There’s an old joke that goes like this: A bunch of scientists created a huge machine capable of complex calculations and called it UNIVAC. Eager to test their invention, they asked it, “Is there a God?”The vacuum tubes hummed and the tape spools spun for several minutes. Finally, the machine spit out a little card, on which was written, “THERE IS NOW.” On March 31 in 1951, the Remington Rand Corporation signed a contract to deliver the first UNIVAC computer to the U.S. Census Bureau. UNIVAC I (which stands for Universal Automatic Computer) took up 350 square feet of floor space — about the size of a one-car garage — and was the first American commercial computer. It was designed for the rapid and relatively simple arithmetic calculation of numbers needed by businesses, rather than the complex calculations required of the sciences. It was intended to compete against IBM’s punch card-reading computers, but UNIVAC read magnetic tapes, not punch cards, so a special “card to tape converter” had to be designed.
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Though the government contract was signed, and a ceremony held, on March 31, the computer wasn’t actually delivered until the following December; this was because there was only one UNIVAC I, and Remington Rand wanted to use it for demonstration purposes. So they asked for and received time to build a second computer.
The government was the first big customer of the UNIVACs, with subsequent models going to the Air Force, the Army Map Service, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Navy. The first commercial sale was to General Electric, for their Appliance Division, followed soon after by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, in 1954. There were 46 UNIVAC I’s built and delivered, in all.
The computer first came to the notice of the general public in 1952, when CBS used one to predict the outcome of the presidential election. UNIVAC correctly picked Eisenhower and predicted his electoral count within 1 percent, but the network didn’t release the results until after the election was called, so as not to affect the outcome.
Thanks Writer's Almanac
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My ex-husband was one of the first insurance employees writing code for computers, at Traveler's Insurance in 1964. He was first a Computer Programmer then called a System's Analyst most of his career. That was just 14 years after that first big ole computer was developed and went into use.
Time has certainly squeezed along at a faster pace since then. I borrowed a word processor from him in the 1980s when I was in grad school. He had some of the first Apple computers in his home, and as he upgraded, sometimes I could receive the older models. Thus I had an Apple IIe for a while, but never had some of the other models, which went to our sons.
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Today I put energy into writing blogs (and replying to comments) when I have all this precious time as a retiree. And I give myself a daily mantra, "I use the screens, they don't own me."
So many of us (me included) spend each moment gazing at our phones, games, TV's and computers. But they are just tools. I am so grateful to have all of these, but also need to remind myself of the wonders of nature! Yes, even if I don't go barefoot these days, yesterday I walked across a large grassy area, and was so happy to feel the earth as it had different softness and angles with each footstep.
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