National Research Development Corporation

The National Research Development Corporation (NRDC) was a non-departmental government body established by the British Government to transfer technology from the public sector to the private sector. The NRDC provided financial support for various development programmes. Computing was a key area that the organisation sought to support; among others, it supported the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercially available electronic general-purpose stored-program digital computer. One high-profile application involving NRDC was the development of hovercraft, which was worked on under a contract issued by the organisation to Saunders-Roe. The NRDC was established by the Labour government of Attlee in 1948.