Origins of ICL
International Computers Limited was formed in 1968 as a part of the Industrial Expansion Act of the Wilson Labour Government. ICL was an initiative of Tony Benn, the Minister of Technology, to create a British computer industry that could compete with major world manufacturers like IBM. ICL represented the last step in a series of mergers that had taken place in the industry since the late 1950s.
The main portions of ICL were formed by merging International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) with English Electric Computers, the latter itself a recent merger of Elliott Automation with English Electric Leo Marconi computers. EELM was itself a merger of the computer divisions of English Electric, LEO and Marconi. Upon its creation, the British government held a 10 percent stake in the company and provided a $32.4 million research-and-development grant spread across four years.
On its formation the company inherited two main product lines: from ICT the 1900 Series of mainframes, and from English Electric Computers (EEC) the System 4, a range of IBM System/360-compatible mainframe clones, based on the RCA Spectra 70.
When the companies were first merged the EEC order books were full, while ICT (who had twice as many employees) were struggling, perhaps because it was already obvious that the 1900 series was incompatible with the rest of the industry, with an architecture based on a 24 bit word and 6 bit character rather than the 8 bit byte that was becoming the industry norm.
The new board decided that the 1900 should be phased out in favour of the System 4, but shortly afterwards reversed the decision. It is probable that this was due to union and political pressure from the Wilson government. In any event, most of the original EEC board resigned over the interference as they believed that the 1900 series was doomed from the outset, being incompatible with the rest of the market place. ICL initially thrived, but relied almost wholly on supplying the UK public sector with computers. The 1900s were sold in several countries worldwide, but the largest slice of the market was always in the UK, and the largest part of that in government, local authorities, and nationalised industries.
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