Plan Calcul was a French governmental program to promote a national or European computer industry and associated research and education activities. The plan was approved in July 1966 by President Charles de Gaulle, in the aftermath of two key events that made his government worry about French dependence on the US computer industry. In the mid-1960s, the United States denied export licenses for American-made IBM and CDC computers to the French Commissariat à l'énergie atomique in order to prevent it from perfecting its H bomb. Meanwhile, in 1964, General Electric had acquired a majority of Compagnie des Machines Bull, the largest French computer manufacturer, which had the second highest market share in France, after IBM, and was a leading IT equipment maker in Europe. Following this partia