Ferranti

Ferranti

Company type	Public
Industry	Electronics & Defence
Founded	1905 (as Ferranti Ltd)
Defunct	Bankrupt 1993
Fate	Bankrupt & broken up
Successor	GEC-Marconi, Matra Marconi Space
Headquarters	Hollinwood, UK
Key people	Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti

Ferranti or Ferranti International plc was a major UK electrical engineering and equipment firm known primarily for defence electronics and power grid systems. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but ceased trading in 1993.

Ferranti is also famous in the computer industry for building the first commercially available computer, the Ferranti Mark 1, which was first delivered in 1951 and started their computer business, which lasted into the 1970s. They had influential collaborations with the university computing departments at Manchester and Cambridge, which resulted in the development of the Mercury and Atlas machines (Manchester); and the Atlas 2 or Titan (Cambridge).

History

Beginnings

Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti established his first business Ferranti, Thompson and Ince in 1882. The company developed the Ferranti-Thompson Alternator. Ferranti focused on Alternating Current power distribution early on, and was one of the few experts in this system in the UK. In 1885 Ferranti established a new business, with Francis Ince and Charles Sparks as partners, known as S. Z. de Ferranti.

During the 1880s electricity meters became key product for Ferranti, and the company became an important supplier to many electricity supply companies: this business remained successful until the 1980s when it was transferred into a joint venture with Siemens and then sold to them.

In 1887 the London Electric Supply Corporation (LESCo) hired Ferranti for the design of their power station at Deptford. He designed the building, the generating plant and the distribution system. On its completion in October 1890 it was the first truly modern power station, supplying high-voltage AC power that was then "stepped down" for consumer use on each street: this basic system remains in use today around the world. Success followed and Ferranti started producing electrical equipment for sale. Soon the company was looking for considerably more room. Prices in the London area were too high, so the company moved to Hollinwood in Oldham in 1896 where a production facility was erected for the manufacture of various items including steam engines, alternators and dynamos.

By 1897 it had become clear that the costs of setting up the Hollinwood plant had far exceeded the initial estimates. Cash flow problems became so acute that some suppliers were withholding deliveries, forcing the company to take out a secured overdraft. The overdraft facility was, however, soon exhausted creating a further crisis in 1898 when more cash was raised through the sale of debentures. A merger with T.I. Wire was considered but this fell through. Financial reconstruction followed in 1901, when the company changed its name to Ferranti and offered shares on the open market. However, the initial issue of 120,000 £1.00 nonvoting preference shares largely failed to attract investors, and at the end of 1902 Ferranti was obliged to offer 41,000 ordinary shares to private investors. By September 1903 the company was again experiencing financial difficulties, this time of such elemental proportions that, at the instigation of the debenture stock holders, it was placed into receivership.

Rapid growth

The management appointed by the receiver, which comprised two chartered accountants, immediately rationalised the product line and severely curtailed expenditure on new product development. The latter measure annoyed Ferranti and brought him into conflict with the receiver-managers who, because of their court awarded powers, took steps to limit the former owner's influence. After another financial reconstruction, which reduced Ferranti's position to director and technical advisor, he took a far less active role in the running of the business. Between 1905 and 1913 the new management improved the firm's financial position, concentrating on marketing those aspects of the product range which were capable of returning a profit. By 1907, the considerable losses of 1903 had been reversed and by 1913 the company employed 1,752 workers.

During the early part of the 20th century, electricity was supplied by small companies, typically as an offshoot of plant set up to provide power to local industry. Each plant supplied a different standard, which made the mass production of electrical equipment for home users rather difficult. In 1910 Ferranti promoted an effort to standardize the power supply, supplying large numbers of power transformers, an initiative which eventually culminated in the National Grid in 1926.

During the First World War the Ferranti plant was extensively re-equipped and extended following an initial contract to manufacture shrapnel cases for Vickers. In September 1915 the War office financed the construction of additional floor space and the purchase of machine tools for the production of shells and fuses. American built automatic machine tools were installed, mass production techniques were adopted and the company's turnover and gross profit more then doubled for the remainder of the conflict. Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti became a member of the executive committee set up in 1915 to monitor arms production, a position which again gave him a direct input into production matters.

High voltage power transformers became an important product for Ferranti; some of the largest types weighed over a hundred tons. Ferranti built a new power transformer works at Hollinwood in the late 1940s; however, the orders the company had hoped for did not materialize, and the transformer division closed in 1979, severing the last link Ferranti had with heavy electrical engineering. In the early 1980s, Ferranti Engineering Holdings Limited's business consisted of container handling and tapchanger (transformer part) manufacture, and the purchase and resale of agricultural machinery.

In 1935 Ferranti purchased a mill at Moston: from here it manufactured many "brown goods" such as televisions, radios, and electric clocks. The company later sold its radio and television interests to EKCO in 1957. In addition Ferranti Instruments, again based at Moston developed various items for scientific measurements, including one of the first cone and plate viscometers.

Defence electronics

During the Second World War Ferranti became a major supplier of electronics, fuzes, valves, and was, through development of the Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system, heavily involved in the early development of radar in the United Kingdom. In the post-war era this became a large segment of the company, with various branches supplying radar sets, avionics and other military electronics, both in the UK and the various international offices. By 1980 about 60 percent of Ferranti's turnover was generated from the defence market.

In 1943 Ferranti opened a factory at Crewe Toll in Edinburgh to manufacture Gyro Gunsights for the Spitfire aircraft. After the war this business (Ferranti Scotland) would grow to employ 8,000 staff in 8 locations, becoming the birth place of the Scottish electronics industry, and a major contributor to company profitability. Later products included solid state ring laser gyros.

From 1949, Ferranti assisted the Canadian Navy develop DATAR (Digital Automated Tracking and Resolving). DATAR was a pioneering computerized battlefield information system that combined RADAR and SONAR information to provide commanders with an "overall view" of a battlefield, allowing them to coordinate attacks on submarines and aircraft.

In the 1950s work focused on the development of airborne radar with the company subsequently supplying radars to most of the UK's fast jet and helicopter fleets: today the Crewe Toll site (now owned by SELEX Galileo) leads the consortium providing the radar for the Eurofighter Typhoon.

In the 1960s and 1970s inertial navigation systems became an important product line for the company with systems designed for fast jet (Harrier, Phantom, Tornado), space and land applications. The electro-mechanical inertial navigation systems were constructed at the Silverknowes site in Edinburgh, in addition to their other military and civil applications were used in the ESA Ariane 4 and first Ariane 5 launches. Ferranti also produced the PADS (Position and Azimuth Determining System). This was an inertial navigation system which could be mounted in a vehicle and was used by the British Army.

With the invention of the laser in the 1960s the company quickly established itself in the electro-optics arena. From the early 1970s it was delivering the Laser Rangefinder and Marked Target Seeker (LRMTS) for the Jaguar and Harrier fleets, and later for Tornado. It supplied the world's first man-portable laser rangefinder/designator (Laser Target Marker, LTM) to the British Army in 1974, and had notable successes in the US market, establishing Ferranti Electro-optics Inc in Huntington Beach, California. Its TIALD Pod (Thermal Imager and Laser Designator) has been in almost constant combat operation on the Tornado since it was rushed into service during the first Gulf War.

The first order was placed for the Bristol Ferranti Bloodhound SAM, a missile developed in co-operation with Bristol Airplane Co., in spring 1995. The Bloodhound was a successful weapon in terms of performance and sales and it was especially profitable for Ferranti. In October 1963, however, government auditors announced that "serious discrepancies" had been discovered in Ferranti's Bloodhound programme cost calculations. Ferranti refused to treat with the Ministry of Aviation, and an independent enquiry, chaired by Sir John Lang, was set up. In the face of its findings Ferranti offered to refund a total of £4.25 million, or 86% of the firm's final profit on the Bloodhound project, to the MoA.

From the 1960s until the late 1980s the Bristol Ferranti Bloodhound SAM, for which Ferranti developed radar systems, was a key money earner.

In 1970 Ferranti became involved in the sonar field through its involvement with Plessey in a new series of sonars, for which designed and built the computer subsystems. This work later expanded when it won a contract for the complete Sonar 2050. The work was originally carried out at the Wythenshaw factory and then at Cheadle Heath. Takeovers of other companies gave it expertise in sonar arrays. This business later became Ferranti Thomson Sonar Systems.

The selection of the radar for the EFA (now known as the Eurofighter Typhoon) became a major international issue in the early 1990s. Britain, Italy and Spain supported the Ferranti-led ECR-90, while Germany preferred the MSD2000 (a collaboration between Hughes, AEG and GEC. An agreement was reached after UK Defence Secretary Tom King assured his West German counterpart Gerhard Stoltenberg that the British government would underwrite the project and allow GEC to acquire Ferranti Defence Systems from its troubled parent. Hughes sued GEC for $600 million for its role in the selection of the EFA and alleged that it used Hughes technology in the ECR-90 when it took over Ferranti. It later dropped this allegation and was awarded $23 million, the court judged that the MSD-2000 "had a real or substantial chance of succeeding had GEC not tortuously intervened ... and had the companies, which were bound by the Collaboration Agreement, faithfully and diligently performed their continuing obligations thereunder to press and promote the case for MSD-2000".

Industrial electronics

In the late 1980s there were a number of sections of the company involved in non-military areas. These included microwave communications equipment (Ferranti Communications), and petrol (gas) station pumps (Ferranti Autocourt). Both of these departments were based at Dalkeith, Scotland.

Computers

In the late 1940s Ferranti joined with various university-based research groups to develop computers. Their first effort was the Ferranti Mark 1, completed in 1951, about nine delivered between 1951 and 1957. The Pegasus introduced in 1956 was their most popular valve (vacuum tube) system, with 38 units sold. In about 1956 Ivan Idelson of Ferranti originated the Cluff-Foster-Idelson coding of characters on 7-track paper tape for a BSI committee, which eventually became ASCII.

In collaboration with the University of Manchester they built a new version of the Mark 1 that replaced valve diodes with solid state versions, which allowed the speed to be increased dramatically as well as increasing reliability. Ferranti offered the result commercially as the Mercury starting in 1957, and eventually sold nineteen in total. Although a small part of Ferranti's empire, the computer division was nevertheless highly visible and operated out of a former steam locomotive factory in West Gorton.

Work on a completely new design, the Atlas, started soon after the delivery of the Mercury, aiming to dramatically improve performance. The machine first ran in 1962, and Ferranti eventually built three machines in total. A version of the Atlas modified for the needs of the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory led to the Titan (or Atlas 2), which was the mainstay of scientific computing in Cambridge for nearly 8 years.

By the early 1960s their mid-size machines were no longer competitive, but efforts to design a replacement were bogged down. Into this void stepped the Canadian division, Ferranti-Packard, who had used several of the ideas under development in England to very quickly produce the Ferranti-Packard 6000. By this time Ferranti's management had tired of the market and were looking for someone to buy the entire division. Eventually it was merged into International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) in 1963, becoming the Large Systems Division of ICL in 1968. After studying several options, ICT selected the FP6000 as the basis for their ICT 1900 line which sold into the 1970s.

The deal setting up ICT excluded Ferranti from the commercial sector of computing, but left the industrial field free. Some of the technology of the FP 6000 was later used in its Ferranti Argus range of industrial computers which were developed in its Wythenshawe factory. The first of these, simply Argus, was initially developed for military use.

Meanwhile in Bracknell the Digital Systems Division was developing a range of mainframe computers for naval applications. Early computers using discrete transistors were the Hermes and Poseidon and these were followed by the F1600 in the mid-1960s. Some of these machines remained in active service on naval vessels for many years. The FM1600B was the first of the range to use integrated circuits and was used in many naval and commercial applications. The FM1600D was a single-rack version of the computer for smaller systems. An airborne version of this was also made and used aboard the RAF Nimrod. The FM1600E was a redesigned and updated version of the FM1600B, and the last in the series was the F2420, an upgraded FM1600E, in service at sea with the Royal Navy until 2010.

Semiconductors

Ferranti had been involved in the production of electronic devices including radio valves, cathode ray tubes and germanium semiconductors for some time before it became the first European company to produce a silicon diode, in 1955. Ferranti Semiconductor Ltd. went on to produce a range of silicon bipolar devices including, in 1977, the Ferranti F100-L, an early 16-bit microprocessor with 16-bit addressing. An F100-L was carried into space on the amateur radio satellite UoSAT-1 (Oscar 9). Ferranti's ZTX series bipolar transistors gave their name to the inheritor of Ferranti Semiconductor's discrete semiconductor business, Zetex plc.

In the early eighties, Ferranti produced some of the first large uncommitted logic arrays (ULAs), used in home computers such as the Sinclair ZX81, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Acorn Electron and BBC Microcomputer. The microelectronics business was sold to Plessey in 1988.

Acquisition of International Signal & Control

In 1987 Ferranti purchased International Signal and Control (ISC), a Pennsylvania based defence contractor. The company subsequently changed its name to Ferranti International plc. and restructured the combined business into the following divisions: Ferranti Computer Systems, Ferranti Defence Systems, Ferranti Dynamics, Ferranti Satcomms, Ferranti Technologies and International Signal & Control.

Unknown to Ferranti, ISC's business primarily consisted of illegal arms sales started at the behest of various US clandestine organizations. On paper the company looked to be extremely profitable on sales of high-priced "above board" items, but in fact these profits were essentially non-existent. With the sale to Ferranti all illegal sales ended immediately, leaving the company with no obvious cash flow.

In 1989 the UK's Serious Fraud Office started criminal investigation regarding alleged massive fraud at ISC. In December 1991 James Guerin, founder of ISC and co-Chairman of the merged company, pleaded guilty before the federal court in Philadelphia to fraud committed both in the USA and UK. All offences which would have formed part of any UK prosecution were encompassed by the US trial and as such no UK trial proceeded.

The financial and legal difficulties that resulted forced Ferranti into bankruptcy in December 1993.

Operations

De Havilland Heron operated from Manchester Airport 1962–1970 as an executive transport, particularly between the factories in Lancashire and Scotland. The company name is on the lower fin

The company had factories in Greater Manchester at Hollinwood, Moston, Chadderton (Gem Mill), Waterhead (Cairo Mill), Derker, Wythenshawe, Cheadle Heath, West Gorton, and Poynton. Eventually it set up branch-plants in Edinburgh (Silverknowes, Crewe Toll, Gyle, Granton and Robertson Avenue factories), Dalkeith, Aberdeen, Dundee, Bracknell and Cwmbran as well as Germany and the United States and several British Commonwealth countries including Canada, Australia and Singapore.

Products manufactured by Ferranti Defence Systems included cockpit displays (moving map, head-down, head-up) video cameras and recorders, gunsight cameras, motion detectors, pilot's night vision goggles, integrated helmets, and pilot's stick controls.

On the Tornado aircraft, Ferranti supplied the radar transmitter, inertial navigation system, LRMTS, TIALD pod, mission recording equipment, and cockpit displays.

Current ownership of former Ferranti businesses

Ferranti Autocourt

acquired by Wayne Dresser, renamed to Wayne Autocourt, before Autocourt name dropped

Ferranti Communications

acquired by Thorn and branded Thorn Communications and Telecontrol Systems (CATS). Later acquired by Tyco International and renamed Tyco Communications. Still operating under the name TS Technology Services.

Ferranti Computer Systems

acquired out of administration by SYSECA, the IT arm of Thomson-CSF and renamed Ferranti-SYSECA Ltd, later the Ferranti was dropped and when Thomson changed its name to Thales, SYSECA became Thales Information Systems. Thales Information Systems later sold its German interest to Consinto Gmbh. The department dealing with airport systems was bought by Datel in around 1995 and continued to trade under the name Ferranti Airport Systems until it was bought by Ultra Electronics. Other parts of Ferranti Computer Systems were acquired out of administration by GEC-Marconi, when GEC-Marconi sold on its defence related businesses to BAE Systems many of these former Ferranti entities became part of the BAE/Finmeccanica joint venture called Alenia Marconi Systems. The JV has now been dissolved and the former Ferranti entities are now part of BAE Systems Integrated System Technologies (Insyte).

Ferranti Defence Systems

acquired by GEC-Marconi out of administration and re-named GEC Ferranti, later changing to GEC Marconi Avionics (GMAv). This business was acquired in 2000 by BAE Systems (BAE Systems Avionics). Part of this business, including the heritage Ferranti operation, was acquired by Finmeccanica in 2007 and re-named SELEX Galileo.

Ferranti Dynamics

acquired by GEC-Marconi in 1992

Ferranti Instrumentation

dissolved. Some assets acquired by GEC-Marconi and Ravenfield Designs

Ferranti Satcomms

acquired out of administration by Matra Marconi Space in 1994

Ferranti Technologies

Continued as an independent company specialising in electronic power management and control systems. Acquired by Elbit Systems in 2007.

Ferranti Air Systems

acquired by Datel then turned into an independent company. Later bought by Ultra Electronics

Ferranti Thomson Sonar Systems

50% share acquired by GEC-Marconi. Now owned by Thales and renamed Thales Underwater Systems.

Ferranti Helicopters

acquired by British Caledonian Airways in April 1979 to become British Caledonian Helicopters which was in turn acquired by Bristow Helicopters in 1987

Ferranti Subsea Systems

Management buyout in the early 90's, renamed FSSL. Kværner bought more shares in 1994 and then turned to Kværner FSSL. Kværner is now known as Aker Solutions

Ferranti Computer Systems Service Department

This was acquired by the third party maintenance company ServiceTec. The regional Service Centres were rebranded as ServiceTec and all of the service engineers and management were taken on. The support of the Argus computers dominated activities although new (non-Argus) business was added to the regional centres. The repair centre at Cairo Mill also became part of the ServiceTec group, ultimately as a separate entity.

Ferranti Semiconductors

became Zetex Semiconductors after a management buyout in 1989. In 2008 it was acquired by Diodes Inc.

Other uses of the Ferranti name

A number of uses of the Ferranti name remain in use. In Edinburgh, the Ferranti Edinburgh Recreation Club (FERC), the Ferranti Mountaineering Club and the Ferranti Ten-pin Bowling League are still in existence. While these organisations no longer have any formal ties with the companies which subsumed the Ferranti companies which operated in Edinburgh, they still operate under the old names.

Ferranti Thistle F.C. was formed in 1943 and joined the Scottish Football League in 1974. Due to strict sponsorship rules it changed its name to Meadowbank Thistle F.C., and later to Livingston F.C..

Denis Ferranti Meters Limited is still owned by a direct descendant of Sebastian de Ferranti but is not directly related to the major Ferranti corporation. The company has over 200 employees that manufacture BT's public phones, oil pumps for large industrial vehicles, electric motors for motorbility solutions, electronics, and small MOD equipment.

Ferranti Technologies Limited of Oldham was bought out by management when the greater company collapsed. The company today is an electronics supplier to the aviation industry.

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Todd, Daniel (1989), The World Electronic Industry, Routledge, ISBN 978-0415024976
• Turner, Graham (1969), Business in Britain, Eyre & Spottiswoode, ISBN 978-0413265401
• Wilson, John F. (2001), Ferranti: A History, Building a Family Business, 1882–1975, Carnegie Publishing, ISBN 978-1859360989
• Vardalas, John N. (2001), The Computer Revolution in Canada: Building National Technological Competence, The MIT Press, ISBN 978-0262220644
• Wertheim, Eric (2007), The Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets of the World: Their Ships, Aircraft and Systems (15 ed.), Naval Institute Press, ISBN 978-1591149552