UNIVAC I

UNIVAC I ( UNIV ersal has utomatic C omputer I ) is the first commercial computer produced in the United States. It was created by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, already at the origin of ENIAC. Before other machines do not leave in the same series, the UNIVAC I was quite simply called UNIVAC.

The first computer is delivered to the United States Census Bureau the March 30th 1951 and brought into service the June 14th. The fifth (built for the Atomic Energy Commission) was used by CBS to predict the exit of the presidential election of 1952. Starting from a sample of a percent of the voters he predicts that Eisenhower would have been elected president, thing that nobody could have believed, but UNIVAC had seen just.

The computers were manufactured by Univac, a subsidiary company of Remington Rand.

Description

UNIVAC I uses 5 ' 200 vacuum tubes, weighs 13 tons, consumes 125 kw for a computing power of 1905 operations a second with a clock with 2.25 MHz. The unit accommodating the memory with mercury made 4,3  m  ×  2,4  m  ×  2,6 m with it only. The complete system occupies 35,5 square meters.

The main memory makes it possible to store 1000 numbers with 11 decimal plus the sign (words of 72 bits), consistent in 100 channels of 10 words. The memory of entry and exit consists of 120 words. The whole of the channels is contained in seven mercury tanks.

A channel of 10 words is composed of three sections:

  1. a channel in a mercury column equipped at the ends with crystals quartz, one for the emission and the other for the reception.
  2. a frame, connected to the crystal of reception, container of the amplifiers, a detector and compensating for latency. It is fixed at the wall of the tank.
  3. a frame of circulation, containing a cathode, a generating apparatus of the impulses and a modulator which controls the transmitting crystal.

The instructions making it possible to control the computer make 36 bits length and are gathered two to two in a mot.

The numbers are represented by using a format decimal Binary coded Excesses-3 to six bit by figure (+ a bit of parity by figure), allowing signed numbers of 11 digits.

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