Anecdotes

Summary form only given. In this paper, Computing Devices of Canada was founded in 1948. The company got its start by manufacturing the Position and Homing Indicator (PHI), a device developed at the National Research Council that kept track of an aircraft\´s position and indicated its return route to base. One large contract that had a significant influence on the company\´s growth was for the Kicksorter, a digital-pulse counter designed for the Atomic Energy of Canada Laboratories in Chalk River. If the Kicksorter had been slightly modified to do simple arithmetic operations, it would have been a rudimentary computer. AECL purchased a large number of these devices between 1957 and 1963, when they were replaced by one of the early computers in the PDP series manufactured by the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Another contract was to design and construct a large digital simulator for the Royal Canadian Navy that was never completed. Computing Devices also handled the Canadian sales of the NCR 102-A, a digital computer manufactured by the National Cash Register Company of Dayton, Ohio. Sixteen 102-A computers were produced altogether and two were installed in Canada. The first was at A.V. Roe (Canada), an aircraft company in Malton, Ontario, adjacent to what is now Pearson Airport, and the second was at the Royal Canadian Air Force Station (now called Canadian Forces Base) in Cold Lake, Alberta. (The only other computer in Canada at the time was the Ferranti computer Ferut at the University of Toronto.) The 102-A system consisted of the "computer proper"-as it was termed in the programming manual-and a console with a Flexowriter, which was a modified electric typewriter with a paper-tape reader and punch for input and output.