Editing BESK (section)

==Usage==
BESK was inaugurated on 1 April 1954 and handled weather data for [[Carl-Gustaf Rossby]] and the [[Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute]], statistics for the telecommunications service provider [[Televerket (Sweden)|Televerket]], wing profiles for the attack aircraft [[Saab Lansen]], and road profiles for the road authority [[Vägverket]]. During the nights [[Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment]] (FRA) used BESK for cracking encryption of radio messages (by Per-Erik Persson ''et al.''). BESK was also used for [[calculation]]s for the [[Studsvik|Swedish nuclear energy industry]], for example [[Monte Carlo simulation]]s of [[neutron spectrum]] (by Per-Erik Persson ''et al.''), and for the [[Swedish nuclear weapon program]]{{Citation needed|date=May 2010}}, but most of those calculations were done by [[Siffermaskinen i Lund|SMIL]]. In 1957 [[Hans Riesel]] used BESK to discover a [[Mersenne prime]] with 969 digits - the largest prime known at the time.

[[Saab Group|SAAB]] rented computer time on the BESK to (probably, much was secret) make calculations of the strength of the [[Saab Lansen]] attack aircraft. In the fall of 1955 SAAB thought the capacity was insufficient and started working on ''SAABs räkneautomat'' [[SARA (computer)|SARA]], "SAAB's calculating machine",  which was going to be twice as fast as BESK. Some former SARA employees went to [[Facit]] and worked with the [[FACIT EDB]].

In the spring of 1956, eighteen of the BESK developers were hired by office equipment manufacturer [[Facit]] and housed in an office at Karlavägen 62 in Stockholm, where they started to build copies of BESK called Facit EDB (models 1, 2, and 3), led by Carl-Ivar Bergman. A total of nine machines were built, of which four were used internally by Facit Electronics and five were sold to customers. On 1 July 1960 Facit Electronics, then with 135 employees, moved to [[Solna Municipality|Solna]], just north of Stockholm.

In 1960 BESK was used to create an animation of a car driving down a planned highway from the driver's perspective. This was one of the earliest computer animations ever made. The short clip was broadcast on Swedish national television on 9 November 1961.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.tekniskamuseet.se/lar-dig-mer/kommunikation-och-media/datorhistoriska-nedslag/svensk-datorhistoria-1960-talet/|title=Svensk datorhistoria - 1960-talet - Tekniska museet|work=Tekniska museet|access-date=2017-11-16 |language=sv-SE|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170103001844/https://www.tekniskamuseet.se/lar-dig-mer/kommunikation-och-media/datorhistoriska-nedslag/svensk-datorhistoria-1960-talet/|archive-date=2017-01-03}}</ref>