Today in History: UNIVAC — World’s first general purpose, commercially produced, electronic digital computer — was...

Originally shared by Brad Acker

Today in History: UNIVAC — World’s first general purpose, commercially produced, electronic digital computer — was dedicated, 1951
On June 14, 1951 — 64 years ago today — the United States Census Bureau dedicated the world’s first “general purpose” commercially-produced electronic digital computer, the UNIVAC I, which stood for UNIV ersal A utomatic C omputer. 

The computer model, of which 46 were made, became famous for correctly predicting the presidential election outcome in 1952. In fact, the computer correctly predicted an Eisenhower landslide victory with only a tiny percentage of the votes actually counted; but because traditional pollsters almost universally predicted victory for Adlai Stevenson, CBS withheld the computer’s prediction until later in the evening. At 8:30 PM, the computer was predicting the electoral college vote — Eisenhower 438, Stevenson 93. The actual count ended up as Eisenhower 442, Stevenson 89. CBS, using the computer data, was the first network to call the election. By the next presidential election in 1956, the other two major networks were also using computers on election night.

The UNIVAC was designed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, and it was manufactured by the Remington Rand company. The computer weighed 29,000 pounds and could process about 1,905 operations per second using a 2.25 Mhz clock. The machine was 25 feet in width by 50 feet in length, used 5,600 vacuum tubes, 18,000 crystal diodes, and 300 relays; it had an internal storage capacity of 12,000 characters. Each of the original UNIVACs came with 10 magnetic tape drives — all compatible. 

YouTube videos:
•Remington-Rand Presents the UNIVAC (length 17:31). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2fURxbdIZs
•UNIVAC — Then and Now (length 13:17). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4wQJfdhOlU
•History of the Computer — Documentary (length 48:07). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPDy2y4AjSo

Vimeo Video:
http://vimeo.com/52980654

Web sources:
•http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/?year=1951
•http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/univac-computer-dedicated
•http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-u-s-census-bureau-first-dedicated-univac-61-years-ago-today
•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC
•http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/UNIVAC-FAQ.htm
•http://bitscolumn.blogspot.com/2013/10/computer-projected-1952-presidential.html
•http://edn.com/electronics-blogs/edn-moments/4423752/UNIVAC-predicts-election-results--November-4--1952
•http://www.historyfactory.com/2012/11/06/presidential-elections-and-a-brief-history-of-emerging-technologies/
•http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9904/30/1952.idg/
•http://www.ideastream.org/news/npr/163951263
•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Presper_Eckert
•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mauchly
•http://www.thocp.net/hardware/univac.htm

Book sources:
• A Few Good Men from Univac by David E. Lundstrom [History of Computing]. http://amzn.to/1SenThn
• Computing: A Concise History by Paul E. Ceruzzi [The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series]. http://amzn.to/1BeJQZl
* UNIVAC: Webster’s Timeline History, 1941-2002 by Icon Group International. http://amzn.to/1cTVIEu

Image credits (top to bottom, left to right):
•Remington Rand’s Harold E. Sweeney (left) and J. Presper Eckert (middle right) demonstrate UNIVAC for CBS’s Walter Cronkite (right). http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/edn-moments/4423752/UNIVAC-predicts-election-results--November-4--1952
•Creators of the UNIVAC — J. Presper Eckert (left) and John Mauchly (right). http://www.thocp.net/hardware/univac.htm
•UNIVAC at the U.S. Census Bureau with 10 magnetic tape drives. http://www.thocp.net/hardware/univac.htm

Additional Events in Technology History on June 14:
•The European Space Research Organization (later the European Space Agency, ESA) was established in Paris, France.
•NASA launched Mariner 5 to explore Venus.

#history #history -tech #UNIVAC #RemingtonRand