Goodyear Computers????? You thought they only made tires...well, actually they made a product where the rubber never met the road!

The Goodyear Zeppelin Company manufactured blimps starting in 1924 and in 1939 they became the Goodyear Aircraft Corporation having expanded into designing and manufacturing airplanes. So Goodyear just didn't slap their name on some rented blimp and hire it to hover over an NFL football game...they had a long tradition of making blimps and airplanes (they even made an all rubber airplane...seriously, the "Inflatoplane")! [So about now you're wondering, "Should I continue reading...is this guy making the stuff up?" Check it here.] At some point after WWII, Goodyear decided to start making their own computers to help design and test even better aircraft.

There were several models of the Goodyear Electronic Differential Analyzer (G.E.D.A). Ours is GN215-L3 (the "L" indicates a linear analog computer) and is believed to have been made before 1955. We have one source that states this model was produced as early as 1952. Goodyear made an earlier linear analog, the GN184-L2 which seems to have been produced by 1949. A non-linear model, the GN184-N1 was available on or before November 1950.

This particular machine is #3 of the 3 in our collection. These three are the only known survivors of this extraordinary computer. This model is slightly different from the other two. The control panel on this machine has an added switch labeled "CTF" which may refer to "continuous transfer function". CTF has to do with how elements of the computer deal with continuous real-world input (and if you are testing to see how your design might work there is a lot or real-world input). We do not yet know if there are significant internal differences.

We will be adding much more information on these unique computers over the next few months. If you are interested in researching these and other machines from this era...feel free to contact us.

A separate metal tag contains an ID # that seems to be a property tag from Lockheed Aircraft Corporation's headquarters (in the 1950s) in Burbank, CA. This unit is marked #742133. We have not found a Lockheed tag on either of the other two Goodyear computers.