Sperry Rand

Sperry Rand was a manufacturer of computers, formed by the merger of Remington Rand (and in particular its Remington Rand Univac division) with Sperry Gyroscope. Sperry provided coherent management that Remington Rand badly needed.

It is perhaps best known as one party in the most famous patent case involving computers: Honeywell, Inc. v. Sperry Rand Corp., et al. Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation had obtained a very broad patent - too broad, in retrospect - on much computer work, as a result of the work of John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert on the ENIAC. The patent was issued in 1964, after EMCC had become part of Sperry Rand, via Remington Rand; Sperry used the patent to try and claim fees from several computer manufacturers, including Honeywell. The latter contested the patent, and after a long trial, the patent was disallowed, on the grounds that some of what it claimed had actually been invented by John Atanasoff. This led to a lengthy controversy over the importance of Atanasoff's work.

Sperry Rand was bought by Burroughs in 1986, with the two being merged into Unisys.

Further reading

• A History Of Sperry Rand Corporation, Sperry Rand, 1967

External links

• Sperry Rand Corporation - brochures from Sperry Rand and Remington Rand Univac Division
  • An Introduction to the Univac File Computer System
• VIP Club - Information Technology (IT) Pioneers - contains a wealth of Sperry-related content
  • A Brief History of Sperry Corporation
• Patent/Court Case - Honeywell vs. Sperry Rand - good, detailed description of the events