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UNIVAC SHOWS HOW FAR
WE'VE COME
UNIVAC shows how far
we've come
06/06/2001
By ALAN GOLDSTEIN / The
Last year's euphoria about the possibilities of new technology has
yielded to despair. Has the pendulum swung too far?
As far as computing has advanced, there must be more to come.
Consider the state-of-the-art in computing a half-century ago. That's when
the
The introduction marked what's generally regarded as the beginning of the
computer industry, because it was the first time a company put one of these
mammoth machines up for sale, said George Gray, a programmer for the state of
Georgia and a hobbyist historian.
The UNIVAC was a commercial cousin to the ENIAC, the Electronic Numerical
Integrator and Computer, a 30-ton marvel developed at the
The UNIVAC weighed a relatively svelte eight tons. Effectively a walk-in
computer, its central processing unit was about the size of a one-car
garage.
"On one side of it, there was a door and you could go in - when the
electricity was off," Mr. Gray said. "That's how maintenance
engineers would go inside."
Vacuum tubes created an enormous amount of heat, so the system was cooled
with a high-capacity air-conditioning system that used chilled water and a
blower.
Most visually compelling to those who got to witness the great machine in
action was its array of eight tape drives.
"Whenever a movie was showing you a computer in the old days, they'd
show you tape drives," said Mr. Gray, who writes the online Unisys
History Newsletter and co-wrote a history of computers that Unisys Corp.
sends out as a reference work on the subject. Unisys is the corporate
descendant of the creator of the UNIVAC.
"The tape was made from extremely thin metal foil. They hadn't gotten to
the more familiar Mylar tapes. If you dropped one of them on your foot, you'd
know it."
For the time, its price tag was also shocking - more than $1 million.
Speedy giant
And the UNIVAC was considered blazingly fast. The UNIVAC's
arrival was too late for the compilation of the 1950 population census, but
it was used for economic reports over the next several years. The 1950 census
was counted the old-fashioned way, using tabulating machines and traditional
punch-card technology, Mr. Gray said.
The UNIVAC design could scan through a reel of tape, find the correct
records, perform some processes with them and then return the results to
the tape - replacing the labor-intensive process of having people shuttle
punched cards between machines.
"The advantage of the computer over the punch-card device was sheer
speed. You can pass magnetic tape much more quickly than you can read a deck
of cards," Mr. Gray said.
Of course, by today's standards, the original UNIVAC's
speed was downright laughable - about 2.25 megahertz. By way of comparison, a
good handheld organizer today operates at more than 200 megahertz, while a
typical new desktop personal computer runs at more than a gigahertz.
With the added speed, the Census Bureau was able to gather more data and
analyze it in far more sophisticated ways, Mr. Gray said.
The UNIVAC was showcased to the broader world through television and radio
coverage of election night in 1952. The computer constructed a mathematical
model of the election, then used early results from
sample precincts to correctly predict that Dwight D. Eisenhower would win by
a landslide.
"This was not about counting; it was predicting," Mr. Gray said.
Announcers on CBS praised the UNIVAC, but they also pointed out that while it
had produced an accurate prediction, they had been afraid to use it. In the
following years, the UNIVAC basked in the glow of favorable publicity,
eventually becoming synonymous to many with a powerful computer.
Lower high-end costs
The ultra-powerful Unisys computers these days borrow most heavily from the
standard PC architecture of the last two decades, operating with up to 32
Intel processors and running the Microsoft Windows operating system.
"It's a technical and engineering challenge," said David Houseman,
vice president for advanced technology at Unisys, but it's bringing down the
cost of high-end computing.
Fast computers are so common, they're far less visible.
"In the early days of electric power, the wealthy would proudly display
a bare light bulb in the living room. Now, of course, they're recessed and
hidden," Mr. Houseman said. "The same thing has happened to
computers. They're in cars, watches, cell phones - everywhere."
Technology editor Alan Goldstein writes about the Internet and electronic
commerce for The |
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