the 5 sisters

This page highlights what wits have described as the seven dwarfs, five sisters or the Bunch: the 'other' computing companies.

It covers -

• an introduction
• HP
• Control Data and Data General
• General Electric
• Philips, Nixdorf and Siemens
• DEC
• ICL
• Wang
• Dell and Cray
• Compaq
• Fujitsu
• national projects

     introduction

Writing about the information economy (and the computing industry) is often characterised in terms of Babbage, IBM versus Apple, Microsoft versus the world ... Reality is both more complicated and more interesting. DEC (subsequently absorbed by Compaq, in turn engulfed by HP) was the second largest computing company in 1982. Electrotechnical giants such as Siemens, Philips and GE expanded into computing but retreated

Paul Ceruzzi's A History of Modern Computing (Cambridge: MIT Press 1998) offers an authoritative but somewhat lifeless overview of technology. There is a broader view in Computer: A History of the Information Machine (New York: Basic Books 1996) by William Aspray & Martin Campbell-Kelly. 

For a perspective that embraces business and social aspects we recommend James Cortada's exemplary Before The Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs & Remington Rand & the Industry They Created 1865-1956 (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 2000) and his The Computer in the United States: From Laboratory to Market, 1930-60 (Armonk: Sharpe 1993).

As an introduction the essays on the hardware and software industries in Sources of Industrial Leadership: Studies of Seven Industries (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1999) edited by David Mowery & Richard Nelson are of considerable value. Technological Competition and the Structure of the Computer Industry (PDF) by Shane Greenstein & Timothy Bresnahan and the latter's The Changing Structure of Innovation in the Computer Industry (PDF) are also important.

Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Science Industries (New York: Free Press 2001) by Alfred Chandler extends the analysis in A Nation Transformed By Information (New York: Oxford Uni Press 2000) and is a 'must read'.

Michael Riordan & Lillian Hoddeson's Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor & the Birth of the Information Age (New York: Norton 1997), Kenneth Flamm's Creating The Computer: Government, Industry & High Technology (Washington: Brookings Institution 1988) and The First Computers: History & Architectures (Cambridge: MIT Press 2000) edited by Raul Rojas & Ulf Hashagen are useful background material. John Markoff's What The Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Viking 2005) offers a revisionist - and for us unconvincing - account of the birth of the PC.

     HP

The company founded in 1939 as Hewlett Packard (in a garage in what became Silicon Valley) merged in 2002 with Compaq Computer Corporation. HP had combined revenue of approximately US$81.7 billion in 2001, with operations in over 160 countries. At that time it embraced including enterprise storage, servers and management software; printer hardware, digital imaging devices such as cameras and scanners, and activity in the commercial printing market; IT services for business; personal-computing solutions such as desktop PCs, notebooks and handhelds.

David Packard, one of the grand-daddies of Silicon Valley, described his partnership with William Hewlett in The hp Way: How Bill Hewlett & I built our company (New York: Harper 1996).

Deone Zell's Changing by Design: Organizational Innovation at Hewlett-Packard (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 1997) is a specialist academic study, dry but perhaps more convincing than Profit from Experience: The National Semiconductor Story of Transformation Management (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold 1996) by Gil Amelio & William Simon.

     Control Data and Data General

David Lundstrom's A Few Good Men From Univac (Cambridge: MIT Press 1987) is an academic history. Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1984) is the most lasting memento of DG.  James Worthy's William C Norris: Portrait of a Maverick (Cambridge: Ballinger 1987), like the company, hasn't lasted the distance.

     General Electric

Homer Oldfield's King of the Seven Dwarfs: General Electric's Ambiguous Challenge to the Computer Industry (Los Alamitos: IEEE Computer Society Press 1996) is the major study of the failure of GE, Phillips, Siemens and other consumer giants to achieve success as computing hardware/software manufacturers.

The literature on GE's history, personalities and business methods is extensive. We've pointed to particular studies here.

     Philips, Nixdorf and Siemens

Electrotechnical conglomerate Siemens and consumer electronics giant Philips expanded into computing and semiconductors, albeit without great success, before hiving off their hardware and software operations.

Nixdorf was founded in Germany by Heinz Nixdorf during 1952. It was absorbed by Siemens (the German counterpart - along with AEG - of General Electric) in 1990 but hived off in 1999 in conjunction with Siemens move out of mainframes (sold to Fujitsu) and midrange hardware/software.

Philips is the subject of a large-scale academic history. Volumes include The history of NV Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken (Vol. 1: The origin of the Dutch incandescent lamp industry, to 1891) (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1986) and The history of NV Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken (Vol 2: A Company of Many Parts, 1891 till 1918) (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1988) by A. Heerding and The history of Philips Electronics NV (Vol 3: The development of N.V. Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken into a major electrical group) (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff 1992) and The history of Philips Electronics NV (Vol 4: Under German rule) (Zaltbommel : European Library 1999) by I.J. Blanken.

Marcel Metze has produced two studies of Philips in crisis - unfortunately not available in English. They are Kortsluiting (Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Sun 1991) and Let's make things better: Philips 1990-1997 (Nijmegen : Uitgeverij Sun 1997).

There's no major English-language study specific to Nixdorf and Siemens. Papers in The International Computer Software Industry: A Comparative Study of Industry Evolution & Structure (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1995) edited by David Mowery and Sources of Industrial Leadership: Studies of Seven Industries (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1999) edited by Mowery & Richard Nelson are invaluable.

For a broader history of Siemens see Werner Von Siemens: Inventor & International Entrepreneur (Columbus: Ohio State Uni Press 1994) and Siemens: 1918-1945 (Columbus: Ohio State Uni Press 1999) by Wilfried Feldenkirchen and the History of the House of Siemens (New York: Arno Press 1977) by Georg Siemens, first published 1957 and ideally read in conjunction with a study such as West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past, 1945-1955 (Chapel Hill: Uni of North Carolina Press 2001) by Jonathan Wiesen.

     DEC

Massachusets-based minicomputer group Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was formed by Kenneth Olsen in 1957

     ICL

ICL: A Business & Technical History (Oxford: Clarendon Press 89) by Martin Campbell-Kelly is the definitive history of the UK company.

There is a more panoramic view in John Hendry's Innovating for Failure: Government Policy & the Early British Computer Industry (Cambridge: MIT Press 1990), Jon Agar's The Government Machine: A Revolutionary History of the Computer (Cambridge: MIT Press 2003) and Tom Kelly's The British Computing Industry: Crisis & Development (London: Croom Helm 1987).

     Wang

For Wang see An Wang's Lessons: An Autobiography (Reading: Addison-Wesley 1986) and Charles Kenney's Riding the Runaway Horse: The Rise and Decline of Wang Laboratories (Boston: Little Brown 1996).

     Dell and Cray

Business the Dell Way: 10 Secrets of the World's Best Computer Business (Oxford: Capstone 1999) by Rebecca Saunders was for us tedious, simplistic and otherwise disappointing. For insights turn to the New York Times or other quality journalism. Michael Dell's self-serving Direct From Dell (New York: Harper Business 1999) and Dell Computer: Organization of a Global Production Network (PDF) by Kenneth Kraemer & Jason Dedrick are more substantial.

Charles Murray's The Superman: The story of Seymour Cray & the Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer (New York: Wiley 1997) is overly positive. There's a more sober account in Knowing Machines: Essays On Technological Change (Cambridge: MIT Press 1998) by Donald MacKenzie.

     Compaq

Compaq was founded in 1982 by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto of Texas Instruments, with an initial investment of US$1,000 apiece and the classic business plan "sketched on a paper place mat in a Houston pie shop".

In 1983 Compaq shipped 53,000 PCs and scored an initial public offering of US$67 million, with first year revenues of US$111 million. Revenues in its second year were US$329 million. By 1986 it had shipped its 500,000th personal computer and started to manufacture offshore. Annual sales by early 1988 had reached US$1.2 billion; by 1991 sales were over US$1 billion per quarter. In 1993 it left the printer business. By 1996 annual sales reached US$14 billion. In 1997 it bought Tandem Computer; earlier networking acquisitions included Microcom, Networth and Thomas-Conrad. Revenue for that year was US$24.6 billion.

In 1998 it bought DEC, creating the second largest computing company, and rights to the AltaVista domain name. AltaVista proved harder to digest (or easier to sell than DEC) and was unloaded in 1999 to investor CGMI. In 2002 Compaq merged with Hewlett-Packard.

     Fujitsu

For Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC and other Japanese computing companies see Bob Johnstone's We Were Burning: Japanese Entrepreneurs & The Forging of the Electronic Age (New York: Basic Books 1999) and Simon Partner's Assembled In Japan: Electrical Goods & The Making Of The Japanese Consumer (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1999).

     national projects

The Computer Revolution in Canada: Building National Technological Competence (Cambridge: MIT Press 2001) by John Vardalas is a serviceable account of Canada's computer industry.

For the UK and Germany see the works noted above and essays in The International Computer Software Industry: A Comparative Study of Industry Evolution & Structure (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1995) edited by David Mowery.






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