Published on Jun. 1, 2006
Last updated on Jul. 31, 2023
In 1970, Tokyo Shibaura Electric domestically produced the GE635 large computer from the U.S. GE Corporation (later GE sold its computer business to Honeywell Information Systems (HIS), and the series was renamed as the H6000 Series). The result was this computer. The TOSBAC-5600/10, 30 and 50 were manufactured by importing subassemblies and conducting assembly and testing in Japan. They were first shipped in 1970, and gradually the domestic content was increased, until the 100% domestically manufactured Model 160/160E was marketed in 1973. In the process of achieving domestic production, Toshiba independently changed the main memory unit to ICs (which were still rare at the time), and conducted joint development of PL/I compiler with HIS using the bootstrap technique.
