1964- AN/FST-2 Circuit Board
The Burroughs experience with transistor computers was in many respects parallel to that of Sperry Rand. At Burroughs too, early development of transistor computers for the military was not carried over in a timely manner into the large-scale commercial market, but the machine which emerged, the B5000, was a very innovative design. As was the case at Sperry Rand, Burroughs small computers kept the company in the computer business during the transition from vacuum tubes to transistors.
The Atlas Guidance Computer
The Burroughs Great Valley Research Laboratory at Paoli outside Philadelphia had from its beginning been heavily involved in military projects. It developed the AN/FST-2 data transmitting set for the Air Force's extensive North America air defense system which was deployed during the 1950s. When the system was complete, 134 of these data communications devices had been installed. The Air Force also turned to Burroughs for a transistor ground guidance computer for the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). It was officially designated the AN/GSQ-33, but was usually referred to as the Atlas computer. The design was done by Isaac L. Auerbach, a former employee of Eckert-Mauchly who had joined Burroughs in the late 1940s. Work on the project began in April 1955, but problems with the transistors supplied by Philco slowed things down. In a 1992 interview, Auerbach recalled: "We had a major problem there. Philco was going to provide the surface barrier transistors. One of the conditions in the contract was that they could not move the laboratory line where they were manufacturing these until their production line was up running and we approved the quality of the transistors coming off the production line. Philco, without talking to us, set up a production line, cut it over without going parallel, and we got a pile of junk coming in." The problems showed up in testing, and Auerbach called Philco: "Look guys, I don't care what you're planning to do. You set that lab line back up again and you run them on that line, and if you have to, you run the entire production line that we want on that line. I'm not whistling. Here's the project, here's the priority, don't screw around with this". (Oral history interview of Isaac L. Auerbach, October 2-3, 1992, conducted by Bruce H. Bruemmer ,OH 241, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota) Eventually the problems were worked out, and the first machine was installed at the Cape Canaveral missile range in June 1957. Although Atlas missile launches started in September 1957, test patterns were transmitted to the missile in place of actual guidance commands for the first four flights. The first computer-controlled launch was on July 19, 1958. The computer had separate memory areas for instructions (2048 18-bit words) and data (256 24-bit words). The instruction area was increased to 2816 words, beginning with the Model III version, which was first delivered in December 1958. The Atlas guidance computer had no facilities for developing programs, so they were written on the UDEC II, the Datatron, and the 220, using simulator software. Burroughs was still doing Atlas programming on the 220 in 1964. In all, 18 Atlas guidance computers were built at a total project cost of $37 million. The computer was very reliable, and no Atlas launch was ever aborted due to computer failure. During the later phases of the Atlas project, Burroughs also developed a computer used in the Polaris submarine-launched missile system.