BARK

Matematikmaskinnämnden — the Swedish Board for Computing Machinery — was set up in 1948 to supply research, industry and defence with computing capacity. Engineers were first sent to the United States to see how it was done; then Binär Automatisk Reläkalkylator was built in Stockholm and entered service in April 1950. Conny Palm led the design, which used around 5,000 relays. Addition took roughly 150 milliseconds and multiplication a little over 250 — slow even then, but relays could be bought off the shelf and vacuum tubes were still a gamble.

The machine was deliberately conservative and always meant as a stopgap. In parallel the board built its electronic successor BESK, finished in 1953 and for a brief spell reckoned the fastest computer in the world. BARK ran until 1955, BESK until 1966. When the board was wound up in 1956 the expertise passed to Facit, which built BESK copies for a few years before interest drained away — in hindsight an unusually well-earned head start that was nevertheless mislaid.