Computer Control Company

Computer Control Company, Inc. (1953–1966), informally known as 3C, was a pioneering minicomputer company known for its DDP-series (Digital Data Processor) computers, notably:[lower-alpha 1][1]

It was founded in 1953 by Dr. Louis Fein, the physicist who had earlier designed the Raytheon RAYDAC computer.[5]

The company moved to Framingham, Massachusetts in 1959. Prior to the introduction of the DDP-series it developed a series of digital logical modules, initially based on vacuum tubes.

In 1966 it was sold to Honeywell, Inc. As the Computer Controls division of Honeywell, it introduced further DDP-series computers, and was a $100,000,000 business until 1970 when Honeywell purchased GE's computer division and discontinued development of the DDP line.[6]

In a 1970 essay, Murray Bookchin used the DDP-124 as his example of computer progress:

In 1945, J. Presper Eckert, Jr. and John W. Mauchly of the University of Pennsylvania unveiled the ENIAC ... it weighed more than thirty tons, contained 18,800 vacuum tubes with half a million connections (the connections took Eckert and Mauchly two and a half years to solder. It often broke down or behaved erratically... Some twenty years later, the Computer Control Company of Framingham, Massachusetts offered the DDP-124 for sale. The DDP-124 is a small, compact computer that resembles a bedside AM-radio receiver. The entire ensemble, together with a typewriter and memory unit, occupies a typical office desk. The DDP-124 performs over 285,000 computations a second. It has a true stored-program memory that can be expanded to retain nearly 33,000 words... Its pulses cycle at 1.75 billion[sic] per second. The DDP-124 does not require any air-conditioning unit. It is completely reliable, and it creates very few maintenance problems.... The difference between ENIAC and DDP-124 is one of degree rather than kind.[7]


Notes
  1. One of the developers of the DDP-124, William Poduska, who later on became one of the founders of Prime Computer, said in a 2002 interview that the 124 came after the 224, which came after the 24.
gollark: ... and?
gollark: Yes, and it's bad.
gollark: It just is. I tried it.
gollark: So how goes your potatoBIOS analysis?
gollark: I mean, more than that, potatoBIOS is 1200 lines of cryptic code I barely understand half the time with terrible documentation.

References
  1. "DDP-124 Microcircuit General Purpose Digital Computer" (PDF). Confirms the 24, 224, 124 sequence
  2. Adams Report 1967, PDF
  3. Zhou, Yong (1968). The European Computer Users Handbook 1968/69. Computer Data Series. Computer Consultants Limited (Sixth ed.). Pergamon Press. p. 111.20. ISBN 9781483146690. LCCN 63-25287.
  4. "DDP-24 Announced by Computer Controls". Archive.org. Computers and Automation. July 1965. Retrieved April 1, 2019.
  5. Background, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Aug., 1963), pp. 109-110; published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The International Studies Association
  6. Adrian Wise. "Computer Control Company". Adrian Wise. Retrieved 2008-06-09.
  7. Bookchin, Murray, (1970), "Toward a Liberatory Technology," in Post-Scarcity Anarchism, AK Press, 2004, ISBN 1-904859-06-2; pp. 57-8


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