TRADIC

The TRADIC (for TRAnsistor DIgital Computer or TRansistorized Airborne DIgital Computer) was the first transistorized computer in the USA, completed in 1954.

The computer was built by Jean Howard Felker of Bell Labs for the United States Air Force while L.C. Brown ("Charlie Brown") was a lead engineer on the project, which started in 1951. The project initially examined the feasibility of constructing a transistorized airborne digital computer. A second application was a transistorized digital computer to be used in a Navy track-while-scan shipboard radar system. Several models were completed: TRADIC Phase One computer, Flyable TRADIC, Leprechaun (using junction transistors in 1956) and XMH-3 TRADIC. TRADIC Phase One was developed to explore the feasibility, in the laboratory, of using transistors in a digital computer that could be used to solve aircraft bombing and navigation problems. Flyable TRADIC was used to establish the feasibility of using an airborne solid-state computer as the control element of a bombing and navigation system. Leprechaun was a second-generation laboratory research transistor digital computer designed to explore the capabilities of new solid-state devices for airborne computers. The TRADIC Phase One computer was completed in January 1954.