray california charles babbage institute university of minnesota minneapolis the burroughs 5000 computer series is discussed by individuals responsible for its development and marketing from 1957 through the 1960s in a 1985 conference sponsored by afips and burroughs corporation oral history interview with isaac levin auerbach charles babbage institute university of minnesota auerbach discusses his work at burroughs 19491957 managing development for the sage project beam i computer the intercontinental ballistic missile system a magnetic core encryption communications system and atlas missile oral history interview with robert v d campbell discusses his work at burroughs 19491966 as director of research and in program planning oral history interview with alfred doughty cavanaugh cavanaugh discusses the work of his grandfather a j doughty with william seward burroughs and the burroughs adding machine company oral history interview with carel sellenraad charles babbage institute university of minnesota sellenraad describes his long association with burroughs adding machine company and the impact of world wars i ii on the sales and service of calculators and adding and bookkeeping machines in europe oral history interview with ovid m smith charles babbage institute university of minnesota smith reviews his 46 year career at burroughs adding machine company later burroughs corporation early burroughs machines university of virginias computer museum older burroughs computer manuals online burroughs computers such as the d825 at brl an historical burroughs adding machine companyburroughs site unofficial list of burroughs manufacturing plants and labs ian joyners burroughs page the burroughs b5900 and emode a bridge to 21st century computing jack allweiss vteunisyshistory burroughs corporation system development corporation convergent technologies sperry corporation eckertmauchly computer corporation remington rand mainframes burroughs large systems mcp univac 11002200 series os 2200 products burroughs b1700 burroughs b2500 command and edit es7000 holmes 2 linc 4gl mcp compiler new executive programming language unisys icon univac list of univac products univac fastrand people robert s barton j presper eckert authority control worldcat identities gnd 43397529 isni 0000 0001 0943 759x lccn n50056127 nla 35823999 viaf 141593962 