English Electric Ltd. is putting into production a computor based on a design of the National Physical Laboratory.

ECONOMIST: The business world

But there is this drawback: a full-sized computor carries 4, 000 to 5, 000 valves and thousands of other small electronic components.

ECONOMIST: The business world

The National Research Development Corporation is sponsoring the smaller Elliot computor.

ECONOMIST: The business world

Computor developments are being followed with interest and with some understandable apprehension by the companies that now supply the bulk of the business machines in use.

ECONOMIST: The business world

These are the arguments that led Lyons to opt for a full-sized computor, and experience during four years of often difficult experiment has not disproved them.

ECONOMIST: The business world

Their answer has been to produce a poor man's computor, a machine that calculates electronically, but has neither the ability to store data nor the power to plan its own operations that are peculiar to a full-sized electronic brain.

ECONOMIST: The business world