Packard Bell Computer

Packard Bell was founded in 1926 as a maker of consumer radios. It later found success in the military electronics industry.

The most famous of its machines, the PB 250 released in 1961, was one of the last users of magnetostrictive delay lines as part of its memory. It was also the last machine to be partially based on the original designs of Alan Turing’s NPL Pilot ACE computer.

Packard Bell was purchased by Teledyne in 1968, which eventually merged with Nippon Electric Company (NEC) in the 1990s. While no longer doing retail business in America, it is still a major supplier of consumer computers in Europe.