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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."
Was it so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe could afford it?
after all these years, it STILL doesn't have decent 3D hardware support video drivers! Bastards!
from the venerable old-computers.com
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.
Who cares if it runs Linux ... as long as I can mod the case!
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Here's a great freeware UNIVAC simulator you can use until you get your own UNIVAC off eBay. MTBF on those babies was somewhere around 10 hours due to the use of vacuum tubes...hopefully your PC running this sim will post somewhat better reliability numbers. :D If you'd like to see some dino-iron in person, a similar-era ENIAC resides in a basement museum in the Engineering School at the University of Michigan. This page is full of good information and links. Also, check out this list if you're interested in restorations of other ancient machines such as Crays and Cybers; my favorites are the Royal-McBee LGP 21 and 30 machines, immortalized in the Jargon File mythologies about Real Programmers. Read The Story of Mel and be enlightened (as well as entertained) about how a True Master thinks when dealing with the limitations of old hardware. It's so Zen it will make you clap with one hand.
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,
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.