During the late 1950s, Ferranti's UK computer development department was heavily involved in the development of computer circuitry based on the use of magnetic amplifiers. These were a 1950s replacement for transistors; at that time transistors were extremely expensive and still had reliability issues. Magnetic amplifiers were larger than transistors but had the advantage of allowing a single amplifier to be shared among several circuits, lowering component counts. When newer transistors were introduced at lower price points, interest in magnetic amplifiers disappeared almost overnight.