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."