ANGERS PLANT
extracts translated from Maurice Gaymard's article in Bull Anjou's history edited by FEB.
| 1960s | Gamma 3 | Gamma 60 | Gamma 30 | Gamma 10 |
| Gamma M-40 | GE-400 | 140 | GE-55 | |
| 1970s |
In September 1961, Compagnie des Machines Bull decided to market the RCA 301
computer under the brand name Bull Gamma 30 and to manufacture it in Angers.
On October 1st, 1961 Maurice Gaymard, then responsible of Muy plant, was
appointed responsible for the Gamma 30 manufacturing with the objective of a
first shipment on December 15, 1962.
His team (later known as L2 division) included:
Paul
Perrier heading manufacturing workshops (Ateliers de fabrication), i.e. printed
circuits, cabling, peripheral subsystems mounting and central processing unit
assembly.
Jean Paul Wilhelm heading system debugging,
customer configuration assembly, quality control
Raymond Massias heading production methods (in Le
Mouy)
Albert Ticchi
heading manufacturing planning and storage
Georges Ramaget RCA relationship
Lucien Martin joined the 40 people team as Engineering Support, for the Bull peripheral equipments designed by CMB for the Gamma 30.
The Gamma 30 had to be identical to the RCA 301 imported from West Palm Beach, FL, up to the color of wirings.
A problem was the language problem: few Bull's people were fluent in English. However, it was decided to keep English documentation and measurements units.It has to be known that no RCA engineer was there to help.
In September 1962, the L2 division team assembled in N°3 building, a provisional location and the first system was delivered to Sales on schedule on Dec 15st, 1962. There was no special celebration for that event, the CMB management wishing to mask that prior deliveries of Gamma 30 were American made.
The M-40, a mid-size scientific and industrial computer was initially
manufactured in Saint-Ouen, then transferred to Angers in 1964. It used the same
technology (TC2) as the Gamma 10 that was also produced there.
The production was suspended in June 1967; 16 systems had been produced. Some
extensions of the systems will be made until end 1968.
In September 1964, the Angers plant, that was manufacturing Gamma 30, Gamma
10 and M40 (in Bull's TC2 technology), was asked to study the manufacturing of
GE-400.
Responsible for the study were Maurice Gaymard, JP Wilhelm (quality control), R.
Poinas (production methods) and G. Ramaget under the supervision of Georges
Flament (interim director of the Angers plant).
The study team visited the Phoenix plant that they found performing, but somewhat on same level as Angers plant. It was decided to manufacture in France the whole system excluding the mechanical parts of peripherals.
Angers was then underloaded, so few new equipments were needed. The plan was completed on 23rd December 1964 and approved by the BGE upper management on Dec 30th. The product plan called for 10 systems in 1965 and 34 in 1966.
The first Angers built system was shipped end of August 1965. Early, in 1966, the GE-400 responsibility was transferred to L1 division, the plant being geared up to the Gamma 140.
The GE-400 manufacturing was helped by the RCA experience. However GE's manufacturing options, specially the interconnection was poor and lead to relatively bad reliability. End 1966, a cost-reducing decision to modify cabling (called Beatles cabling) was made by Angers worsened the reliability problem.
The last GE-400 system was manufactured in September 1971
[Translator note: the GE-400 image described here somewhat contrasts with that from the GE side described in Oldfield's book :King of the Seven Dwarves]
The last GE-55 was produced in october 1971
Gamma 140/141 or GE-140 was in 1966 the high visibility project in Bull General Electric, regrouping a staff of 340 people . A new technology, TC3, was used as well a new type of read-only memory, using magnetic wires.
Angers plant was involved in prototypes manufacturing. In January 1967, the line was publicly announced as discontinued, while 6 machines were already built, 3 of them in Angers.
From March 1967 to June 1968, a negotiation was held with the Czechoslovakian firm Tesla to give Tesla a license for the 140, then named Tesla 200.
Potential problems existed, notably that design was not fully completed and that some manufactured parts had been reallocated. TC3 technology production had been abandoned.
In 25th September 1968, the project was restarted, under Robert Audoin responsibility. The 3 prototypes made in Angers were delivered to Tesla before the end of 1968. In 1969, 16 complete systems and 10 kits had to be produced in Angers.
Eventually, the operation brought to BGE around $1 Million and the Tesla 200 was sold in the Eastern countries in around 200 machines. The Tesla program succeeded in spite difficulties because mid 1968 was the Prague Spring, just during the technology transfer critical phases and because the Comecon plan to build an Unified Series (Ryad, a copy of IBM S/360).
H-3200 Manufacturing
In June 1971, with the closure of GE-400 prodct line manufacturing, the Angers plant started the assembling of Honeywell H-3200. 13 systems were manufactured between September 1971 and January 1972. A version, the H-1015E, was developed for the European market by the Angers Enginnering team.
Level-64 Manufacturing
DPS-7 Manufacturing
DPS-7000 Manufacturing
H-6000, DPS-8 Manufacturing