UNIVAC Full Form

UNIVAC stands for Universal Automatic Computer which was the world’s first computer, and the first commercial computer employing transistorised circuits. It was developed by a group of engineers from the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC), led by Ted C. J. Berst and John W. Mauchly, who went on to found the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, which was based on the same principles but used vacuum tubes for computing, instead of transistors. UNIVAC was designed to use punched cards for input and output rather than a keyboard and disk drives. It was also the first computer to be programmed using computer languages such as BASIC, FORTRAN, and COBOL. The UNIVAC I and II machines were generally used only in government and commercial applications, but the UNIVAC III and the Super UNIVAC (S/UNIVAC-II) were used in scientific use; they supported programs written in FORTRAN, COBOL, and other computer programming languages.

Importance of Universal Automatic Computer:

UNIVAC was the most important and significant piece of computer equipment invented in the 1940s and 1950s. Its importance helped to make computers available to private industry by enabling manufacturers to build smaller and less expensive computers, thus expanding the market for computer hardware. The first UNIVAC was installed at the Elliott Company in St. Joseph, Missouri, on June 9, 1951. In addition to serving as a reliable business machine (or “mainframe”), it was also used as a research tool for computer scientists at universities including University of Wisconsin–Madison and Stanford University. One of the first business applications of UNIVAC was by the Philadelphia Inquirer to predict the outcomes of elections.

During its early years, UNIVAC was a very important factor in scientific research. It was used in projects such as John von Neumann’s nuclear weapons simulations at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and Arthur Kornberg’s discovery of how to make DNA reproducing material (deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA) using chemical reactions at Stanford University. By providing more efficient computing power for use with difficult scientific problems, UNIVAC helped many scientists make important discoveries that helped humanity.

Significance of UNIVAC:

UNIVAC and other large-scale computers like the IBM 701 provided new insights about how human beings could interact with computers. By observing how people interacted with UNIVAC and other large-scale computers, computer scientists were able to make major improvements in the design of computer equipment. These research projects, which were performed on UNIVAC and other large-scale computers like the IBM 701, benefited not only UNIVAC but also all of its descendants. The design of future computers was greatly influenced by research that was conducted using UNIVAC; this is why it is important to understand the nature of the scientific research that was performed using UNIVAC.

UNIVAC helped to lay a foundation for the development of future business and scientific endeavors.

Functions of Universal Automatic Computer:

UNIVAC can be used to perform following functions:

1) UNIVAC was the first commercial computer, developed from 1947 to 1951, that was based on the principles of electronic digital computing using transistors instead of vacuum tubes. It was the first fully transistorized computer and used punched card input and output. Graner and Allen’s thesis at Purdue University, published in 1956:

2) The UNIVAC I was built to be a computer for business use (“mainframe”) that would provide distributed computation capability to many users simultaneously. It had only a few hundred core tubes and used tape memory; its capacity was 1 million words. The machine could process lengthy programs in 1/6th the time of a manual calculation. UNIVAC computations could be performed by a single user, or by users working in parallel.

3) The UNIVAC I was the first commercial computer to employ magnetic tape for secondary memory and the UNIVAC II and III were computers that employed magnetic tape for their primary memory (“memory store”, sometimes referred to as main store or core store).

4) UNIVAC I had drum memory stores that could hold up to 1 million words of data; it also had high-speed card readers and punches as well as magnetic tape subsystems. UNIVAC II was an improvement on UNIVAC I, built in 1954 which stored 1.75 million words of data on 58 magnetic tapes.

Mode of Operation:

The UNIVAC computer obtains instructions every 1/60 second through tape control. It can also obtain instructions from drum memory units. UNIVAC is operated by means of an appropriate program punched onto cards called standard cards. The sequence of operation, i.e, the order in which the computer carries out its elementary operations, is stored in a group of 80 words on the card punch called “sequential function table.”

UNIVAC performs efficient arithmetic, logical and input-output operations and can handle numbers up to 20 digits with a word length of 24 bits. Computer operates at speed about 2500 operations per second with a maximum storage capacity of 2048 words.

Characteristics:

The computer is housed in a cabinet made of masonite covered with steel. It consists of a control unit, five drums, 100 magnetic core registers, three I/O units and auxiliary units. The major components consist of five drum memories, ten magnetic core registers or “main storage units,” and three input-output units or “auxiliary storage units” plus their associated output section. The drum memories are attached to the drum controllers mounted on the front cover panel. These drums rotate through an endless belt connected to the motors that operate the drum controller mechanisms. The magnetic core registers are contained in boxes containing about 100 leaves each. The core registers act like drum memories and can be used interchangeably. Each main storage unit has a maximum storage capacity of 64,000 words and consists of an array of magnetic cores contained in a wooden casing. The magnetic cores are arranged in a parallel ring inside the unit with each core having an individual number called a “word” (i.e., 80 bits). Four input-output sections are used to communicate the instructions to drum memory units, magnetic core registers, and drum controller mechanisms. Each input-output unit is assigned five I/O ports through which information can be passed to or from the computer.

Conclusion:

UNIVAC was the first commercially successful computer. It was widely used by scientists and businesses during the 1950s and 1960s, but as time passed it fell out of favor with many companies. UNIVAC II was a step in the right direction, but it had many flaws that made it too expensive to be widely used. When IBM introduced the IBM PC in 1981, the computer captured the attention of millions of users around the world. This computer ushered in a new era in computing known as personal computing. Today, almost every feature of UNIAC is incorporated into computers from PCs to supercomputers. Computer scientists continue to work on improving both software and hardware for most modern computers today.