(Fredrik Rosing Bull) 1882-1925

1919: Norwegian engineer Fredrik Rosing Bull sets himself the challenge of designing a machine that automates the processing of statistics for his employer, insurance company Storebrand. The prototype is unveiled to the Storebrand Board of Directors in August 1921, who approves it. The specialist press gives FR Bull’s machine good publicity. Half a dozen are delivered to various different companies between 1922 and 1925. Its success is due both to the machine’s technical qualities (especially its simplicity) and to the fact that its appearance calls a halt to the rise of IBM’s Hollerith system, which lowers prices and gives customers greater choice.

After Fredrik Rosing’s premature death in 1925, the main instigator of Bull’s European expansion is Émile Genon, a Belgian seller of calculating machines. In 1927, he buys the rights relating to FR Bull’s patents for ten European countries. Then in 1928 he reaches an agreement with Swiss company HW Egli to acquire the manufacturing rights relating to these patents for countries outside Scandianavia; and from 1928 onwards the machines are made in Switzerland.

In December 1929, the first machine manufactured in Zurich is delivered to the laboratories of chemical and pharmaceutical company Sandoz. The search for a strong domestic market capable of supporting industrial-scale production, as well as legislation to protect the patents, leads the company to move to France.

1931: In March 1931, the company known as HW Egli Bull – governed by French law but with a majority Swiss shareholding – is formed in Paris by three partners: HW Egli, the company Bull AG (founded the previous year in Zurich by Genon) and finally ATEIC (the Association Technique d'Études industrielles et Comptables or Technical Association for Industrial and Accounting Studies). The company sells Bull machines in France and is based at Avenue Gambetta in the 20th arrondissement of Paris; today the site is occupied by the rectorate of the Academy of Paris.

(T30 tabulating machine)

1931: Bull’s research, led by Knut Andréas Knutsen, leads to the launch of the tabulator T30, which is 25% to 40% cheaper than its rivals and capable of printing 120 lines a minute: a world record, that will only be equaled some 18 years later! This great performance is the birth of Bull’s commercial development.

1933: The Compagnie des Machines Bull or CMB is formed. Born out of the patents for the tabulating machines developed by Frederik Rosing Bull and Knut Andréas Knutsen, it supersedes the Franco-Swiss company Egli-Bull. Two years later, in 1935, it holds 16% of the French market, becoming IBM’s main competitor in France, and also has commercial operations in Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Argentina and the Scandinavian countries. Its tabulating machine is one of the best on the market, as well as the fastest. CMB never ceases in its technological innovation. It enjoys an excellent reputation for speed and functional richness, and is well suited to European applications. The company is building around three machines a month, and regularly increasing its production capacity.

1935: Innovation requires costly investments, and talks are under way with the government to obtain funding for the development of new research studies. Émile Genon is charged by the Board to look for possible licensing and distribution deals with various firms in the USA. He meets with IBM, who offers him the possibility of a friendly collaboration. But the company prefers to ask for a commitment from the French government, whose decision is slow in coming. So without the Board’s authorization, Genon agrees to sell the majority of the shares in Bull AG (the company which sells the Bull machines, of which he is the Director) to IBM. He sees this as a way to achieve a ‘tacit peace’ between IBM’s and Bull’s patents, and to grow Bull’s international presence with support from the American group. The intractable Georges Vieillard, then Director of CBM, forces Genon to chose between Bull and IBM. After ten years of often decisive and intense activity, Genon leaves Bull. And new players enter the scene: the Callies-Aussedat family.

Stationery company Société des Papeteries Aussedat provides Bull with the tabulating cards used by its machines. Since 1932, it has invested heavily in this area and is represented on the Board of Bull by Jacques Callies. The threat of the company being absorbed into IBM worries Aussedat, because IBM requires its customers to buy their punch cards exclusively from them.

Just as it is vital to prevent General Motors from buying Citroën, it is essential that the Compagnie des Machines Bull doesn’t fall into American hands. And because the State is still not responding, the Callies family decides to increase its financial stake in the company. It takes over the leadership of the company, in the person of former Board member Jacques Callies, who is appointed as Managing Director of Bull in December 1935, and subsequently becomes the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). This is a role which he holds until his death in November 1948, when he will be succeeded by his brother Joseph, an engineer at the Aussedat stationary company and then at CMB. The team that will animate and ensure the company’s expansion for almost three decades is now in place. As is the family-owned capital structure that will manage the company right through until 1964 (with the Callies holding 55% of the shares), and the spirit that will come to characterize the Group: the belief that every employee is important, social paternalism, the determination to be the best, and intense consideration for customers.

1936: The company now employs 200 people. With the development, in 1938, of the technique of independent cycles – which allows specific processing cycles to be run in a flexible and optimum way, using removable connection panels – Bull’s electromechanical calculators are greatly improved and gradually establish themselves as market leaders. Its various machines enable thousands of data items recorded on punch cards to be read, sorted, used in accounting and printed. These cards will be in use, with the introduction of electronics, right through until the early 1980s. The need to enter data onto the cards spawns a whole new job role, which has since disappeared, that of the keypunch operator (more usually known just as an ‘operator’).

(BS 120 tabulating machine)

1939: The BS120 tabulating machine is designed, featuring independent cycles, which will be one of the main factors in Bull’s expansion over the next 20 years.

From 1947 the export business, which had been interrupted by World War II, takes off again dynamically. Over the next 15 years, Bull’s international network will expand considerably to become one of the company’s greatest strengths. So in 1942 in Belgium, for instance, SOMECA – which had represented Bull AG in 1930 – becomes the Société belge des machines Bull. In Switzerland Endrich AG, which had also been one of Bull’s partners since 1930, becomes a subsidiary under the name Bull Lochkartenmaschinen AG. In 1949, an agreement with Olivetti is concluded to create a distribution company in Italy: known as Olivetti-Bull. Over the next forty years Bull will become well established in the Netherlands, Germany and South America.

1948: Bull overtakes IBM in the French market, with a total installed base of 385 machines: over the course of the next 16 years that figure will be grow ten-fold. This will largely be down to organic growth, thanks to Bull’s efforts in product and sales development. Certain of the company’s sub-contractors will also be absorbed into Bull. This period marks not only the high-point of the market for mechanical tabulation machines, but also a time when Bull, in common with its competitors, will gradually start to convert to electronic systems.

(Gamma 3) (Typical electronic tubes used in Gamma 3)

1951: The start of an even more intrepid adventure in information technology. At the third SICOB exhibition in Paris (focused on industry and commercial offices) Bull unveils Gamma 3, its first electronic calculator. Linked to automated readers and printing machines, it enables calculations to be performed much faster. A technical and commercial success, Gamma 3 becomes the industry benchmark and heralds the decline of mechanical tabulation and the dawn of the computer age. The computer is programmed with a simple sequence of operations, wired manually using tiny electrical plugs inserted into numbered sockets, to access the machine’s basic functions. It will be followed by Gamma 3 B, featuring a ‘magnetic drum’, which is not only used for business purposes but also for scientific computing; with the drum holding both programs and intermediary data. This creates a fast computing device that can carry out both accounting and scientific operations on behalf of the punch card machine (the BS 120 tabulator) to which it is connected. Capable of 5,800 operations a second, it carries out calculations in the interval between reading two consecutive cards, enabling the machine to run at its rated speed of 150 cards a minute. Its main technical innovation is the intensive use of germanium crystal diodes (a technological first): the Gamma 3 uses no more than 400 electronic tubes compared with the 1,500 found in similar machines, which results in lower manufacturing costs and much better reliability.

1952: The company now employs around 2,200 people.
In 1956, the Soviet market opens up to CMB products, and in 1960 Bull first enters the market in the People’s Republic of China.
In 1957, Bull develops the CMC-7 font (Caractères Magnétiques Codés à 7 bâtonnets) for magnetic ink character recognition still in use today, most notably in the processing of some bank cheques.

(Gamma 60)

1960: Bull launches Gamma 3’s ‘big brother’, Gamma 60: the world’s first multi-tasking computer, featuring a logical architecture that is ten years ahead of its time (it is 20 times faster than Gamma 3 and much more powerful thanks to its multi-tasking capabilities). Data is initially input using 80-column punch cards, at a speed of 300 cards a minute, and subsequently stored on magnetic tapes or drums. The development of Gamma 60 leads Bull to design an embryonic operating system (OS). It marks the emergence of the world of IT specialists, with their large air-conditioned computer suites and new job roles: programmers, analysts... And it foreshadows the massive systems that will gradually become the norm over the next thirty years. Gamma 60 can be seen as the direct ancestor of the Tera 100 supercomputer. Around fifteen Gamma 60s will be sold to prestigious customers including SNCF, EDF, Mitsubishi and the CEA (CEA: the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission).

At the same time, Bull is successfully marketing Gamma 10 – which it has designed as the real successor to Gamma 3 – and Gamma 30, which is sold under OEM license, as Siemens and ICL are also doing at the time. The last Gamma 60 in Europe will be retired from service in 1974.

(Gymnastics relaxation)

In 1960, Bull introduces rest breaks with gymnastic exercises at its keypunch pools; a practice that will spread to Japan.

(Gamma 10)

1962: The Gamma 10 – the real successor to Gamma 3 and the last representative of the mechanical punch card generation – is launched. Designed primarily for business applications, it uses second-generation large-scale computer technologies. In 1962 a commercial agreement is signed with Mitsubishi to become the exclusive distributor of Bull hardware in the Japanese market. The firm also buys a Gamma 60 and then several Gamma 10s.