UNIVAC I

The UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer I) was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer design for business application produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC. Design work was started by their company, Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC), and was completed after the company had been acquired by Remington Rand (which later became part of Sperry, now Unisys). In the years before successor models of the UNIVAC I appeared, the machine was simply known as "the UNIVAC". The first Univac was accepted by the United States Census Bureau on March 31, 1951, and was dedicated on June 14 that year. The fifth machine (built for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission) was used by CBS to predict the result of the 1952 presidential election. With a sample of a mere 5.5% of the voter turnout, it famously predicted an Eisenhower landslide. The UNIVAC I was the first American computer designed at the outset for business and administrative use with fast execution of relatively simple arithmetic and data transport operations, as opposed to the complex numerical calculations required of scientific computers. As such, the UNIVAC competed directly against punch-card machines, though the UNIVAC originally could neither read nor punch cards. That shortcoming hindered sales to companies concerned about the high cost of manually converting large quantities of existing data stored on cards. This was corrected by adding offline card processing equipment, the UNIVAC Tape to Card converter, to transfer data between cards and UNIVAC magnetic tapes. However, the early market share of the UNIVAC I was lower than the Remington Rand Company wished. To promote sales, the company joined with CBS to have UNIVAC I predict the result of the 1952 Presidential election. After it predicted Eisenhower would have a landslide victory over Adlai Stevenson, as opposed to the final Gallup Poll which had predicted that Eisenhower would win the popular vote by 51–49 in a close contest, the CBS crew was so certain that UNIVAC was wrong that they believed it was not working.