Bunker Ramo

The Bunker-Ramo Corporation, later known as “Bunker Ramo” (without the hyphen) was an American electronics and computer systems manufacturer. Bunker Ramo was the owner of Amphenol from 1967–1982.

Keyboards

Bunker Ramo manufactured a keyboard described as the “Admin Keyboard”. Two examples are known, a German-layout “ADMIN KEYBRD” and a Yugoslavian-layout “BCS-90 ADMIN KEYBOARD”. Both of these keyboards use Micro Switch SD switches, with keystem type “K”. The description of stem “K” is given only as “special blade”; it is a non-standard option which may be a customisation specific to Bunker Ramo.

Although the keyboard switches patented by Bunker Ramo were advertised by Amphenol (as were custom keyboards), Bunker Ramo also placed an advertisement in the Electronic Engineer magazine in 1971 offering custom keyboards under their own name.

Switches

Bunker Ramo filed several patents for keyboard switches. Further research has shown that these switches were produced by Amphenol while it was under Bunker Ramo’s ownership. Two of the patents would later be sold to Amphenol. These switches in turn were marketed by Maxi-Switch as their own.

Documentation

All documents were scanned by Bitsavers unless otherwise noted.

• Custom-built keyboards advertisement, The Electronic Engineer, Vol. 30 No. 9, September 1971