UNIVAC
Sperry Rand (1955–1978) | |
Release date | March 1951 |
---|---|
Discontinued | 1986 |
Predecessor | ENIAC |
Successor | Unisys 2200 series |
UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was a line of electronic digital stored-program computers starting with the products of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. Later the name was applied to a division of the Remington Rand company and successor organizations.
The BINAC, built by the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation, was the first general-purpose computer for commercial use, but it was not a success. The last UNIVAC-badged computer was produced in 1986.
History and structure
With the death of EMCC's chairman and chief financial backer
The most famous UNIVAC product was the UNIVAC I mainframe computer of 1951, which became known for predicting the outcome of the U.S. presidential election the following year: this incident is noteworthy because the computer correctly predicted an Eisenhower landslide over Adlai Stevenson, whereas the final Gallup poll had Eisenhower winning the popular vote 51–49 in a close contest.[1]
The prediction led
When the predictions proved true – Eisenhower defeated Stevenson in a landslide, with UNIVAC coming within 3.5% of his popular vote total and four votes of his Electoral College total – Charles Collingwood, the on-air announcer, announced that they had failed to believe the earlier prediction.[2]
The
The UNIVAC was manufactured at Remington Rand's former Eckert-Mauchly Division plant on W Allegheny Avenue in
In 1955 Remington Rand merged with Sperry Corporation to become Sperry Rand. The UNIVAC division of Remington Rand was renamed the Remington Rand Univac division of Sperry Rand.[4] General Douglas MacArthur, then the chairman of the Board of Directors of Remington Rand, was chosen to continue in that role in the new company.[6] Harry Franklin Vickers, then the President of Sperry Corporation, continued as president and CEO of Sperry Rand.[6]
In the 1960s, UNIVAC was one of the eight major American computer companies in an industry then referred to as "
To assist "corporate identity" the name was changed to Sperry Univac, along with Sperry Remington, Sperry New Holland, etc. In 1978, Sperry Rand, a conglomerate of various divisions (computers, typewriters, office furniture, hay balers, manure spreaders, gyroscopes, avionics, radar, electric razors), decided to concentrate solely on its computing interests and all of the unrelated divisions were sold. The company dropped the Rand from its title and reverted to Sperry Corporation. In 1986, Sperry Corporation merged with Burroughs Corporation to become Unisys.
After the 1986 merger of Burroughs and Sperry, Unisys evolved from a computer manufacturer to a computer services and outsourcing firm, competing at that time in the same marketplace as IBM, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), and Computer Sciences Corporation.
As of 2021[update], Unisys continues to design and manufacture enterprise class computers with the ClearPath server lines.[8]
Models
In the course of its history, UNIVAC produced a number of separate model ranges. One early UNIVAC line of vacuum tube computers was based on the ERA 1101 and those models built at ERA were rebadged as UNIVAC 110x; despite the 1100 model numbers, they were not related to the latter 1100/2200 series. The 1103A is credited in the literature as the first computer to have interrupts.
The original model range was the UNIVAC I (UNIVersal Automatic Computer I), the second commercial computer made in the United States.[a] The main memory consisted of tanks of liquid mercury implementing delay-line memory, arranged in 1,000 words of 12 alphanumeric characters each. The first machine was delivered on 31 March 1951.
The Remington Rand 409 was a control panel programmed punched card calculator, designed in 1949, and sold in two models: the UNIVAC 60 (1952) and the UNIVAC 120 (1953).
The UNIVAC File Computer was first shipped in 1956. It was equipped with between one and ten large drums each holding 180,000 Alphanumeric characters.[9] One early application was for an airline reservations system,[10] which was used by Eastern Air Lines.[11] It competed mainly against the IBM 650 and the IBM 305 RAMAC and a total of 130 were manufactured.[12]
The
The UNIVAC Solid State was a 2-address, decimal computer, with memory on a rotating drum with 5,000 signed 10-digit words, aimed at the general-purpose business market. It came in two versions: the Solid State 80 (IBM-Hollerith 80-column cards) and the Solid State 90 (Remington-Rand 90-column cards). This computer used magnetic logic, not transistors, because the transistors then available had highly variable characteristics and were not sufficiently reliable. Magnetic logic gates were based on magnetic cores with multiple wire windings; unlike vacuum tubes, they were solid-state devices and had a virtually infinite lifetime. The magnetic gates required drive pulses of current produced by a transmitter-type vacuum tube, of a type still used in amateur radio final amplifiers. Thus the Solid State depended, at the heart of its operations, on a vacuum tube, however, only a few tubes were required, instead of thousands, greatly increasing reliability.
Sperry Rand began shipment of UNIVAC III in 1962, and produced 96 UNIVAC III systems. Unlike the UNIVAC I and UNIVAC II, it was a binary machine as well as maintaining support for all UNIVAC I and UNIVAC II decimal and alphanumeric data formats for backward compatibility. This was the last of the original UNIVAC machines.
The
The UNIVAC 490 was a 30-bit word core memory machine with 16K or 32K words; 4.8 microsecond cycle time. The UNIVAC 1232 was a military version of the 490.[13]
The
The
The UNIVAC 1050 was an internally programmed computer with up to 32K of six-bit character memory, which was introduced in 1963. It was a one-address machine with 30-bit instructions, had a 4K operating system and was programmed in the PAL assembly language. The 1050 was used extensively by the U.S. Air Force supply system for inventory control (The Standard Base Level Supply System [14][15]).
The UNIVAC 1004 was a plug-board programmed punched card data processing system, introduced in 1962 by UNIVAC. Total memory was 961 characters (6 bits) of
The UNIVAC 1005, an enhanced version of the UNIVAC 1004, was first shipped in February 1966.[18] The machine saw extensive use by the US Army, including the first use of an electronic computer on the battlefield. Additional peripherals were also available including a paper tape reader and a three pocket stacker selectable card read/punch. The machine had a two-stage assembler (SAAL – Single Address Assembly Language) which was its primary assembler; it also had a three-stage card based compiler for a programming language called SARGE. 1005s were used as some nodes on Autodin. There were actually two versions of the 1005. The Federal Systems (military) version described above and a Commercial Systems version for civilian use. While the two versions shared common memory and peripherals they had two completely different instruction sets.[citation needed] The Commercial Systems version had a three pass assembler and a program generator.
The UNIVAC 1100/2200 series is a series of compatible 36-bit transistorized computer systems initially made by Sperry Rand. The first true member of the series was the 1107, also known as the Thin-Film Computer due to its use of Thin-film memory for its Control Memory store (128 registers). Delivery of the 1107 was late and this affected sales; the subsequent 1108 was considerably more successful, and helped to establish the series as viable competitors to the IBM System/360. The series continues to be supported today by Unisys Corporation as the ClearPath Forward Dorado Series.[19]
The
The UNIVAC Series 90:
- High-end: (90/60, 90/70, 90/80): The high-end Series 90 machines were successors to the high-end UNIVAC 9000 machines, but added virtual memory and thus were similar, or equivalent, to later IBM System/370 mainframes.
- Low-end: (90/30, 90/25, 90/40): Separately from the high-end series, Sperry Univac introduced the Univac 90/30 in about 1975 to provide an upgrade path for 9x00 users and to compete with IBM's KiB memory. It ran an OS called OS/3, and could run up to 7 jobs at one time, not counting various OS extensions such as the print spooler and telecommunications access (ICAM). It was an upgrade path for users who had outgrown the IBM System/3. It ran Cobol-74, RPG2, Fortran, and Assembler. The instruction set of the 90/xx series was implemented in microcode and was loaded into control storageas part of the boot up process, before loading the operating system.
- Shortly after the 90/30 was introduced, Sperry Univac introduced the 90/25 which was the same basic hardware, however had an option for a smaller 80 column card reader and was a bit slower. The machine executed 3 instructions and then a NOP (no op) to slow it down, as nearly every component was identical to the 90/30). Later a 90/40 model was added, with improved performance from a faster clock rate (cycle time of 500 ns vs 600 ns), pre-fetching of the next instruction, and greater maximum main memory capacity (1M vs 512K).
- The Sperry UNIVAC System 80 series: The entire 90/xx series was eventually replaced in 1981 by the System 80, models 4 and 6. More powerful System 80's (models 8, 10 and 20) were introduced in 1984. These were Sperry-badged, IBM/360-like mainframes actually developed and engineered by Mitsubishi in Japan. The final System 80 was the model 7E, released in 1990 by Unisys.
Operating systems
The 1107 was the first 36-bit,
The affordable System 80 series of small mainframes ran the OS/3 operating system which originated on the Univac 90/30 (and later 90/25, and 90/40).
The
Trademark
UNIVAC has been, over the years, a registered trademark of:
- Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation
- Remington Rand Corporation
- Sperry Corporation
- Sperry Rand Corporation
- Unisys Corporation
See also
- FASTRAND
- History of computing hardware
- List of UNIVAC products
- FIELDATA
- Unisys
Notes
References
- ^ Brinkley, Alan. American History: A Survey (12th ed.).
- ^ Alfred, Randy. "Nov. 4, 1952: Univac Gets Election Right, But CBS Balks". Wired.
- NewspaperARCHIVE.
- ^ a b c "The Sperry Rand Corporation Announces the Formation of Remington Rand Univac" (PDF). World Radio History. ELECTRONICS Magazine. January 1956. pp. 47–49. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 31, 2023. Retrieved February 15, 2024.
- ^ "The Computer Directory 1956" (PDF). Bitsavers. Computers and Automation. June 1956. p. 21. Archived (PDF) from the original on November 14, 2022. Retrieved February 15, 2024.
- ^ a b Lewis, Arthur M. (November 1977). "From Brewerytown to Sperry Rand". SPAN. U.S. Embassy New Delhi. Archived from the original on February 16, 2024. Retrieved February 16, 2024.
- ^ Dvorak, John C. (November 25, 2006). "IBM and the Seven Dwarfs – Dwarf One: Burroughs". Dvorak Uncensored. Retrieved July 20, 2010.
- ^ "Unisys History". July 9, 2021.
- S2CID 17276776. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
- .
- .
- ISBN 9780230389113.
- ^ "Input-Output Console, Univac 1232".
- ^ Implementation of the USAF Standard Base Supply System: A Quantitative Study (PDF) (Report). July 1968.
- ^ Phase IV SBSS Data Element Architecture (PDF) (Report). February 1985.
- ^ Shirriff, Ken (April 2022). "Reverse-engineering a mysterious Univac computer board".
... Robert Garner identified it as from the Univac 1004, ...
- ^ "Item ST 43414 - Computer Plug-Board - Univac, Model 1004, circa1965". Museums Victoria Collections. Australia. June 27, 2014. Retrieved July 2, 2023.
- ^ "Univac 1004 II, III and others". First and Second Quarters 1967. Computer Characteristics Quarterly. Vol. 7. Adams Associates. pp. 62–63.
- ^ "ClearPath Forward Dorado Systems". Unisys. June 10, 2021.
- David E. Lundstrom: A Few Good Men from Univac, 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
External links
- UNIVAC Conference Oral history on 17–18 May 1990. Charles Babbage InstituteUniversity of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 171-page transcript of oral history with computer pioneers involved with the Univac computer, held on 17–18 May 1990. The meeting involved 25 engineers, programmers, marketing representatives, and salesmen who were involved with the UNIVAC, as well as representatives from users such as General Electric, Arthur Andersen, and the U.S. Census.
- Oral history interview with Isaac Levin Auerbach Oral history interview by Nancy B. Stern, 10 April 1978. .
- UNIVAC Memories;
- Unisys History Newsletter at the Wayback Machine (archived October 2, 2017).
- Universal Automatic Computer Model II
- UNIVAC 1004 80/90 Card Processor
- The Case 1107
- EXEC II – Unisys History Newsletter, Volume 1, Number 3 at the Wayback Machine (archived August 9, 2017)
- UNIVAC timeline
- A still functional UNIVAC 9400 in a German computer museum
- UNIVAC Simulator 1.2 – by Peter Zilahy Ingerman; Shareware simulator of the UNIVAC I and II
- UNIVAC I/II console photos, 1948–1955 marketing documentation and flash video (Off The Broiler blog)
- UNIVAC Television Advertisement from the Internet Archive
- Sperry Corporation, UNIVAC Division Photograph Collection at Hagley Museum and Library
- Sperry Rand Corporation, Univac Division records at Hagley Museum and Library
- Sperry-UNIVAC records at Hagley Museum and Library
- Remington-Rand Presents the Univac video