Once a year the computer industry comes together to celebrate these amazing machines!
The Big Iron Evolution of Burroughs Computers: A Visual Journey
Global Events and Celebrations on World Computer Day 2025
Featured Event: Saturday, February 15th, 5PM - 7PM eastern USA
Welcome to World Computer Day 2025
This event was organized by Compuseum.
This was a Virtual Zoom Event - It's free; courtesy of Sponsor generosity.
5PM-7PM (eastern USA) Zoom platform on Saturday, February 15th, 2025
Two Hour Global Zoom Call. 6 VIP speakers, 15 minutes each.
Reference www.WorldComputerDay.org
Theme of Event...
THE BIG COMPUTERS FROM BURROUGHS OF PAOLI, PENNSYLVANIA
- Burroughs was one of nine major US computer companies in the 1960s
- One of the largest producers of mainframe computers in the world
- Leader in innovation with the first true multiprocessor computer
Two hour Webinar, 6 speakers, 15 minutes each with Q&A
Introduction
Dr. Thomas Haigh - "Where Burroughs Fits in the March of Computing" Tom is co-author of "A New History of Modern Computing": Purchase book here: https://a.co/d/esgXbCS
Gary Grossman - "The B5500 - A Different World" - Mr. Grossman worked on Burroughs machines for years and also wrote a simulator for Illiac IV.
Emilio Salgueiro - "Burroughs B6700 Architecture: A Pioneer in Computing Innovation" Exploring the groundbreaking design and features of the Burroughs B6700. Professor Salgueiro is a prior Burroughs team member.
Mike Kain & Steve Koss - "The ClearPath MCP: From 1961 to 2050" (MCP = Master Control Program) Mike and Steve are Distinguished Engineers from Unisys Corporation
Jeffrey Yost - "Burroughs Archives at the Charles Babbage Institute are Alive and Well" Director, Charles Babbage Institute, which is both a research institute and an archives repository containing the Burroughs Corporate Records Collection. He will be speaking about the collection and how it can be used for historical research topics such as the history of engineering, business, labor, and of women/gender in computing.
Show & Tell - "Audience Participation" Q&A session where audience members can show off their Burroughs equipment or memorabilia using the screen share option. If you have Burroughs equipment or memorabilia you'd like to "show off", please let us know in advance.
Wrap Up
Jim Scherrer and Compuseum
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Speakers Biographical Sketch-
Dr. Tom Haigh, Associate Professor at University of Wisconsin, School of Information Studies. Author of A New History of Modern Computing (with Paul Ceruzzi), MIT Press, 2021, Chair, IEEE Computer Society History Committee, Director, ACM History Committee Turing Awards Project,
Details here: https://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom/Vita
Gary R. Grossman
Beginning in 1965 at the University of Illinois, Mr. Grossman developed the functional simulator of the ILLIAC IV parallel computer using a B5500 and Burroughs ALGOL. Subsequently, he used a B6500 to develop portions of the ILLIAC IV operating system. As one of the early participants in the ARPANET, Mr. Grossman developed the ANTS communication processors, bringing design ideas from ALGOL and the Burroughs machines to software for the DEC PDP-11. Mr. Grossman retired in 2000 after more than 35 years of industry experience in security, networking, and operating systems, including product/service/system planning, definition, specification, design, and implementation, and the preparation of security evaluation/certification evidence. He has provided technical leadership on a number of innovative security projects, and has contributed to the design and definition of several network protocols for the ARPANET and Internet that are in common use, including TCP/IP. He has consulted to major corporations and government agencies on security and networking.
Emilio M Salgueiro
Emilio Salgueiro is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering within the College of Engineering at Temple University. His expertise spans both private industry and academia. In industry, he worked with Burroughs Corporation and later with Unisys Corporation. In academia, he conducted research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the University of California, San Diego. While working for Unisys, he also served as a Professor at Pennsylvania State University. Emilio holds a Bachelor of Science degree with a dual major in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering from the National University of Mexico. He earned a Master of Engineering in Engineering Science and a Postmaster in Artificial Intelligence from the Pennsylvania State University/University of Wales UK program. Emilio has been highly active with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He has served the Philadelphia Section as Chairman and Awards Committee Chair, as well as Secretary and Technical Policy Coordinator for Region 2. His technical interests include Computer Architecture, Performance, and Capacity Planning of large, complex computer systems. Above all, Emilio Salgueiro is passionate about teaching.
Steven Koss
Mr. Steve Koss is a Distinguished Engineer and Senior Director of Consultancy at Unisys. Mr. Koss has a BSE in Computer Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. His current responsibilities include defining and supporting the strategic direction of their high-end computer product line, practice leader for the technical consulting services organizations, and leading a global team of Pre-Sales Solution Architects. In his nearly 40 years at Unisys, he has helped to ensure their products remain open, and modern platforms, using and interacting with the latest technologies. Prior to his current role, he was the Chief Architect for ClearPath MCP systems, worked on compilers and operating system development. and has developed software tools and strategies for application modernization and cyber recovery. Additionally, Mr. Koss assists clients to better understand how to take advantage of their computing environment. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. He is also a past chair of the Southeastern Pennsylvania ITAG (Innovative Technology Action Group) industry partnership.
Michael Kain
Mike Kain is a Distinguished Engineer and security architect at Unisys of the ClearPath MCP platform in addition to overall ClearPath systems. Mike holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Delaware and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Drexel University. His current responsibilities include ensuring that all ClearPath environments (both enterprise systems and companion products and platforms) are kept state-of-the-art and interoperate with all other types of systems. Currently, that entails ensuring that they are ready for a post-quantum computer world whenever that happens. He has held various technical leadership positions at Unisys and has over 35 years of experience with the ClearPath MCP software environment. He holds six U.S. patents in the areas of networking and inter-process communication and has taught at Drexel University (27 years) in the areas of Computer Networking and Operating Systems.
Jeffrey Yost
Prof. Yost is Director of the Charles Babbage Institute, and Research Professor of History of Science, Technology & Medicine (HSTM) at University of Minnesota. He authored Making IT Work: A History of the Computer Services Industry (MIT Press) and has published seven other books and countless articles. His newest book co-edited (with G. Con Diaz) is Just Code: Power, Inequality, and the Political Economy of IT (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025, out in Sept.). He is co-editor of Johns Hopkins U. Press book series Computing and Culture. A six-time NSF PI (all history of computing/software projects), he also has completed sponsored historical research for DOE, Sloan, ACM, Unisys, & IBM. He is past EiC of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, past Chair, IEEE CS History Committee, and currently on the ACM History Committee. His work focuses on the history of HCI and AI. He has done a Congressional Briefing on AI on Capitol Hill and serves on the Academic Alliance for AI Policy.
Charles Babbage Institute for Computing, Information & Culture (CBI)
CBI’s mission is to facilitate, foster, and conduct research to advance understanding of computing, information, and culture. CBI fulfills this mission through synergistic programs of curating and continuously expanding the leading global archives on computing and society and running an interdisciplinary history research center. CBI hosts major conferences/symposia and smaller workshops, engages in sponsored research, publishes scholarly books and articles, conducts oral histories, provides editorial leadership, manages fellowship and grant programs, has public history programming, and contributes to education globally. CBI has over 320 collections, its largest is over 600 feet, the 100 years of records documenting all aspects of the Burroughs Corporation. Almost as large is its collection of Control Data Corporate Records.
This event will be hosted in the Zoom virtual networking platform including images, chat, and breakout rooms. We highly encourage utilizing Google Chrome and joining via laptop or desktop rather than from a mobile device for the best user experience.
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Selected References:
Burroughs Large Systems from Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_Large_Systems
IEEE - The Annals of the History of Computing, 1987 Volume 9, Number 1 of which is devoted to the B5000.
https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an/1987/01
Computer System Organization: The B5700/B6700 Series Paperback, December 24, 2014, by Elliott I. Organick (Author), Robert L. Ashenhurst (Editor) https://www.amazon.com/Computer-System-Organization-B5700-B6700/dp/1483205614
Computer Structures; Principles and Examples by Gordon Bell
The B205- Fastest Computer on Earth
https://uvamagazine.org/articles/one_of_the_fastest_machines_on_earth
Philadelphia and the Birth of Modern Computing, by Ceruzzi
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5215/pennlega.15.1.0026
Additional sources of Burroughs information:
https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an/1987/01
https://bitsavers.org/pdf/burroughs/
https://conservancy.umn.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/967eb41b-af55-423e-811e-7305c139ed84/content
https://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/B5000-AlgolRWaychoff.html
https://www.lib.umn.edu/collections/special?id=238
https://www.hoa.org/blog/jack-allweiss/a-brief-history-of-burroughs-corporate-leadership/
https://www.jaapsch.net/mechcalc/pdf/burr_helping_ford.pdf
https://www.tehistory.org/hqda/html/v40/v40n1p003.html
Charles Babbage Libraries
Featured on World Computer Day 2025
Location Map of Burroughs as Presented on World Computer Day 2025
Here's a little location map to keep you oriented.
Burroughs Corporation, Great Valley area, Pennsylvania
ENIAC Invention, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
RCA Selectron Memory tube, Lancaster, PA
Philco Transac, Lansdale, PA
Illiav IV, Paoli, PA
The System Source Computer Museum displays technology from the inception of computing in Hunt Valley, Maryland.
Burroughs Corporation and its computing divisions located near Paoli, Pennsylvania
The Burroughs Corporation was a major American manufacturer of business equipment. The company was founded in 1886 as the American Arithmometer Company by William Seward Burroughs. In 1986, it merged with Sperry UNIVAC to form Unisys. The company's history paralleled many of the major developments in computing. At its start, it produced mechanical adding machines, and later moved into programmable ledgers and then computers. It was one of the largest producers of mainframe computers in the world, also producing related equipment including typewriters and printers. This is a 1961 Burroughs Corp Computer Data Systems Advertisement.
Burroughs B 2900 Advertisement
Burroughs B 2900 Advertisement
Burroughs produced the B2500 or "medium systems" computers aimed primarily at the business world. The machines were designed to execute COBOL efficiently. This included a BCD (Binary Coded Decimal) based arithmetic unit, storing and addressing the main memory using base 10 numbering instead of binary. The designation for these systems was Burroughs B2500 through B49xx, followed by Unisys V-Series V340 through V560.
Burroughs E-101 Print Advertisement
Burroughs E-101 Advertisement from 1957
Designed to fill the gap between a desk calculator and a large computer, the Burroughs E-101 was programmed by inserting pins in a removable board.
"Easy-to-use Pinboard pinpoints step-by-step programming instructions. Do it once on paper template, file it, reuse it. Familiar notations; no coding." (from advertisement print copy)
Where did Burroughs fit in the competitive environment of computing in the 1960's and 1970's?
"IBM and the BUNCH" was a nickname for a group of mainframe computer manufacturers that competed with IBM in the 1970s:
IBM: The mainframe computer company that dominated the market
BUNCH: An acronym for Burroughs, UNIVAC, NCR, Control Data Corporation (CDC), and Honeywell.
The group was originally known as "IBM and the Seven Dwarfs", which also included General Electric and RCA. However, after GE sold its computer business to Honeywell in 1970 and RCA sold its computer business to Sperry in 1971, the group was renamed the BUNCH.
IBM's dominance in the mainframe market led observers to expect the BUNCH to either merge or leave the industry. The BUNCH eventually followed IBM into the microcomputer market, but they were latecomers and didn't quickly adjust to retail sales.
Why was ALGOL important to Burroughs?
ALGOL was developed jointly by a committee of European and American computer scientists in a meeting in 1958 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (cf. ALGOL 58).[9] It specified three different syntaxes: a reference syntax, a publication syntax, and an implementation syntax, syntaxes that permitted it to use different keyword names and conventions for decimal points (commas vs periods) for different languages.[5]
ALGOL was used mostly by research computer scientists in the United States and in Europe; commercial applications were hindered by the absence of standard input/output facilities in its description, and the lack of interest in the language by large computer vendors (other than Burroughs Corporation).[10] ALGOL 60 did however become the standard for the publication of algorithms and had a profound effect on future language development.[10]
The underlying architecture of the later Burroughs large machines is similar and continues today as the Unisys ClearPath MCP line of computers: stack machines designed to be programmed in an extended Algol 60. Their operating systems, called MCP (Master Control Program—the name later borrowed by the screenwriters for Tron), were programmed in ESPOL (Executive Systems Programming Oriented Language, a minor extension of ALGOL) and DCALGOL (Data Communications ALGOL) and later in NEWP (with further extensions to ALGOL) almost a decade before Unix. (from Wikipedia)
Spielberg worked at Burroughs until 1992
Did you know?
Steven Spielberg's father, Arnold, was a key leader at Burroughs Corporation, coordinating their A Series computers, which later became the robust Unisys ClearPath MCP, their master control program or operating system, which is still a major platform and profit center for Unisys today. After the merger of Burroughs with Sperry to create Unisys in 1986, Arnold Spielberg continued to work there on in to retirement in 1992.
Arnold Spielberg was later awarded the prestigious IEEE Computer Pioneer award in 2006 shown here: https://www.computer.org/profiles/arnold-spielberg
2006 Computer Pioneer Award
“For recognition of contribution to real-time data acquisition and recording that significantly contributed to the definition of modern feedback and control processes.”
National Geographic Publishes on World Computer Day: How Supercomputers Changed the World. National Geographic - 2025
How supercomputers paved the way for laptops and chatbots
Enormous dimensions, complicated military calculations, and thousands of vacuum tubes—this was the early supercomputer.
Engineer Thomas Kite Sharpless gives a demonstration of the EDVAC at the University of Pennsylvania.
Getty Images
By Editors of National Geographic
February 13, 2025
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/worlds-first-supercomputers-photos
The big bang impact of the Burroughs E-101
Why in Belgium? More about the Computer Museum, Namur, Belgium
Why in Belgium? More about the Computer Museum, Namur, Belgium
Why in Belgium? More about the Computer Museum, Namur, Belgium
Go back in time to discover the vestiges of the past
The NAM-IP Computer Museum, Belgium helps you understand the origins and milestones of the computer revolution. It leads you through a timeline illustrated by rich collections allowing you to discover the first calculation devices (abacuses, slide rules) then various mechanical and electromechanical calculating machines and finally the computer era (mainframe, mini, micro, laptops …). It emphasizes IT pioneers in Belgium and explores specific themes and periods through its temporary exhibition. The museum also proposes many other activities: guided tours, workshops for schools and kid groups, team building, etc.
The "Big Bang" Inventor and his use of the E-101
Why in Belgium? More about the Computer Museum, Namur, Belgium
Why in Belgium? More about the Computer Museum, Namur, Belgium
Four Collections of Pioneer Computing in Belgium have been brought together in order to preserve them from dispersion or destruction and to make them the basis of a space for pioneer computing in Belgium.
Each collection has its own coherence linked to its origin:
The Bull-FEBB and Unisys Computer Museum (J. Laffut) collections originate from industrial groups of historical importance in Belgium.
The collection “Informatique et bible” is centered on an application of historical importance whose traces have been kept since the beginning of the use of computers. The collection of Computing Systems comes from a competent collector (J. Lemaire) in this specific branch of which he was a specialist. These collections are the property, by donation, of the Fund “Pioneer Computing in Belgium – Baanbrekende Informatika in België” of the King Baudouin Foundation. This Fund was established in April 2013.
The Burroughs E-101 and Lamaitre
Canon Lamaitre uses Burroughs E-101 in Astronomical Research at Louvain University
Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître (17 July 1894 - 20 June 1966) was a Belgian Catholic priest, theoretical physicist, and mathematician who made major contributions to cosmology and astrophysics. He was the first to argue that the recession of galaxies is evidence of an expanding universe and to connect the observational Hubble-Lemaître law with the solution to the Einstein field equations in the general theory of relativity for a homogenous and isotropic universe. That work led Lemaître to propose what he called the "hypothesis of the primeval atom", now regarded as the first formulation of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.
For electronic computational support, he chose the Burroughs E-101.
Catholic University of Louvain and the E-101 - 1959
Georges Lemaître and Andrée Bartholomé using a Burroughs E101 computer in the numerical research laboratory of the Catholic University of Louvain, May 1959 (Archives de l'Université catholique de Louvain)
With Manuel Sandoval Vallarta, whom he had met at MIT, Lemaître showed that the intensity of cosmic rays varies with latitude because they are composed of charged particles and therefore are deflected by the Earth's magnetic field.[37] In their calculations, Lemaître and Vallarta made use of MIT's new differential analyzer computer, developed by Vannevar Bush.[38] That work disproved the view, advocated among others by the Nobel laureate Robert Millikan, that cosmic rays were composed of high-energy photons. Lemaître and Vallarta also worked on a theory of primary cosmic radiation and applied it to their investigations of the Sun's magnetic field and the effects of the galaxy's rotation.
Events Around the Globe on World Computer Day!
Send us Your Event Details
Events and celebrations are held around the globe on World Computer Day. Feel free to send us news of your event and we'll publish it here. Small, medium and large sized events are all special; so send them in!
- Seminars
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Event Details - CPSM College of Education, Gurugram, Celebrates World Computer Day with an Insightful Webinar!
CPSM College of Education, Gurugram, Celebrates World Computer Day with an Insightful Webinar! 💻🌍
Join us for an engaging webinar on "Introduction to Computers and Its Latest Technologies (AI, Machine Learning, Data Science)"as we celebrate World Computer Day!
🔹 Date:15 Feb 2025
🔹 Time: 4:00P.M. - 5:00P.M.
🔹 Platform: Online
We are honored to have Ms. Shruti Bhalla, Assistant Professor , DPGSTM Gurugram, as our resource person. She is B.Tech, M.Tech, pursuing PhD in Computer Science and has 8yrs of teaching experience in Engineering Colleges.
Don’t miss this opportunity to enhance your knowledge and stay updated with the latest advancements in technology!
📢 Be a part of this enlightening session!
#CPSMCollege #WorldComputerDay #AI #MachineLearning #DataScience #TechWebinar
Social Media Posts for World Computer Day 2025 - Use Hashtag #WorldComputerDay
Learn More about Computers
Order this book, now!
All there is to know about the history of computing!
A highly recommended book about how the computer became universal.
Over the past fifty years, the computer has been transformed from a hulking scientific supertool and data processing workhorse, remote from the experiences of ordinary people, to a diverse family of devices that billions rely on to play games, shop, stream music and movies, communicate, and count their steps. In A New History of Modern Computing, Thomas Haigh and Paul Ceruzzi trace these changes. A comprehensive reimagining of Ceruzzi's A History of Modern Computing, this new volume uses each chapter to recount one such transformation, describing how a particular community of users and producers remade the computer into something new.
Authors Haigh and Ceruzzi ground their accounts of these computing revolutions in the longer and deeper history of computing technology. They begin with the story of the 1945 ENIAC computer, which introduced the vocabulary of "programs" and "programming," and proceed through email, pocket calculators, personal computers, the World Wide Web, videogames, smart phones, and our current world of computers everywhere--in phones, cars, appliances, watches, and more. Finally, they consider the Tesla Model S as an object that simultaneously embodies many strands of computing.