1976 · Bipolar 16-Bit Microprocessor · Work 898 of 1,871
A manager's office in Bracknell in England on an overcast afternoon, on a teak desk a flat block of clear deep red acrylic twelve centimetres long and two and a half centimetres thick with glossy polished edges, its faces plain smooth and clear, floating inside it a long violet-grey ceramic package with forty gold legs and an open gold frame in its middle, fine bond wires running to a small silvery-grey die, grey daylight catching the red block, a closed buff folder tied with red tape, a man in a dark grey suit seen from directly behind at the window, a car park under a grey sky outside.
What it was used for
The object is a desk piece. The Science Museum records a "Ferranti Ltd desk ornament, containing a F100-L microprocessor", made in Oldham in 1976, 25 x 79 x 117 mm, of plastic, metal and silicon, and adds: "This particular example is encased in plastic as a commemorative paperweight." The processor itself was, per the museum, designed by Ferranti in Bracknell and made at Gem Mill in Oldham. On its use the museum says: "Their main uses were in military technologies, such as Sea Eagle anti-ship missiles" - the parts were built for temperature extremes and hardened against radiation.
What was new
The Science Museum calls the F100-L "the first microprocessor to be completely designed, developed and manufactured in Europe". Technically the museum counts 7,000 electronic elements on the chip, joined by "more than six feet of electrical connections". The barb is the object itself: the surviving example does not compute, it holds down paper.
What the sources leave open: The priority claim comes from the Science Museum object text and was not independently checked in this run. An IEEE paper on the F100-L exists in the search results but was not read. The object record gives no unit numbers, price or clock speed.