October 1965, Issue 2

Ferranti's Argus computers were a line of industrial control computers offered from the 1960s into the 1980s. Originally designed for a military role, a re-packaged Argus was the first digital computer to be used to directly control an entire factory. They were widely used in a variety of roles in Europe, particularly in the UK, where a small number continue to serve as monitoring and control systems for nuclear reactors.

Argus 100, which was also intended for process control use. Unlike the original, the Argus 100 used a flat 24-bit addressing scheme with both data and code stored in a single memory. Only a 5-bit opcode was used in order to simplify the basic logic and gain an address bit. The single ALU and other changes resulted in a basic operation time of 72 μs. One notable use of the Argus 100 was to control the Jodrell Bank Mark II telescope in 1964.

The design of the Argus 300 was started in 1963 as a much faster machine featuring a fully parallel-architecture arithmetic logic unit, as opposed to the earlier and much slower serial units. Its instruction set was nevertheless fully compatible with the Argus 100. The 300 was very successful and used throughout the 1960s in various industrial roles

We are very grateful for this donation from John Triance.

Reference Number :

Date Published : October 1965

Manufacturer : Ferranti

Platform : Argus 100; Argus 300

Format : Hard back