Ferranti-Packard 6000

The FP-6000 was a second-generation mainframe computer developed and built by Ferranti-Packard in the early 1960s. It is particularly notable for supporting multitasking, being one of the first commercial machines to do so. Only six FP-6000s were sold before the computer division of Ferranti-Packard was sold off by Ferranti's UK headquarters in 1963, the FP-6000 becoming the basis for the mid-range machines of the ICT 1900, which sold into the thousands in Europe.

What was to become the FP-6000 had its genesis in a Royal Canadian Navy project starting in 1949 called DATAR. For DATAR, Ferranti-Packard (then still known as Ferranti Canada) built an experimental computer to share information among ships in a convoy. Although the prototype was a success, the failure rate of the vacuum tubes was a concern to everyone and Ferranti suggested they re-build the machine using transistors instead. DATAR ran out of funds before this conversion could take place, but Ferranti put the experience to good use in a series of one-off transistorized machines. One such example was a cheque sorting system built for the Federal Reserve Bank, itself a modification of a system developed to sort mail for the Canadian Post Office.

The developmental series eventually culminated in ReserVec. ReserVec was the first computerized reservation system to enter service when it took over all bookings for Air Canada in 1961. Ferranti initially had high hopes for the machine, thinking that it would be successful in Europe if sold by the UK headquarters' sales staff. As had happened many times in the past, however, the UK computer team suffered from a terminal case of not invented here, and decided it was better if they designed their own instead. Their project was never delivered, and ReserVec withered.

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