Burroughs Medium Systems

My favorite memory of running mainframes was the huge red HALT button on the console. Would the unit actually start smoking if a bad instruction got processed? Never got to test that.

I was stationed in Alabama, where the USAF wrote all their code, back in the early 80's. We had 2 Burroughs (2500 & 3900? Funny how 25 years can degrade the RAM...), a Honeywell 4050, a couple of old Univac 1050's (upon which the techs actually had to use rubber bands a couple of times 'cause they had a hard time getting belts for the tape drives), plus a PDP-11 for the ARPA connection.

Around my last year there they were deciding whether to go with Burroughs, or Sperry for their next generation of big iron.

Hint: The one that lost that contract bought the other.

A couple of years later I was running a B1900 for this private firm, and the techs there were talking about having a naming contest for the newly merged company.

I took all the letters from Burroughs & Sperry, mangled 'em up and came up with Ury's Burger Shop (visions of french fried capacitors).

The techs said they thought it was a great name, and would submit it, but I shouldn't hold my breath.

Granted, I'm biased, but I still think it's a better name than Unisys.

;)