By HEC! An Electronic Brain For Business?!

Tom Lean, interviewer for Made in Britain, writes:

Consider how many computers fill the typical modern workplace, all those dozens of laptops, desktops, mobile phones, and other gizmos. Now, take a step back to the office of the late 1940s and count the computers. Or, more likely, notice their complete absence. But not for long...

After its early development by scientists and engineers in the 1940s, it was only a few years before people started putting the 'electronic brain' to work on commercial problems. Lyons' LEO office computers have become well known, but they weren't the only ones producing computers for business. The British Tabulating Machine Company (BTM), saw the development of computers as putting at risk its existing market of mechanical punched-card office machines. The solution? Build a computer of their own to offer to customers...

In the early 1950s Made in Britain interviewee Dr Raymond Bird was asked to build a computer for BTM based on a prototype built by Birkbeck College's Andrew Donald Booth. The resultant Hollerith Electronic Computer, or HEC1 was a compact and handy machine, which was the origin for the most commercially successful series of business computers in 1950s Britain, the HEC4 or BTM1200 series. Last year we reunited Ray with the HEC1 computer he built in 1951, now stored by Birmingham Museums, and filmed a video interview, excerpts of which are now on the British Library's YouTube channel.

The entire video interview is archived at the British Library (Sound Archive catalogue reference C1379/04A)