Summary: The Telefunken TR 440 Computer was, at its deployment in 1970, the fastest machine developed and manufactured so far in Europe. 46 of them were installed in scientific institutions, agencies, and industry. The TR 440 was the successor of the TR 4 of 1962, which on the same market had gained an important position by its performance and its innovative compiler concept. TR 440 was designed for timesharing operation. The machine was one of the first large scale computers to use integrated circuits. It had page addressing and a refined system of privileged functions. The instruction rate approached 1 Mips, the main memory had a capacity of 1.5 MB. Point of departure, structure and technology are described from the point of view of today. A follow-on product, TR 550, was conceived but not developed. The appreciation TR 440 gained among its users was primarily due to its system software, which is described in a further paper [6]. TR 440 structure and technology is also subject of a paper submitted to the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.