Early Transistor Computers in Japan

The paper describes the history of the early development of transistor computers in Japan. Because the paper pertains mostly to the Electronics Division of the Electrotechnical Laboratory, the author begins with the establishment of this division. He then explores the development of the ETL Mark III, which used point-contact transistors, and the ETL Mark IV, which was followed by various commercial products. ETL Mark IV technology was also employed for "Yamato, " a special-purpose machine that was developed in 1959 for the first trial of English-Japanese machine translation.