Canadian Computer History

In the early 1960s Canadians were at the forefront of computer development. The FP-6000 computer was developed by Ferranti Packard Canada with the first production machine completed in early 1963. Only five production machines were ever built with the largest FP-6000 installation used by Saskatchewan Power Corporation for twenty years.

The picture above shows a keyboard used by the operators to control the computer and some of the magnetic tape drives. The computer itself filled an entire wing of the building.

The FP-6000 had very advanced features and capabilities for its time. It only had 32k of memory, which is minuscule by today's standards, but it could control up to 64 input/output devices. It was one of the first computers to use an Operating System to allow multi-tasking of programs. This is now standard with all computers. Prior that computers had to be extensively reprogrammed to allow them to run a single application.

Ironically, Ferranti Packard Canada was located in Malton Ontario just down the road from where the famous advanced Canadian fighter jet the Avro Arrow was developed before being cancelled by the government in 1959. The Canadian computer advancements in the FP-6000 met a similar fate when Ferranti Packard Canada's parent company, owned by the British government, discontinued the FP-6000 and moved all computer development to England. The FP-6000 has been referred to as the "Avro Arrow of the Canadian computer industry". Also similar to the Avro Arrow, the Canadian government was more interested in development in the US than recognizing Canadian innovation.

I was involved in programming the FP-6000 for several years in the late 1970s, using a language called ALGOL, and an assembly language called Autocoder. The programs and data were entered on punch cards as described in my previous post on Computer History. At the time I was not aware of the FP-6000's place in computer history.

In 1983 the Saskatchewan Power Corporation's FP-6000 was donated to the Western Development Museum in Moose Jaw to "provide a lasting example of an important Canadian contribution to the Information Revolution".