Happy Birthday, UNIVAC I

Daniel Goldman writes "Today is the 53rd birthday of the UNIVAC I (UNIVersal Automatic Computer I). The UNIVAC I was delivered to the Census Bureau in 1951. It weighed some 16,000 pounds, used 5,000 vacuum tubes, and could perform about 1,000 calculations per second. It was the first American commercial computer, as well as the first computer designed for business use. The first few sales were to government agencies, the A.C. Nielsen Company, and the Prudential Insurance Company. It could retain a maximum of 1000 numbers and was able to add, subtract, multiply, divide, sort, collate and take square and cube roots. Its transfer write/read to and from magnetic tape was 10,000 characters per second."

Comments

where is it now?

[2057]

I'd love to see this beast live and crunching numbers... anyone, know where its grave is or if they have it running

Re:where is it now?

[Rick.C]

I'd love to see this beast live and crunching numbers

Back in 1951 there were factories that pumped out vacuum tubes by the millions. That was convenient, because Univac burned out tubes by the thousands.

Firing up an old Univac would require firing up some old tube factories, too.

Re:where is it now?

[bhtooefr]

What about a UNIVAC emulator? You could even hook up equivalents of the peripherals to it, and have a somewhat realistic experience without blowing tubes.

Re:where is it now?

[ackthpt]

I'd love to see this beast live and crunching numbers... anyone, know where its grave is or if they have it running

When my Explorer Post was given an old computer to play with (a DEC PDP-3) we found, after getting it to do a few simple things, that disposing of it even in the late 70's was a hazardous/toxic waste issue. As "Love Canal" had already met with public attention, and commercial electrolytes showing up in cattle, we had either the choice of paying transporation to send it to a museum which would have taken it or pay to dispose of it. Since Dow was our Post sponsor, they were willing to bundle it up with other electronic gear for proper disposal.

As much as these old beasts are fascinating, they're a pain to get rid of.

Re:where is it now?

[MdotCpDeltaT]

My dad used to do tech service on the Univac in Kansas City at the USDA building. (It took an entire building to just hold the computer.) One Christmas he took me on a tour of the computer. They had programmed the different pieces of equipment to make their distinct noises to play Christmas Carols. Also got a real tour of the computer - from the inside. We walked through one area where I was told that if I tripped, to grab a cable that would cut the power to the computer to keep from get electricuted when I hit the tubes. All in all a pretty fascinating tour,

Re:where is it now?

[Waffle Iron]

I was reading about the U.S. airforce's SAGE systems a while ago. They built a couple of dozen of these tube-based computers that consumed ~1 megawatt each. The last ones weren't taken offline until the 1980s.

The funny part is that these were built to coordinate air defenses against a Soviet bomber strike, but towards the end of their life they had to buy replacement tubes from countries in the Soviet bloc because they were the only places that still manufactured them.

Re:where is it now?

[DoraLives]

yes but would it run linux?

Dunno, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't run windows.

By the way, my mom used to work for Univac as a stenographer, out on Cape Canaveral back in the 50's. She'd bring home boxes of punched tapes, punch cards, and all the rest of the detritus of mid 20th century computing. We thought we were the hot shit playing around with that stuff as kids. Space Age! Whoa!

I remember UNIVAC I

[Animats]

I wrote about this back on the 50th anniversary.

I started my career on Univac / Unisys

[uid100]

What a great experience - a punch card reader was right next to the disk cache cabinet. Univac consoles are still my favorite "clicky" style keyboards. The Univac 1170 had dials for choosing the tape drive for IPL, switches for the memory banks and a small black button to initiate the IPL. Lots of flashing LED's to tell us what was going on. This was to support weather forcasting in the USAF.

Has anyone tried...

[Len Budney]

Building one of these using transistors? It should reduce maintenance costs, and the leftover power would meet all the energy needs of the museum it lives in, plus the surrounding towns.

A time when anything was possible

[Lord Grey]

UNIVAC's possibilities fired the imagination. Science fiction writers populated magazines and books with powerful computers, based on what they knew of UNIVAC. Pretty cool stuff, if you don't think it's quaint.

BTW, one of the best short stories along those lines was Isaac Asimov's The Last Question (published in Nine Tomorrows among other places). The focus isn't really the computer, but it shows how people were thinking about these new-fangled gadgets at the time.

Re:A time when anything was possible

[Trurl's Machine]

Funny - I asked the Asimov question to the contemporary equivalent of the Asimov omniscient machine and got the same answer as people in this short story. Obviously because it was pointing to web sites about the short story itself, but...

First Virus?

[Inda]

The page about the game ANIMAL brought back memories. I can't remember the name of the computer I played this on - it was about 20-25 years ago.

I didn't know the game was a 'virus'. Very interesting.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/univac/animal.ht ml

I question the claim that it was the first for biz

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew a old guy who claimed to help develop the first computer delivered to a business. He was an old hacker who worked on the software, and he claimed that their computer was the first delivered to a business. I have no reason to doubt him. I do know that sometimes history sweeps stuff up and lumps it all together, ignoring the realities. One such example was that Phil Zimmerman released PGP, when he didn't (he just developed it, and didn't want anything to do with the actual release).

I've forgotten the name of the company; all I know is that it was developed back in the 50's, and he worked on it down in Los Angeles. And the first business to buy it was a Bank.

I've also run across another person who's professor claimed to work on the first computer released to a business.

So I think this history of the UNIVAC appears to be questionable in certain regards. Anybody know of some good historical reference material? Something based upon actual research, and not marketing hype?

Re:Some more specs/info

[randyest]

Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see a mention of these facts or power specs anywhere at old-computers.com or in the links from the post:

- The UNIVAC became famous when it was use by the US Census Bureau to calculate the results of the 1952 presidential election.

- The number of vacuum tubes was reduced fmor about 19,000 to 5,000, therefore reducing the power consumption from 175 kilowatts to 100 kilowatts (!), and also reducing the size and weight. (In comparison, your PC probably has a 200-500Watt power supply -- this thing needed about 200x as much power!)

- The machines cost about $1Million, so most customers wanted to lease them rather than buy outright.

amazed by the specs

[xonen]

Wow, i am amazed by the specifications. This 'beast' almost outperfoms my ZX-81! zx-81: 1Kb memory, tape I/O: 300bps.. only thing that is (little) faster may be effective clockspeed: 1Mhz, but i doubt if the zx-81 can take 1000 square roots in one second ;) Looks like it took microelectronics about 30 years to make a -payable- equivalent of this machine.

The Guinness Book of Records

[Open Council]

awarded this certificate to end the arguements.