(I was involved with sims procurement, 1966-70. This is from memory).
3 firms shared the workload arising from Healey's Defence recast:
- at Aylesbury, GPS (1967: Redifon Air Trainers Ltd). They had Bucc S.2(RN), which was the first UK digital/motion/visual. A US GPS mainframe.
- at Crawley, Redifon. They had F-4K/M, with Honeywell, and another (forget) with Redifon 2000 mainframe.
- at Lancing (Churchill Industrial Estate), Miles (yes, the same F.G.; soon Link-MIles, soon Singer-Link). They had F-111K, but chopped, which I think was to have been the first with 6-axis motion + colour visual.
The work of art in this generation was not the model - always done by dextrous females. It was the computer room, a work of exquisite civil engineering. The Bucc's at LM was sited at a distance from the runway that had been assessed as far enough to reduce vibration to match the floor's dampening (springing), but early sim useage was affected during runway activity. The room was clean - as in gyro manufacture - noddy suits, and very hot. For 30k.
Wedgwood-Benn at this time was Minister of Technology, responsible for the nascent UK computer industry. This raft of sim business caused him to obtain Cabinet Approval that all UK public procurement of mainframes should carry a Buy British weighting of 25%: so a Honeywell bid of £100 would lose to a Redifon £125. We only had ICL and they soon became Fujitsu.
Last edited by tornadoken; 1st Nov 2012 at 11:05.