ICL & Calcomp

ICT (International Calculators and Tabulators) evolved into ICL (International Computers Limited). The British Government was partly responsible for the merger of several British Companies such as ICT and LEO.

ICL 1900 series cover a range of machines : ICL 1901 to ICL 1907.

The “basic” machines have “A” in the name, e.g. ICL 1901A

The “enhanced” machines have “S” in the name, e.g. ICL 1902S (the one used at UCC).

The following configuration was used at UCC.

Some upgrades were made using the budget for “Population Census Data Processing” Project.

ICL 1902S computer with 2.5 D (dimensional) core memory and a console typewriter

Two ICL 2101 Card Readers

ICL 1933 Line Printer

Two ICL 2802 EDS (Exchangeable Disk Store)

Each controller controls two EDS 8 disks

Four ICL 2506 Magnetic Tape 9 track NRZI (Non Return to Zero Inverted)

The computer has piano-like keys for “bootstrapping” and for “testing”.

Some ICL computers use a 5-track Paper Tape Reader. There are pros and cons for using “punched cards” versus “punched paper tape’.

Punched cards were used in the early looms and in the Hollerith Machines used for processing US Population Census Data. Hollerith founded a company, which evolved into IBM.

Punched paper tape were used in the early transmission systems.

Three UCC engineers (U TAG, U HM and USW) underwent training at the ICLETC (ICL Engineering Training Center) in Letchworth, UK.

ICL provided a resident engineer to maintain the computer system and a resident programmer/analyst to guide the system programmers and selected application programmers.

A flat bed CalComp Graph Plotter was added. Calcomp provided on-site training for the graph plotter.

KMZ wrote :

I believe I still have a key chain from Ko Soe Myint Gyi. He had a “ဆွမ်းအုပ်” drawn on Calcomp and laminated it to create the key chain. He gave it to me when I met him and KZ at Wynn Myint Aung’s house. They were on some tour visiting Washington DC area in the mid-80s.