My City June 2022

MYAFTERTHOUGHT

U.S. CENSUS BUREAU EMPLOYEES TABULATE DATA USING ONE OF THE AGENCY’S UNIVAC COMPUTERS

THE FIRST UNIVERSAL COMPUTER June 14, 1951: UNIVAC 1 Powers On BY PETER HINTERMAN

COMMONS.WIKIMEDIA.ORG

D uring WW2, simple calcu lating/tabulat ing machines including the ˆrst computer facsimiles were used to catalog soldiers, people and munitions by the use of punch cards and other apparatus. After the war, the United States Army developed the ENIAC sys tem and used it to calculate artillery ˆring tables and perform functions related to thermonuclear weaponry. Weighing nearly 30 tons, the unit utilized 18,000 vac uum tubes, numerous diodes, relays, resistors, etc. At a cost of $5 million of today’s money, it was too expensive

input and a magnetic tape for all other input and output. UNIVAC 1 then changed society’s belief in the power of computers when it correct ly predicted President Eisen hower’s landslide victory in 1953 – with only 5.5% of the vote returned – live on CBS News. Companies utilizing UNIVAC 1 included General Electric, New York University, U.S. Steel, DuPont, Westing house, Sylvania Electric and Metropolitan Life Insurance. At the end of the 1950s, UNIVAC 1 was replaced by transistor computers, leading to integrated circuit machines and today’s microprocessor units. e short-lived success of UNIVAC 1 opened the world to the potential of computer systems and helped lead to the availability and sophistica tion of today’s laptops, phones and desktop systems. ®

UNIVAC I CONTROL STATION DISPLAY BOARD

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and cumbersome to repro duce for personal or indepen dent business applications. Two ENIAC engineers, J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, recognized the machine's real-world po tential and set about mak ing it available to any inter ested party. ey reduced its total size, slashed its weight in half and decreased the number of components (they reduced the vacuum

ey also increased comput ing power (1,000 calculations per second) and memory (up to 1,000 words). After part nering with the Remington Rand Corporation, the two engineers brought the UNI VAC 1 to market as the ˆrst available computer system. UNIVAC 1 (UNIVersal Automatic Computer) went into operation at the U.S. Bureau of the Census on June 14, 1951, ushering in the age of mass-produced computer equipment for consumers. Built as one of the ˆrst stored-program computers, it operated via keyboard and console typewriter for simple data

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tubes to only 5,000) to some thing more reasonable and cost e„ective.

THE PART MERCURY DELAY-LINE STORE OF THE UNIVAC I COMPUTER.

TIIA MONTO / COMMONS.WIKIMEDIA.ORG CC BY-SA 3.0

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