Bryan (G. Edward) collection on the CP-6 system, 1955-2002, bulk Bulk, 1965-1992

Summary

Title:

G. Edward Bryan collection on the CP-6 system

Dates:

1955-2002, bulk Bulk, 1965-1992

Creators:

Bryan, George Edward, d. 2014

Abstract:

The G. Edward Bryan collection on the CP-6 system contains material on the Honeywell CP-6 operating system and the team that built it at the Los Angeles Development Center (LADC). In an effort to attract Xerox CP-V users to Honeywell machines, the LADC was established in 1976 to develop CP-V’s backward-compatible successor, CP-6. The LADC team was a hybrid of Xerox programmers and Honeywell management, with Bryan as its director. The collection holds LADC’s administrative records, publications, presentation materials, and records relating to the development and releases of CP-6. The collection spans 1955 to 2002. The LADC and CP-6 parts of the collection span 1973 through 2002, but are primarily from 1976 when the project began until 1992 when support for CP-6 was transferred to ACTC Technologies.

Extent:

60.84 Linear feet, 45 record cartons, 4 manuscript boxes, 2 oversize boxes

Language:

and The collection is almost entirely in English. There is a small amount of material in Swedish, Japanese, German, and French.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of Item], [Date], G. Edward Bryan collection on the CP-6 system, Lot X2901.2005, Box [#], Folder [#], Catalog [#], Computer History Museum.

Background

Scope and content:

The G. Edward Bryan collection on the CP-6 system contains material on the Honeywell CP-6 operating system and the team that built it at the Los Angeles Development Center (LADC). The LADC was established in 1976 to develop a CP-V backward compatible successor, the CP-6, to attract Xerox CP-V users to Honeywell machines. The LADC team was a hybrid of Xerox programmers and Honeywell management, with Bryan as its director. The “Honeywell CP-6 project” series is primarily made up of records created at the LADC starting in 1976 when the project began until 1992 when support for CP-6 was transferred to ACTC Technologies in Canada. LADC administrative records and materials relating to the development and releases of CP-6 make up the bulk of this series, which also includes publications, and presentation materials. Collection highlights in the LADC administrative records include Bryan’s notebooks, calendars, and dayplanners and various forms of original artwork from LADC employees that document the frustration that many LADC members felt over the Honeywell-Bull merger and the end of CP-6. Also included in the “Honeywell CP-6 project” series are promotional material, press, manuals, and conference and presentation materials. The non-CP-6 series in the collection contain Honeywell administrative records and publications related to other projects and products. A significant portion of the collection includes materials created at Scientific Data Systems (SDS) and Xerox Data Systems (XDS) documenting the Universal Time-Sharing System (UTS) and CP-V – both of which were the main predecessors to Honeywell’s CP-6 system in terms of architecture and user base. One other company where Bryan worked that is prevalent in the collection is the RAND Corporation. The materials from RAND are primarily from the 1960s and focus on the JOHNNIAC computer and JOSS programming language. Other companies and publications represented in the non-CP-6 series include IBM, and to a lesser extent, the Control Data Corporation (CDC), Philco, General Electric (GE), Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), and several volumes of the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Biographical / historical:

G. Edward Bryan received his BS in electrical engineering from Caltech in 1954 and an MS-level certificate in communications from Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1957. He worked in system design and engineering at Bell from 1954 to 1960, then worked at the RAND Corporation’s Computer Sciences Department (also known as the RAND Computation Center) until 1967, where he was on the design team that developed the JOSS-II time-sharing programming language.

After RAND, Bryan worked at Scientific Data Systems (SDS) as the manager of operating systems development. SDS was acquired by Xerox and renamed Xerox Data Systems (XDS) in 1969; Bryan continued to work there as a computer scientist on the programming development team that worked on the CP-V operating system for Xerox’s Sigma system of computers. CP-V was released in 1973, but by 1975, Xerox decided to leave the computer business and Honeywell Inc. acquired XDS and around 60 programmers from the CP-V development team, including Bryan, in 1976.

Honeywell also acquired Xerox’s Sigma user base and pledged to continue supporting the Sigma line as they developed an updated and improved version of CP-V that would be nearly identical to the Sigma operating system but operational only on Honeywell machines. They called this operating system CP-6, and it would allow Xerox customers to migrate from their Sigma computers to Honeywell’s own computers with relative ease. CP-6 could be used with Honeywell’s Level 66, DPS 8, DPS 8000, and DPS 90.

Honeywell opened the Los Angeles Development Center (LADC) in 1976 as the center of operations for CP-6 development. As an LADC director, Bryan oversaw the programmers who would create CP-6 in just three years, a development rate that Bryan noted was twice as fast with half the errors as comparable software projects. CP-6 was designed using the programming language PL-6, which was developed by LADC specifically for the project. The first Sigma customer to implement CP-6 was Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1979, and eventually they gained more than 70 CP-6 customers.

In 1987, Honeywell, NEC (Nippon Electric Company), and Groupe Bull merged to create Honeywell Bull. The new company decided to refocus its efforts and phase out the development of CP-6. Honeywell Bull was consolidated into Groupe Bull in 1988 and the name was changed to Bull HN in 1989.

That same year, it was announced that LADC would be closing and support for CP-6 would move to the Canadian company ACTC Technologies Inc., which was partially owned by Bull. Before the shutdown, Bryan considered and proposed several alternatives that would save LADC, such as transforming it into a business independent of Bull and proposing the acquisition of LADC and its staff to several companies. Ultimately, Bull decided to keep LADC open during the transition of CP-6 support to ACTC, retaining essential staff and laying off others. Ten to 12 programmers, including Bryan, stayed on under a two-year contract to train the ACTC staff in the support and maintenance of CP-6 from 1990 to 1992.

Before the LADC contracts ended, Bryan sent letters and resumes to other companies in an attempt to keep his CP-6 team together, or at the very least employed. In December of 1992, LADC closed for good and the staff that did not continue to contract with ACTC were laid off. Bryan took an early retirement from Bull. CP-6 remained in operation and supported by ACTC until 2005, when the last system was shut down at Carleton University, the first site to implement it. Bryan died July 9, 2014.

Acquisition information:

Gift of G. Edward Bryan, 2004.

Processing information:

Collection processed by Bo Doub and Kim Hayden, 2015.

Arrangement:

The collection is arranged into 6 series:

Series 1, Honeywell CP-6 project, 1973-2002, bulk 1976-1992

Series 2, Non-CP-6 Honeywell, 1974-1992

Series 3, SDS and XDS records, 1964-1983

Series 4, RAND Corporation records, 1955-2001, bulk 1960-1969

Series 5, IBM records, 1956-1965

Series 6, Other companies and publications, 1956-1993

Rules or conventions:

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Related resources

Related material:

Keith G. Calkins collection on Sigma systems, Lot X4287.2008.

Separated material:

Non-text items were separated from the main collection. These include packaged software, circuit boards, audiotapes, videotapes, slides, photographs, framed images, plaques, posters, buttons, mugs and a mug warmer, paperweights, a Honeywell post-it holder, a T-shirt, a tie and tie clip, lapel pins, a keychain, a matchbox, a scarf, a pennant with buttons attached, and an LADC pewter tankard. To view catalog records for separated items go to the CHM website at http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/search/.

Indexed terms

Subjects:

CP-6
CP-V
JOHNNIAC computer
Operating systems (Computers)

Names:

Honeywell Inc.
International Business Machines.
Rand Corporation
Scientific Data Systems
Xerox Corporation

About this collection guide

Collection Guide Author:

Finding aid prepared by Bo Doub, Kim Hayden and Sara Chabino Lott

Sponsor:

Processing of this collection was made possible through generous funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, administered through the Council on Library and Information Resources' Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant.

Date Prepared:

July 2015

Date Encoded:

This finding aid was produced using the Archivists' Toolkit 2016-02-11T13:13-0800

Restrictions:

Materials in boxes 1 and 8 contain social security numbers. Researchers must use redacted photocopies of this restricted material for research. Otherwise, the collection is open for research.

Terms of access:

The Computer History Museum (CHM) can only claim physical ownership of the collection. Users are responsible for satisfying any claims of the copyright holder. Requests for copying and permission to publish, quote, or reproduce any portion of the Computer History Museum’s collection must be obtained jointly from both the copyright holder (if applicable) and the Computer History Museum.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of Item], [Date], G. Edward Bryan collection on the CP-6 system, Lot X2901.2005, Box [#], Folder [#], Catalog [#], Computer History Museum.

Location of this collection:

Computer History Museum

1401 Shoreline Blvd.

Mountain View, CA 94043, US

Contact:

(650) 810-1010

research@computerhistory.org

Website