UNIVAC: Birth of Commercial Computing and Computer Culture

Eckert and Mauchlay left the University of Pennsylvania and decided to create the first computer company. This venture, too, was treated with jeers. Who on earth had need of so much computation that they would need such a large and expensive machine? (An early study indicated that there would not be need for more than about six computers for the whole country.)

Eckert and Mauchlay expected that the U.S. government would be their primary customer. However, this was the McCarthy Era, and John Mauchlay had been accused of being a Communist. Even though this charge eventually proved false, it meant that in the meantime Eckert and Mauchlay were ineligible to bid for government work. This was one of the main reasons that Eckert and Mauclay were forced to sell their company to the Remington-Rand corporation before they had even sold their first computer.

Remington? Why was a gun company interested in computers? After the Civil War, the Remington company had retooled much of its gun-making machinery to produce typewriters.

In 1951, Remington-Rand sold their first ENIAC-derived computer under the name UNIVAC to the U.S. Census department.

UNIVAC made its television debut during the 1956 U.S. Presidential Election, correctly predicting Eisenhower's victory based on only 5% of the returns, displaying a small margin for error that is impressive even today. Interestingly, human polling data showed otherwise, so CBS did not air UNIVAC's prediction. When CBS had to go on the air the next night and admit their error, the UNIVAC became famous. UNIVAC-like computers began popping up in movies and elsewhere in the popular imagination.