You’re reading this right now on a device packed full of microscopic wires, transistors, switches, and myriad other devices designed to corral little electrical bursts into 1s and 0s, which then are whipped (via some magic I can’t even fathom right now because I haven’t had my after-lunch coffee yet) into what you are currently looking at and interacting with. It’s electronic wizardry, and it’s allowed us to produce devices that are smaller, more powerful, and cheaper than Babbage’s analytical engine ever could have.At their core, computers are about counting, and it’s easy to forget just how hard that is to do electronically (as compared to, say, an abacus). That’s what made UNIVAC, the world’s first commercially produced digital computer, so impressive. UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was developed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, who also created ENIAC, the very first general-purpose electronic computer. The U.S. Census Bureau first dedicated UNIVAC on June 14, 1951, which is totally fitting: Who better to welcome in the age of digital data crunching than the organization tasked with figuring out who and where every American is?As part of an excellent history of UNIVAC, History noted that UNIVAC’s promise was in making computing possible for (very wealthy) clients, a leap that ENIAC couldn’t make. From History:ENIAC, which stood for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator, was completed in 1946 at a cost of nearly $500,000. It took up 15,000 feet, employed 17,000 vacuum tubes, and was programmed by plugging and replugging some 6,000 switches. It was first used in a calculation for Los Alamos Laboratories in December 1945, and in February 1946 it was formally dedicated.
Following the success of ENIAC, Eckert and Mauchly decided to go into private business and founded the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation. They proved less able businessmen than they were engineers, and in 1950 their struggling company was acquired by Remington Rand, an office equipment company. On June 14, 1951, Remington Rand delivered its first computer, UNIVAC I, to the U.S. Census Bureau. It weighed 16,000 pounds, used 5,000 vacuum tubes, and could perform about 1,000 calculations per second. On November 4, 1952, the UNIVAC achieved national fame when it correctly predicted Dwight D. Eisenhower’s unexpected landslide victory in the presidential election after only a tiny percentage of the votes were in.As huge as it was, UNIVAC was indeed a commercial product, as evidenced by the 1956 commercial shared above. It was also successful: UNIVAC I, the guy we’ve been talking about, spawned a whole host of increasingly-powerful descendants. (A mark-II UNIVAC, oddly enough, is Plankton’s wife Karen in Spongebob Squarepants.)So thank UNIVAC, all ye computer faithful, for making all of our shiny little electronic devices possible. And as election season ramps up to full swing, expect a whole lot of computer-powered prediction insanity. Yeah, you can also thank UNIVAC for that.Follow Derek on Twitter: @derektmead.
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