Ferranti Orion facts for kids

The Orion was a large computer made by a company called Ferranti. It came out in 1959, and the first one was set up in 1961. Ferranti wanted the Orion to be their main computer for businesses in the early 1960s. It was meant to work alongside their super-powerful Atlas and smaller computers like the Sirius. The Orion was special because it used a new type of electronic part called "Neuron." It could also do many tasks at once, which was very new for computers back then!

However, the Orion didn't work as well as people hoped. It was a big problem for Ferranti, and they only sold about eleven of them. Because of this, they quickly started working on the Orion 2 to fix the issues. They sold five of these improved machines. The problems with the Orion made Ferranti decide to leave the computer business. They sold their computer part of the company to International Computers and Tabulators (ICT). ICT then chose a different computer, the Ferranti-Packard 6000, as their main mid-range computer. This meant the Orion 2 was no longer sold.

History of the Orion Computer

Early Computer Parts: Magnetic Amplifiers

In the 1950s, transistors were new and expensive. They were also quite fragile. Even though transistors used less power and were smaller, most computers still used vacuum tubes. Scientists were always looking for new ways to make computer parts.

One idea was using "magnetic amplifiers." These were like the parts used in magnetic core memory. They used tiny rings of ferrite material to switch electronic signals. When electricity went through the ring, it created a magnetic field. This field could then create a new electric current in a separate wire. This allowed them to make logic circuits.

One cool thing about magnetic amplifiers was that you could thread many wires through their center. This made it easy to combine many inputs to get one output. This was sometimes called "Ballot Box Logic." It helped make parts of the computer, like the ALU, simpler.

By the late 1950s, making transistors became much cheaper. They also became more reliable. Because of this, most efforts to use magnetic amplifiers in computers stopped. Only a few computers, like the UNIVAC Solid State, used them.

The Neuron Design

The Ferranti Computer Department in West Gorton, Manchester, worked closely with Manchester University. They helped turn the university's computer ideas into real products. In the 1950s, the Ferranti team also looked into magnetic amplifiers. But like others, they stopped when transistors got better.

A scientist named Ken Johnson at Ferranti came up with a new way to use transistors. His idea, called "Neuron," was similar to magnetic amplifiers. It used specific amounts of electricity to represent computer information, not just different voltages.

The Neuron design was special because it often needed only one transistor for each logic part. Older designs usually needed two or more. Since transistors were still costly, a Neuron-based computer could be cheaper. It could also offer similar performance.

To test the Neuron design, the team built a small computer called "Newt." This test computer worked very well. So, the lab decided to make it into a full computer. This led to the Sirius computer. It was announced in 1959 as a small and affordable computer for Europe. It sold quite well!

Orion 1: Problems and Delays

After the success of the Sirius, the team started designing a much bigger computer. This new computer was the Orion. They believed a larger machine using Neuron parts would be cheaper than other big computers. This was because many costs, like power supplies, were the same for all computers. Ferranti thought the Orion would be a strong partner to their powerful Atlas. They planned for it to be their main computer for the next five years.

Ferranti promised to deliver the first Orion to a company called Prudential Assurance in 1960. But things quickly went wrong. The Neuron design was hard to use for a larger computer like the Orion. It was very difficult to keep the electricity levels steady over longer wires. Trying to fix these problems caused long delays.

The first Orion was finally delivered, but it was over a year late. It also cost more than expected. This limited how many they could sell. Between 1962 and 1964, Ferranti's computer division lost a lot of money, mostly because of the Orion.

Orion 2: Fixing the Issues

While the Orion 1 was being built, some engineers at other Ferranti departments worried it might not work. They suggested using a more traditional transistor design. They wanted to use "Griblons" circuits, which had worked well in the Argus computer. But their ideas were not accepted at first.

Eventually, after more delays with Orion 1, the company decided to make big changes. In September 1961, Prudential threatened to cancel their order. At this time, a key person at Ferranti, Peter Hall, decided to listen to the engineers who had suggested the new design.

By the end of October, the basic design for the Orion 2 was ready. The team decided to use "Gemini" circuits from Ferranti Canada. These circuits had been successful in another computer system.

Parts for the Orion 2 arrived over the next year. The machine was officially turned on in January 1963. The first Orion 2 was delivered to Prudential in December 1964. It ran about five times faster than the Orion 1! Prudential bought a second one. Other Orion 2 computers were sold to companies in South Africa and the Beecham Group.

However, Ferranti was already planning to sell its computer business to ICT. ICT looked at both the Orion 2 and another computer, the FP-6000. Ferranti's own engineers thought the FP-6000 was good enough. So, ICT chose the FP-6000 as the basis for their new computers. Existing orders for the Orion 2 were completed, but no new ones were taken.

How the Orion Computer Worked

Even though the Orion and Orion 2 were built differently inside, they worked almost the same for programmers. Their external parts were also very similar.

The basic Orion computer had 4,096 "words" of memory. Each word held 48 bits of information. This memory was a bit slow, taking 12 microseconds to access. You could expand the memory to 16,384 words. Each word could store eight 6-bit characters, a single 48-bit number, or a special "floating-point" number for complex math. The computer could even work with Pound sterling (British money) before it became decimal.

The main memory was supported by one or two magnetic drums. Each drum could hold 16,000 words. The computer also used other ways to get information in and out. These included magnetic disks, tape drives, punched cards, punched tape, and printers.

Most of the Orion's instruction set (the commands it understood) used a "three-address" form. It had sixty-four 48-bit "accumulators" (special storage areas). Each program had its own set of these accumulators. A basic command took about 64 microseconds. The Orion 2 was much faster because its memory worked quicker.

A very important feature of the Orion was its built-in support for time-sharing. This meant the computer could run many programs at the same time. It would switch between programs when one was waiting for something, like data from a disk. The Orion also had "protected memory." This kept different programs from interfering with each other. A special "Organisation Program" managed starting, stopping, and switching between programs. The Orion was one of the first computers to directly support time-sharing.

The Orion is also known for its own special programming language called NEBULA. Ferranti created NEBULA because they felt the standard COBOL language of the time wasn't powerful enough for their machines. NEBULA took many ideas from COBOL but added new features. NEBULA was later also used on the Atlas computer.