Computer Control Company, Inc. (1953–1966), informally known as 3C, was a pioneering

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ...

company known for its DDP-series (Digital Data Processor) computers, notably: *

DDP-24 The DDP-24 (1963) was a 24-bit computer designed and built by the Computer Control Company, aka 3C, located in Framingham, Massachusetts. In 1966 the company was sold to Honeywell who continued the DDP line into the 1970s. Hardware The DDP-24 ...

24-bit (1963) *DDP-224 24-bit (1965) * DDP-116 16-bit (1965) *DDP-124 24-bit (1966) using monolithic ICs It was founded in 1953 by Dr. Louis Fein, the physicist who had earlier designed the Raytheon RAYDAC computer. The company moved to

Framingham, Massachusetts Framingham () is a city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. Incorporated in 1700, it is located in Middlesex County and the MetroWest subregion of the Greater Boston metropolitan area. The city proper covers with a popul ...

in 1959. Prior to the introduction of the DDP-series it developed a series of digital logical modules, initially based on vacuum tubes. In 1966 it was sold to

Honeywell, Inc. Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance ma ...

As the Computer Controls division of Honeywell, it introduced further DDP-series computers, and was a $100,000,000 business until 1970 when Honeywell purchased GE's computer division and discontinued development of the DDP line. In a 1970 essay,

Murray Bookchin Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006) was an American social theorist, author, orator, historian, and political philosopher. A pioneer in the environmental movement, Bookchin formulated and developed the theory of socia ...

used the DDP-124 as his example of computer progress: One of the oddest of the DDP series was the DDP 19 -- of which only 3 were built on custom order for the U.S. Weather service. Its architecture was based on a 19-bit word structure consisting of six octal bytes plus a sign bit, which in arithmetic operations could create the unusual value of "negative zero". One of these machines was donated by the government to the Milwaukee Area Technical College in 1972, which included a drum-based line printer and dual Ampex magnetic tape drives. It was used for a limited number of students as an "extra credit project device" for the next 2-3 years, after which it was (unfortunately) scrapped to make space for newer equipment. The fate of the other two units is unknown.

Notes

References

External links

Oral history interview with Louis Fein
at

Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Fein discusses establishing computer science as an academic discipline at

Stanford Research Institute SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit organization, nonprofit scientific research, scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as ...

(SRI) as well as contacts with the University of California—Berkeley, the University of North Carolina, Purdue,

International Federation for Information Processing The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) is a global organisation for researchers and professionals working in the field of computing to conduct research, develop standards and promote information sharing. Established in 196 ...

and other institutions.
The 3C Legacy Project
* 1953 establishments in Massachusetts 1966 disestablishments in Massachusetts 1966 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 1953 American companies disestablished in 1966 Companies based in Framingham, Massachusetts Computer companies established in 1953 Computer companies disestablished in 1966 Defunct computer companies based in Massachusetts Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Electronics companies established in 1953 Minicomputers {{compu-company-stub