the letter made its way to the desk of vincent ziani de ferranti, the then-current ceo of the family-held british company. at the time, ferranti in the uk was involved in a similar commercial/academic development project with manchester university to build the manchester mark 1 computer, so it seemed that their canadian division would naturally be able to do the same. in october 1948, he flew to canada to meet with the drb. he was disappointed to learn that the drb did not have the financial resources to fund any sort of program, but ferranti remained interested, even though it appeared the only way to work with the drb would be for free.