UNIVAC

There are slides devoted to this topic: Lecture 0, pp. 44-46, Lecture 9, pp. 39-42.

Websites

Visit the “UNIVAC” page on the Computer History Museum site, which briefly discusses the machine’s history and functions. There are some wonderful pictures of the UNIVAC also included here. Move on to the “Delay Lines” page to see the memory storage process that distinguished the UNIVAC from many of its predecessors. Then learn about how “UNIVAC Predicts an Eisenhower Win!” in 1952 and made the UNIVAC a household name. Afterwards, read about “Making UNIVAC a Business.”

Learn about assorted “UNIVAC Memories” on the Fourmilab site. This collection of information on the UNIVAC includes information on different models of the UNIVAC, a guide to the one’s complement system on which the UNIVAC represented negative numbers, and the wonderful poem “UNIVACKY” (based of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.”

Read about the connection between UNIVAC and ENIAC through the “John W. Mauchly and the Development of the ENIAC Computer” exhibit, produced by the UPenn Library.

Check out this 1949 article – “Want to Buy a Brain?”- featured in Popular Science. This four-page piece covers the functions and practical applications of buying a commercial, $200,000 UNIVAC.

Videos

Watch “Remington-Rand Presents the UNIVAC.” The informational film covers a brief history of mainframe computers, then goes through the functions, properties, and applications of the machine.

Afterwards, watch this more lighthearted promotional video by Remington Rand, called “UNIVAC – Then and Now.” This partially animated film provides a brief history of computing before delving into UNIVAC’s development from the ENIAC. The video includes brief interviews at the end with Mauchly and Eckert.

Other Media

Try out this freeware UNIVAC simulator, created by original UNIVAC programmer Peter Ingerman.

Articles

IEEE: “Programming on the UNIVAC 1: a Woman’s Account,” Adele Mildred Koss: Experience the early world of computing through the eyes of Adele Koss, a female programmer. Her account of working at Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) reveals that the early computer industry was flexible and open-minded enough to accommodate the schedule of a working mother. Koss’s  story also includes detailed and comprehensible explanations of some of her projects, including automatic programming.

Books

Campbell-Kelly and Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine, 95-99 (also discusses BINAC); 104-109