--- title: Remington Rand Univac 1 categories: - Computers types: - Professional Computer origins: - U.S.A. years: - '1951' cpus: - Vacuum tubes array params: name: Univac 1 company: /companies/remington-rand company_name: Remington Rand specs: - label: NAME value: Univac 1 - label: MANUFACTURER value: Remington Rand - label: TYPE value: Professional Computer - label: ORIGIN value: U.S.A. - label: YEAR value: March 1951 - label: END OF PRODUCTION value: Unknown - label: BUILT IN LANGUAGE value: None - label: KEYBOARD value: Binary, control and ASCII keyboards - label: CPU value: Vacuum tubes array - label: SPEED value: 1,905 operations per second - label: RAM value: 1000 words of 72 bits in delay lines - label: SIZE / WEIGHT value: '4,25 (W) x 2,45 (D) x 2,60 (H) meters, floor space: 943 cubic feet / 13.1 tons' - label: BUILT IN MEDIA value: Magnetic tapes - label: PRICE value: |- $750,000 FOB factory.\ High-speed line printer: $185,000 tabs: - emulators - links emulators: - title: UNIVAC simulator url: http://www.ingerman.org/niche.htm#UNIVAC platform: Windows text: Univac I & II emulator ! links: - title: History of Computing Project page url: http://www.thocp.net/hardware/univac.htm text: '' - title: Lexikon's History of Computing url: http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/UNIVAC-1-FullView-B.htm text: Nice pictures and some info - title: Very complete and detailed page about the Univac 1 url: http://mywebpage.netscape.com/reitery2k/univac1.htm text: '' comments: - author: Ardis Noyes Rettich date: Tuesday 21st July 2015 text: Picture is of me operating the UNIVAC l in 1960 or 61. - author: Ardis Noyes Rettich (United States) date: Tuesday 21st July 2015 text: Picture of me taken for a magazine at Remington Rand in Buffalo, NY. Picture is on my FB page. How do I get it to you? Ardis - author: computer guy (USA) date: Saturday 4th February 2012 text: Wasn''t the first computer built in 1936? I''m not sure - author: Computer date: Thursday 3rd November 2011 text: The first computer not commercial was the ENIAC - author: James Sandford (United Kingdom) date: Saturday 2nd October 2010 text: I''d just like to say, this computer was not the first to store programs and data in the same memory and I would argue not the first modern digital computer. The Small Scale Experimental Machine also known as Baby or The Manchester Mark 1 Prototype came online in 1948. This machine was the worlds first stored program computer and was built with the sole purpose of testing it''s cathode ray tube memory (also making this an earlier computer not to be built to replace a mechanical computer than the Whirlwind). The machine could hold 32 words of 32 bit length and had 7 instructions with subtraction but no addition. The machine had a typewriter for input, a cathode ray tube output, RAM, an accumulator and an accumulator so had all the major components of a modern computer. I help maintain a replica at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester in the UK. We''re currently carrying out repairs on the machine and an interesting offshoot of the current position is we have discovered we can run this valve machine which fills a room off of a regular household plug. - author: Daniel (Switzerland) date: Saturday 15th November 2008 text: I think with commercial computer they mean that it was the first to be actually produced and marketed as a product that anyone could by (anyone who could afford it.) Remember that the Z4 was still a unique computer of which only one was built. The UNIVAC was the first one to go into actual serial production. - author: Thinker (Germany) date: Wednesday 3rd August 2005 text: The Univac 1 was NOT the first commercial computer. The first commercial computer was the Zuse Z4 from 1950 - author: j4ck (us) date: Monday 28th March 2005 text: has anyone ported linux to it? - author: David (Spain) date: Thursday 4th November 2004 text: |- About the question if vacuum tubes were hot... yes, a vacuum tube was like an light bulb, it had a filament that warmed up to 900 ºC (about 1650 Fahrenheit degrees), when the thing was powered it turned to bright orange. In this way, the electrons could go from the catode that was heated by this filament to an anode, by applying several hundreds of volts between them. By placing a grid between the anode and the catode, you could control the intensity of the current at the anode by varying the voltage of the grid. In fact, the bulb of the vaccum tubes could get 50 or 60 ºC (about 120 to 140 Fahrenheit), less than the heat generated by a modern CPU, but if you add the heat produced by 5000 tubes, the technicians shouldn't take a cold easily. (Sorry if my English is not very good, I have learned it by the public schools of Spain ;) - author: Daniel Saner (Switzerland) date: Tuesday 26th October 2004 text: There actually is an emulator for this machine, and the Univac II. You can find it as shareware on SimTel, just visit www.simtel.net and search the Software Archive for "Univac" and you should be able to get it. It has been coded by one of the original Univac programmers! - author: Eric (Pa) date: Wednesday 25th February 2004 text: I seriously think an emulator would work for this... - author: BHTooEFR (USA) date: Monday 15th December 2003 text: |- How about an emulator for this thing? I DON'T think I'd find one on the sales forums \*ducks\*, but I'd like to see this old beast in action, even if it's only on a Celery that weighs 2600 times less, and costed about 935 times less - with a printer. Just think of a casemod on one of those things, though... you could throw a HUGE beowulf cluster in there on rackmounts. How quickly did the vactube array run? I mean, could you measure that in Hz, even? Also, how HOT did the thing get? Were vacuum tubes hot, or were they really cool? I mean, heat output of high-end desktop CPUs has gone up as the process size has gone down. E-mail me with the information - my e-mail is backwards for spam protection (I'll munge it less if I ever get around to setting up my spam filter again), and has a .NOSPAM on the end - remove the .NOSPAM, and then reverse it. oc_id: 973 source: url: https://web.archive.org/web/20230627150804/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=973 date: '2023-06-27' --- In March 1951, The **Eckert and Mauchly Computer Co.** of Philadelphia delivered the UNIVAC 1 (Universal Automatic Computer) to the U.S. Census Bureau. The machine was put into service on June 14, 1951. It was retired on October 3, 1963 after 73,000 hours of operation. In the meantime, **Remington Rand** (now Unisys Corp.) sold 45 UNIVAC 1 machines to U.S. government agencies and private-industry. Although it was not the first commercial computer (The Ferranti Mark I was delivered a few months earlier), the Univac 1 is considered the first modern digital computer and marked the real beginning of the computer industry. For five years, this was the best large scale computer in use for data processing. Technically, it was the first where the program and data were stored in the same memory space, data and programs were fetched from memory, manipulated in registers, and results returned to memory. Every computer since the Univac 1 has used some variation of that architecture. The beast was really imposing, It weighted more than 13 tons, held 5200 vacuum tubes and used 125 Kwatts of electricity. A simple addition instruction took about 100 microseconds (about 200,000 times slower than a Pentium III), time for a divide instruction was of 3,600 microseconds. Large magnetic tape units and card puncher/readers were used for data input, storage and output. Results could also be printed on a high-speed printer (600 lines per minute). The first computer game was created on the Univac. It was called NIM and allowed humans to compete against the machine in a mathematical contest.\ In 1952, the Univac also correctly predicted that Eisenhower would win in the Eisenhower-Stevenson presidential race, but the news media decided not to make the prediction public. Thanks to **Andy Davis** for the picture. --- **William F. Steagall** reports:\ I was a junior engineer at Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp. My role in designing UNIVAC was small, but I did make a contribution to it. One clarification I would offer is that during the 1952 elections, the program we ran to forecast the victor in the presidential election had Eisenhower as winner as soon as the first few votes came in. Dramatic efforts were made to reduce the prediction of 100 to one for Eisenhower, but we never got the forecast below about 20 to one. We had wonderful fun doing our jobs.
We need more info about this computer ! If you designed, used, or have more info about this system, please send us pictures or anything you might find useful.