Universal Automatic Calculator

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The UNIVAC and UNIVAC (according to other sources Univ ersal A utomatic C omputer) is a computer in 1951, that of J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly (both from the ENIAC was constructed group). For the first time, the UNIVAC used a magnetic tape as an external memory . The term UNIVAC was used to represent computers in 1951. The UNIVAC series is still being developed and supported today .

Univac I Factronic in the Deutsches Museum in Munich

General

After World War II, few people believed that computers had a future. The Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation ( EMCC ), founded in 1946 by J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly , was one of the few companies that was convinced that electronic computing systems could be used universally , i.e. not only for specific calculations of complex mathematical problems, but that these 'universal' calculating machines will also find a use in business.

The Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation worked on the BINAC , a smaller version of the ENIAC , which was built for the Northrop Corporation . In 1948, EMCC was commissioned to build a computer for the US Census Bureau that was to be ready for the 1950 census. Due to financial difficulties, the appointment could not be kept and the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation was taken over by Remington Rand on February 15, 1950 . The EMCC was integrated into the Remington Rand organization as the UNIVAC business unit .

When UNIVAC I was handed over to the US Census Bureau in 1951 , it ushered in the era of commercial electronic computing systems, and for some years the name UNIVAC was used to represent all computers. The UNIVAC was the second commercially built computer worldwide after the Zuse Z4 . In 1956 the first UNIVAC was installed in Europe in cooperation with the Battelle Institute in Frankfurt am Main and offered for computing services until it was shut down in 1960.

The UNIVAC became famous after the presidential election night in 1952 . It was used to make an extrapolation based on 7% of the votes counted. As a result, he predicted a landslide victory for Eisenhower at 9 o'clock in the evening , in contradiction to conventionally determined forecasts of a head-to-head race. The client did not trust the UNIVAC forecast and decided not to publish it. It was later found to be quite accurate: the predicted electoral distribution of 438 for Eisenhower and 93 for Stevenson came close to the actual distribution of 442: 89. This result made UNIVAC known worldwide.

In 1955, Remington Rand merged with Sperry Corporation to form Sperry Rand. The Univac business unit remained unchanged at Sperry Rand. All computers delivered were still referred to as UNIVAC . It was not until 1982 that the name UNIVAC was replaced by the name Sperry . In 1986, Sperry merged with Burroughs Corporation to form Unisys . From this point on, the computer series was renamed Unisys .

The computer architecture has been further developed over the years. Starting with vacuum tubes and transistors up to CMOS , the processor architecture specific to UNIVAC s was retained, including the property that is common from the UNIVAC-1100/2200 and OS2200 series that 1 character = 9 bits = 1 byte.

Models

UNIVAC I (1951/52)
UNIVAC 120 (Photo from Department of Interior , Bureau of Mines, 1961)
Univac Solid State (in the Technical Museum Vienna )
UNIVAC 1103 (1961)
  • The UNIVAC I (UNIVersal Automatic Computer I) was the first commercially manufactured computer in the USA. Grace Hopper and Betty Holberton played a key role in UNIVAC I. FLOW-MATIC was designed for the UNIVAC I , as was the network plan method, the critical path method , which is now essential in any planning software.
  • The Remington Rand 409 was designed in 1949. It was one of the first punch card machines that used tubes to store intermediate results. The machine was built under the names UNIVAC 60 (1952) and UNIVAC 120 (1953) .
  • The UNIVAC II was a further development of the UNIVAC I, which was first delivered in 1958. Above all, the main memory , which was no longer based on mercury relays, but on magnetic core memories , was expanded to 2,000 to 10,000 machine words , UNISERVO II magnetic tapes, which could use either the old UNIVAC-I magnetic tapes or the new Mylar- based tapes. Some circuits were implemented on the basis of transistors (the UNIVAC II was still tube-based). The UNIVAC II was completely compatible with the UNIVAC I, both in terms of the program instructions and the data structures.
  • The UNIVAC III was delivered in 1962. 96 pieces of the UNIVAC III system were produced.
  • The ERA 1101 , also called UNIVAC 1101 , was designed by Engineering Research Associates (ERA) and built by Remington Rand Corporation in 1950. 1101 is the binary representation of the number 13, the order number in the ongoing development order from the US Navy . This is the basis for the names of all computers in the 1100 and 2200 series.
  • The ERA 1102 , also called UNIVAC 1102 , was designed by Engineering Research Associates (ERA) and built for the United States Air Force.
  • The ERA 1103 , also called UNIVAC 1103 , was a successor to the UNIVAC 1101 and was introduced in 1953. This machine was also designed by Engineering Research Associates (ERA) , including the UNIVAC 1103 designed by Seymour Cray . An improved version, the UNIVAC 1103A, was built in 1956 and was the direct competitor to the IBM 704 .
  • The UNIVAC 1104 was a forerunner of the UNIVAC-NDTS systems and was built in 1957, later replaced by the AN / USQ-20 .
  • The UNIVAC LARC ( Livermore Advanced Research Computer ) was a first attempt to build a supercomputer in 1960 . The LARC had two CPUs . A total of two machines were built, one for the US Navy and one for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory . In 1960 the LARC with 500 kFLOPS was one of the fastest machines of that time.
  • The UNIVAC-NTDS , also called UNIVAC-1206 or AN / USQ-17 or AN / USQ-20 , was a computer system that was used on warships of the US Navy from 1960 .
  • The UNIVAC BOGART was built in 1956–1959 as the successor to the UNIVAC 1103 for the NSA secret service , which used the machine for cryptanalysis .
  • The UNIVAC Athena was a missile control system and was built in 1955 for the American military.
  • The UNIVAC 490 was a 30-bit computer with machine words of 16K or 32K and was built in 1961. The machine cycle was 4.8 microseconds.
  • The UNIVAC 492 is similar to the UNIVAC 490 , in contrast to this, it had extended memory of up to 64 K 30-bit machine words.
  • The UNIVAC 494 was also a 30-bit machine word system, which was brought onto the market as the successor to the UNIVAC 490/492 . The UNIVAC 494 had a faster processor and 131 K main memory. Up to 24 input and output channels were available, and the system was mostly delivered with UNIVAC FH880 or UNIVAC FH432 magnetic drum storage . The operating system was called OMEGA, a successor to the REX operating system of the UNIVAC 490.
  • The UNIVAC 1004 was a punch card- based system and was marketed in 1962. The memory was 961 “characters” with 6 bits each. A punch card reader that could read 400 cards per minute, a card punch (200 per minute) and a drum printer (400 lines per minute) were also supplied.
  • The UNIVAC 418 was a first attempt to develop a “desktop” computer. The computer was just small enough to fit on an office desk. Since the machine was mainly used in the military sector, only one machine was sighted in Europe in 1964.
  • The UNIVAC 1005 is an extension of the UNIVAC 1004 and it was presented in February 1966. The UNIVAC 1005 was mainly used in the military sector and led to the first use of computers on the battlefield.

UNIVAC systems from Sperry Rand / Sperry Univac based on transistors . These processors are still supported today by the Unisys Clearpath models.

  • The UNIVAC 1107 was the first model of the UNIVAC 1100 series, which appeared on the market in 1962. This series introduced a striking difference in computer architecture. In contrast to its predecessors, register memory instructions were no longer used, but instead converted to an accumulator architecture. 36 pieces were sold in total. The programming language Simula was developed on the UNIVAC 1107 in 1960 by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard at the Norwegian Computer Center ( University of Oslo ) . The first prototype of the compiler ran in 1964.
  • The UNIVAC 1108 was the second product line in the series of UNIVAC 1100 computers, which was introduced in 1964. In contrast to the UNIVAC 1107, in the UNIVAC 1108 the magnetic memory based on thin film memory has been replaced by integrated circuits . In addition, smaller and faster circuits were used for the main memory. The Exec 8 operating system was created for the Univac 1108 , to which all later operating systems of the 11xx (and later 22xx) series go back, and were then called OS / 1100 and OS / 2200 .
  • The UNIVAC 1106 was the third product line introduced in 1969. The UNIVAC 1106 was completely compatible with the command set of the UNIVAC 1108 . A total of 338 processors were shipped.
  • The UNIVAC 1110 was presented as the fourth product line in 1972. The UNIVAC 1110 had extended multiprocessor capabilities. In contrast to the UNIVAC 1108/1106 , which only supported two processors, the UNIVAC 1110 could control up to 24 processors. A machine with 24 processors was used by NASA . A total of 290 processors were sold.

In 1975 the memory system was replaced and a new naming convention was introduced, whereby the last numbers corresponded to the maximum number of processors or CAU (Command Arithmetic Unit) or CPU .

  • The UNIVAC 1100/10 corresponded to an improved version of the UNIVAC 1106 , i.e. 10 CPUs.
  • The UNIVAC 1100/20 corresponded to an improved version of the UNIVAC 1108
  • The UNIVAC 1100/40 corresponded to an improved version of the UNIVAC 1110
  • The UNIVAC 1100/60 was presented in 1979.
  • The UNIVAC 1100/70 was presented in 1981.
  • The UNIVAC 1100/80 was presented in 1979.
  • The UNIVAC 1100/90 was presented in 1982. The system was liquid cooled.

In 1982 the name UNIVAC was dropped and the computers were called Sperry .

  • The Sperry 2200 series was produced from 1982 to 1985.

After the merger of Sperry and Burroughs Corporation to Unisys in 1986 , the computers with the designation Unisys 2200 were later named with the Unisys Clearpath brand .

  • The Unisys 2200 series was continued until 1997.
  • The Unisys Clearpath series continues to this day.

Temporal consideration

The following graphic provides information about the history of the Univac computer.

The enterprise

UNIVAC as a company was created through the amalgamation of various areas of Remington Rand , namely the area of ​​tabulating machines, the area for scientifically used computers and the area of ​​commercially used computers (this was produced by UNIVAC). Remington Rand was merged with Sperry in 1955 and became Sperry Rand . The computer division was renamed Sperry UNIVAC . In 1978 the term UNIVAC disappeared from the company name and the company was only called Sperry.

Sperry was merged with Burroughs in 1986 and was named Unisys after an in-house name search competition .

UNIVAC was one of the eight major computer companies in the 1960s, alongside IBM , Burroughs , Scientific Data , Control Data Corporation , General Electric , RCA and Honeywell .

literature

  • David E. Lundstrom: A Few Good Men from Univac (Hardcover), ISBN 0-7351-0010-1
  • Nancy Beth Stern: From Eniac to UNIVAC: An Appraisal of the Eckert-Mauchly Computers , ISBN 0-932376-14-2
  • Arthur L. Norberg: Computers and Commerce: A Study of Technology and Management at Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company, Engineering Research Associates, and Remington Rand, 1946-1957 (History of Computing) (Hardcover), ISBN 0-262-14090-X
  • James W. Cortada: Before the Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand and the Industry They Created, 1865-1956 (Studies in Business and Technology), ISBN 0-691-05045-7

Web links

Commons : UNIVAC  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Corinna Schlombs: The Univac - An international masterpiece of data processing. (PDF; 9.34 MB) In: Deutsches Museum . January 1, 2008, accessed August 7, 2020 .