Honeywell

Honeywell is a US conglomerate which also manufactured computers for many years, stating in the late 1950's.

Their initial foray into large computers was via the DATAmatic Corporation, established in Newton Highlands in 1955 as a joint venture with Raytheon. Honeywell bought out Raytheon shortly thereafter, eventually renaming DATAmatic to 'Honeywell Information Systems' (HIS), after it had moved to Wellesley Hills. Honeywell also had interests in the avionics, and military area, through their Aeronautical Division, in St. Petersburg; that division's Military Products Group produced the ALERT computer, "compact enough for installations in manned aircraft [and] missiles".

A series of acquisitions the increased Honeywell's presence in the computer market. In 1966, Honeywell purchased Computer Control Corporation of Framingham, makers of the 'DDP' line of minicomputers; renaming it to Honeywell's 'Computer Control Division'. Next, in 1970, Honeywell next bought General Electric's entire computer business. This brought computers to become a significant part of Honeywell's business (although not without very considerable turbulence, as described below). Finally, in 1975, it also purchased Xerox Data Systems.

Eventually, Honeywell decided (realized?) that the computer business was not for them. Groupe Bull was a joint venture between Compagnie des Machines Bull (of France, with roots in the electro-mechanical punched card computing device era) and Nippon Electric Company (of Japan); it too had at one point been associated with GE. In 1987, HIS merged with Bull, to become 'Honeywell Bull'. A series of re-organizations followed, and by 1991, Honeywell's connection to Bull was severed; Honeywell was no longer in the computer business.

The ARPANET was built using DDP-516 'ruggedized' minicomputers; later, Honeywell DDP-316's (the non-ruggedized version of the 516) were used as well. The most widely-used generation of Multics machines were produced by Honeywell, after the GE buyout.

See also

• Honeywell 6000 series
• Interface Message Processor

External links

• Honeywell- documents at Bitsavers
  • Datamatic 1000
  • Honeywell Bull Product Family at a Glance
• Computer Control Corporation - includes the later machines, produced when it was a Honeywell subsidiary
• Honeywell Information Systems, Inc. - several brochures
• A History Of Meeting New Challenges - overall company history
• Honeywell Management - interesting personal recollections of the politics at the top of the company up to the sale to Bull
• Honeywell Datamatic 1000 - Honeywell's first computer product
• From GECOS to GCOS8: A History of Large Systems in GE, Honeywell, NEC and Bull - Part 2: The Honeywell years