HEC was the prototype of the first generation of computers that were successfully marketed by Britian. In addition to the United Kingdom, it was also sold to other countries including India, New Zealand, and East Africa. It played a key role in the global computer revolution.
HEC was commissioned by the British Tabulating Machine Company (BTM), which was a major supplier of punched-card systems in pre-computer times. Development was done by Raymond Bird, an electronics engineer, who had only worked with analogue technologies previously. BTM envisaged its own future in the world of computers.
Bird was absolutely thrilled by the “digital gates” opening up before him through HEC. He was not even aware that the engineers he was working alongside built the codebreaking Bombe designed by Alan Turing during World War II. It was the very same team that developed computers for BTM in the early 1950s.
HEC , ready by 1953, was displayed at a business exhibition, and as Bird put it, this was probably the first occasion that the general public had seen a computer in Britain.
Record-high sales were achieved with HEC 2M and HEC 4, also developed by Bird, from 1955 to 1962. After a business merger in 1959, BTM was renamed ICT and HEC4 was to become ICT1200.