First computer in the UK banking industry

Martins Bank was a pioneer of computing in the UK

At the end of the 1950s, and after much research and careful consideration of the impact of trialling new equipment alongside the normal running of a branch, PEGASUS – a computer manufactured by the British firm Ferranti was chosen to be the brain of Martins Bank’s Branch Accounting.

The home of the future

For my first ever post of this blog, a blog that doesn't have a very clear order in which matter is presented, a blog that doesn't aim to be the best source for learning about the history of science and technology but rather to be a fun place to look back at how things were and where they went from there.
For this first post I selected a one-page article from Popular Electronics, printed in August 1955.

Raytheon's new "Radarange" roasts a turkey in one hour, boils steaks in three and a half minutes, cooks corn and bakes potatoes in a few seconds - yep, that's the granddaddy of the ubiquitous microwave oven.

Let's have a look at a page from Popular Science, October 1955:

Lovely transistor-based radios - and a lady enjoying some nice Jazz or bluegrass with her very portable radio. She could take it with her on a bicycle trip without even noticing the weight.

A battery-powered phonograph (turn-table player) - perfect for outdoors parties, not so great for jogging with it.

In 1955 the transistor, the first solid-state device capable of amplifying an electric signal, was not anymore a breakthrough technology, though the vacuum tube was still king in the marketplace. In the "Transistors Take Over Portables" column, the author actually mean electron tube-based portables - there were battery-powered portable radios that used vacuum tubes that were somewhat sparing in their power consumption.