RCA computers

Radio Corporation of America

This page has been included  in memory of one of the early computer company that was the first to disappear. RCA abandoned computers in 1971, its computer business have been taken over by Univac, the rest of the company was bought by General Electric and the French group Thomson in the 1980s.
Compagnie des Machines Bull was a close associate of RCA in the early 1960s, before CMB was acquired by GE.

Computers built by  RCA

• Bizmac
  
• RCA 601
  The RCA 601 was a large (7090 class) computer targeted towards scientific applications.
  
• RCA 501
  The RCA 501 was the first computer designed as high-end general purpose system. It might be noted that the system was sold in Europe by English Electric as KDP-10.
  
• RCA 301
  The RCA 301 was a business oriented medium sized computer introduced in 1960 and sold in Europe by Siemens, ICT in United Kingdom (as ICT 1501) and by Compagnie des Machines Bull as Gamma 30. A more detailed description of this model can be found here.
  
• RCA 3301
  The RCA 3301 was a a RCA 301compatible high-end system, planned to be introduced in 1964. Compagnie des Machines Bull had prepared its introduction under the name Gamma 40, when the company was bought by General Electric. The RCA 3301 had a short life, being superseded by The Spectra series
  
• RCA Spectra 70
  The Spectra series were the first computer commercially available that made use of integrated circuits designed in RCA labs. Its user mode architecture was very similar to IBM S/360. The interrupt mechanism was different as the supervisor mode. So, the Spectra line used different operating system from IBM. Those systems was also sold by English Electric (system 4) and by Siemens, as Siemens 4004. Siemens developed compatible processors and BS/1000 operating system.
• During the period of the Unidata project, the French Siemens computers was acquired by CII and French Siemens 4004 customers (many of them being ex-Gamma 30 users) became supported by CII. The Serie X (where CII was a partner with Unidata 7740) was designed to upgrade the RCA originated line.
• The line was continued and extended as Univac 9000 series
  
• RCA 110
  The RCA 110 was a process control computer developed in 1961. In 1962-1963, Bull envisioned to market that system and made several proposals based on it. But Bull developed the Gamma M40 on the same market.

• RCA 4102
  The RCA was a military computer developed in the early 1960s.

Index

Revision : 19 février 2002.