UNIVAC I Model

Engineers J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchley created the ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator and Computer) at the University of Pennsylvania between 1943-1946. Soon after its formal dedication, they left the University to start their own business. Early orders from U.S. government agencies and other potential customers were not enough to keep the young Eckert-Mauchley Computer Corporation alive, and Remington Rand agreed to purchase the firm in 1950. Work on on the UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) went forward, and the first of these machines was delivered to the Bureau of the Census in early 1951. By 1957, some 46 copies of the machine had been installed at locations ranging from the David Taylor Model Basin of the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships, to Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company, to the offices of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Another copy went to the Graduate Center for Mathematics of New York University, an institution headed by Richard Courant. Courant had been the head of the Mathematical Institute at Goettingen University but lost his position because of his social democratic politics (he was also Jewish but was exempt from dismissal for that reason because he had fought for the German army in World War I).

The UNIVAC, like the ENIAC, had vacuum tube circuit elements. There also were some 18,000 crystal diodes. Central memory was handled in acoustic delay-line tanks, which were used in several early computers. UNIVAC also had an external magnetic tape memory, as well as magnetic tapes used in input and output. Users of UNIVAC played an important role in the development of programming languages.

This model of the UNIVAC I computer has 18 pieces and 3 miniature chairs, all attached to a heavy white plastic-covered base. The base may be mounted on legs. The pieces modeled are a Uniprinter (2 pieces), a tape to card converter (3 pieces), a high-speed printer (4 pieces), 8 Uniservo tape drive units (1 L-shaped piece), the supervisory control with typewriter (2 pieces) and a chair, a Unityper II with chair, a verifier with chair, the central processing unit (CPU), and a card to tape converter (3 pieces).

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