“Its awfully early, but Ill go out on a limb,” read the
printout, just above the prediction that the winner of the 1952
presidential election would be Dwight Eisenhower. Onlookers were
skeptical, but with only 1 percent of the vote counted, the
Universal Automatic Computerbetter known as Univachad calculated
the winner. The demonstration was a milestone in the pioneering
machines somewhat shaky journey from the laboratory to the real
world. The Univac was created by J. Presper Eckert and John W.
Mauchly, University of Pennsylvania scientists who in 1946 left
academia to form a computer company. Financial woes forced the
pair to sell the business to New York-based Remington Rand,
though they continued to work from their Philadelphia offices.
In 1951, Remington Rand shipped the first Univac to the U.S.
Census Bureau. Weighing 13,000 kilograms and boasting more than
5,000 vacuum tubes, the Univac multiplied figures more than 50
times faster than the eras punch-card calculators. Sales were
limited at first to a f