Computer Control Company, Inc.

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 the 1963 16-bit DDP-116 and the 24-bit DDP-24.

It was founded in 1953 by Dr. Louis Fein, the physicist who had earlier designed the Raytheon RAYDAC computer.[1]

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 computer, and was a $100,000,000 business until 1970 when Honeywell purchased GE's computer division and discontinued development of the DDP line.[2]

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.[3] ”

References

  1. ^ Background, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Aug., 1963), pp. 109-110; published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The International Studies Association
  2. ^ Adrian Wise. "Computer Control Company". Adrian Wise. http://www.series16.adrianwise.co.uk/history/ccc.html. Retrieved 2008-06-09. 
  3. ^ Bookchin, Murray, (1970), "Toward a Liberatory Technology," in Post-Scarcity Anarchism, AK Press, 2004, ISBN 1904859062; pp. 57-8

External links

See Digital Pioneering by Robert L. Massard, former 3C VP, a retrospective on the development of Raytheon's RAYDAC Computer and the Computer Control Company.