Bull
More info
- Released
- 1931
- Owner
- Atos (since 2014)
- Type
- Computer manufacturer
France's national computer maker, which changed owners more often than operating systems.
The company was formed in Paris in 1931 around the patents of Norwegian engineer Fredrik Rosing Bull's punched-card machines. After the war Bull built its own computers, including the Gamma 60 (1960), but money ran short and General Electric took control in 1964. When GE sold its computer business in 1970, Bull went with it to Honeywell – hence the name Honeywell Bull and the GCOS operating system.
The French state nationalised it in 1982 and has topped it up with cash several times since. Bull also looked after Multics to the very end, releasing the source code to MIT in 2007. Since 2014 Bull has been part of Atos, where the name lived on in supercomputers.