Mr. Niels Ivar Bech

He led a group that started as an advisory board formed by the Danish Akademiet for de Tekniske Videnskaber (Academy of Applied Sciences) to keep abreast of developments in modern electronic computing devices taking place in other countries. They were also given the details of the BESK machine being designed at the Swedish Mathematical Center (Matematikmaskinnamndens Arbetsgrupp). The group decided to build their own version of the BESK to run the bureau, and formed Regnecentralen or RC for short in October 1955, which was the first Danish computer company to complete and run the machine. The result was the DASK, a vacuum tube-based machine that completed construction in 1956 and went into full operation in February 1957. DASK was followed in 1962 by the fully transistorized GIER, used for similar tasks. GIER proved to be a useful machine, and went on to be used at many Danish universities. Descendants of these systems sold well into the 1980s. They also developed a series of high-speed paper tape machines, and produced Data General Nova machines under license. They are arguably the oldest remaining "computer-only" company in the world. He also sold GIER machines to the Eastern Bloc nations of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria, and later Romania, the East Germany, and Yugoslavia.