A trackball is a pointing device consisting of a ball held by a socket containing sensors to detect a rotation of the ball about two axes—like an upside-down ball mouse with an exposed protruding ball. Users roll the ball to position the on-screen pointer, using their thumb, fingers, or the palm of the hand, while using the fingertips to press the buttons.
The Type 23 frigate or Duke class is a class of frigates built for the United Kingdom's Royal Navy. The ships are named after British Dukes, thus leading to the class being commonly known as the Duke class. The first Type 23, HMS Norfolk, was commissioned in 1989, and the sixteenth, HMS St Albans was commissioned in June 2002. They form the core of the Royal Navy's destroyer and frigate fleet and serve alongside the Type 45 destroyers. They were designed for anti-submarine warfare, but have been used for a range of uses. Ten Type 23 frigates remain in service with the Royal Navy, with three vessels having been sold to the Chilean Navy, one being retired in 2021, and two being retired in 2023.
The Type 82 or Bristol-class destroyer was a 1960s guided missile destroyer design intended to replace County-class destroyers in the Royal Navy. Originally eight warships were planned to provide area air-defence for the four planned CVA-01 aircraft carriers. They would also have been able to operate independently as modern cruisers "East of Suez".
Ferranti or Ferranti International PLC was a UK electrical engineering and equipment firm that operated for over a century from 1885 until it went bankrupt in 1993. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
Thales Underwater Systems or TUS is a subsidiary of the French defense electronics specialist Thales Group. It was created in 2001 and belongs to its naval division. It specializes in the development and manufacturing of sonar systems for submarines, surface warships and aircraft, as well as communications masts and systems for submarines. Its headquarters are located in Sophia Antipolis, France.
Ferranti-Packard Ltd. was the Canadian division of Ferranti's global manufacturing empire, formed by the 1958 merger of Ferranti Electric and Packard Electric. For several years in the post-war era, the company underwent a dramatic expansion and had several brushes with success in the computer market, but eventually shed various divisions and returned to being an electrical grid supplier once again. The company was purchased in 1998 by the Austrian company, VA TECH. On July 23, 2005 Siemens PTD purchased VA Tech's Transmission and Distribution Division (T&D) group for transformers and switchgear.
Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) was a computerized information processing system developed by the United States Navy in the 1950s and first deployed in the early 1960s for use in combat ships. It took reports from multiple sensors on different ships and collated it to produce a single unified map of the battlespace. This information could then be relayed back to the ships and to the weapons operators.
A combat information center (CIC) or action information centre (AIC) is a room in a warship or AWACS aircraft that functions as a tactical center and provides processed information for command and control of the near battlespace or area of operations. Within other military commands, rooms serving similar functions are known as command centers.
ReserVec was a computerized reservation system developed by Ferranti Canada for Trans-Canada Airlines in the late 1950s. It appears to be the first such system ever developed, predating the more famous SABRE system in the United States by about two years. Although Ferranti had high hopes that the system would be used by other airlines, no further sales were forthcoming and development of the system ended. Major portions of the transistor-based circuit design were put to good use in the Ferranti-Packard 6000 computer, which would later go on to see major sales in Europe as the ICT 1904.
The FP-6000 was a second-generation mainframe computer developed and built by Ferranti-Packard, the Canadian division of Ferranti, in the early 1960s. It is particularly notable for supporting multitasking, being one of the first commercial machines to do so. Only six FP-6000s were sold before the computer division of Ferranti-Packard was sold off by Ferranti's UK headquarters in 1963, the FP-6000 becoming the basis for the mid-range machines of the ICT 1900, which sold into the thousands in Europe.
Anti-submarine warfare is a branch of underwater warfare that uses surface warships, aircraft, submarines, or other platforms, to find, track, and deter, damage, or destroy enemy submarines. Such operations are typically carried out to protect friendly shipping and coastal facilities from submarine attacks and to overcome blockades.
The surface-barrier transistor is a type of transistor developed by Philco in 1953 as an improvement to the alloy-junction transistor and the earlier point-contact transistor. Like the modern Schottky transistor, it offered much higher speed than earlier transistors and used metal–semiconductor junctions, but unlike the schottky transistor, both junctions were metal–semiconductor junctions.
Maurice Kenyon Taylor was an English electrical engineer and inventor, responsible for many diverse technological developments and inventions, producing over 70 patents during his career. He spent most of his career at Ferranti, first in Manchester, then Edinburgh and finally moving to Canada where he led development at their Toronto-area operations, Ferranti-Packard.
Typhon was a missile system developed by the United States Navy in the late 1950s, intended to serve as an integrated air-defense system for Navy fleets. Consisting of the SAM-N-8 Typhon LR, later designated RIM-50A, and the SAM-N-9 Typhon MR, later RIM-55A, paired with the AN/SPG-59 radar system, the cost of the Typhon system led to it being cancelled in favor of the Standard Missile program.
HMCS Digby was a Bangor-class minesweeper that served in the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War. She saw action in the Battle of the Atlantic and the Battle of the St. Lawrence. After the war she was supposed to be transferred to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police but that was cancelled and instead was recommissioned into the Royal Canadian Navy, serving until 1956.
HMCS Granby was a Bangor-class minesweeper that served in the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War. She saw action in the Battle of the Atlantic and the Battle of the St. Lawrence. After the war, she was transferred to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, however never saw service with them. She was recommissioned as a deep-diving tender in 1953 and served as such until 1966. She was named for Granby, Quebec.
Rod Coutts is a Canadian entrepreneur and a co-founder of Teklogix International. He was born in Cookstown, Ontario. Coutts graduated from University of Waterloo in 1964 with a Bachelor of Applied Science Degree in Electrical Engineering.
In 2000, Coutts donated an estimated $7 million in shares to the University of Waterloo, as his tribute to the school.
"My family has had a lot of good fortune over the years and the University of Waterloo had a lot to do with that," says Coutts. "This is my chance to give something back."
Ferranti Canada's Route Reference Computer was the first computerized mail sorter system, delivered to the Canadian Post Office in January 1957. Despite a promising start and a great deal of international attention, spiraling costs and a change in government led to the project being canceled later that year. Technical developments pioneered for the Route Reference Computer were put to good use by Ferranti in several projects that followed over the next decade.
The Comprehensive Display System (CDS) was a command, control, and coordination system of the British Royal Navy (RN) that worked with the detection/search Type 984 radar. The system was installed on a total of six ships starting in 1957. The US Navy purchased a prototype CDS and produced twenty of their own version, the Electronic Data System (EDS). These were used on a number of ships until 1968. A modified version, the Data Handling System, was used with the AMES Type 82 radar by the Royal Air Force, and US Air Force very nearly used it as well.
Sir "Gerard" Vincent Ziani de Ferranti, CBE MC was the second son of Dr Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti. As chairman of Ferranti from 1930 to 1963, he was responsible for evolving the company into a diverse multimillion-pound organisation recognized as an industry leader in electrical engineering, electronics and avionics.
