The New Burroughs

Computers can solve enormously complex problems in fractions of seconds, but sometimes it takes six months to feed in the information and instructions they need to do it. To pay a staff of highly trained technicians to lay out a program for the machine to follow can increase the purchase price of one of the big brains by 40%. Last week a big step was taken toward eliminating this expense: Burroughs Corp. brought out a new B5000 model that goes a long way toward programing its own work.

The B5000 can take problems either worked out in algebraic terms or stated in standard business English, in a few seconds translate them into computer language and go to work to solve them. Although other machines have been adapted to do this, Burroughs claims that the B5000 can work out its program more quickly and efficiently using the least number of steps inside the computer. Furthermore, after the new brain has one problem going through its works, a second or a third can immediately be fed through its programer. It will set them up to use parts of the computer that the first problem is not using. Thus Burroughs President Ray R. Eppert figures that the B5000, which rents for $13,000 to $50,000 a month, can accomplish as much as a larger machine, which rents for $60,000 and up.

Transformation. The B5000 is the most sophisticated commercial computer Burroughs has turned out in the short time it has been in the business. It came into being because President Eppert decided that computers were becoming too complex, that customers were waiting for something cheaper and simpler to operate. If he is right, Burroughs may at last be firmly established in a hotly competitive field dominated by International Business Machines and the Remington Rand division of Sperry Rand. It will also mark a dramatic turn in Burroughs' effort to transform itself from a somewhat stodgy old-line adding machine maker to a modern diversified company.

The conversion was started by the late President John S. Coleman with the help of his executive vice president, Eppert, who went to work at Burroughs 40 years ago as a shipping clerk. To broaden their product base, they bought two oldtime producers of bank forms and checks. The jump into computers came in 1956, when they took over ElectroData Corp., a leading manufacturer of high-speed electronic digital computers. A short time later, they moved into the fast-growing bank automation field (TIME, Dec. 5) with magnetic inks and automatic check-sorting equipment. While they aimed most of their new products at office automation, Coleman and Eppert set up a military electronic computer division that snared contracts for computers that figure in such missile and space projects as Atlas, Polaris and Mercury. Adding machines now account for only 6% of sales.

Growth Abroad. Burroughs moved abroad, building plants in Britain, France and Brazil. Now all its calculators are built in its Scottish plant so that they can not only be slipped inside many of Europe's trade barriers, but can be shipped into the U.S. at prices competitive with other imported machines.

Expansion has boosted sales from $94 million in 1948 to a record $389 million last year. But earnings have been sliding largely because of heavy research and development costs. Last year earnings were $1.39 per share, only 2% of sales. In 1948 they were 13% of sales. As the costs of breaking into new fields are written off, Eppert, who took over from Coleman two years ago, expects profits to improve. But he is not saying when.

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