Computer World. Матросова Т.А. - 9 стр.

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TEXT 3
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FROM UNIVAC TO PC
It is hard to believe now that people used to refer to a computer as a «Umvac,»
but this is the name by which it probably first came to public attention. UNIVAC was
the name that Presper Eckert and John Mauchly gave to their Universal Automatic
Computer, on which they began work in 1946, fresh from their work on ENIAC. In
1949, Remington Rand acquired the company, and the first UNIVAC became
operational at the Census Bureau in 1951.
However, it was in the next year, a presidential election year, that the public
really came to know the term UNIVAC. During vote counting the night of the 1952
election, UNIVAC surprised CBS network executives by predicting–after analyzing
only 5% of the vote counted–that Eisenhower would defeat Stevenson for President .
Of course, since then, computers have been used extensively by television networks
to predict election outcomes.
UNIVAC was also the first computer used for data processing and record
keeping by a business organization–it was installed by General Electric in Louisville,
Kentucky, in 1954. Also in that year, IBM's 650 mainframe computer was first
installed, an upgrade of the company's punched-card machines. Because
businesspeople were already used to punched-card data processing, the IBM 650 was
readily accepted by the business community, thus giving IBM a substantial foot in the
door to the computer market, an advantage it still enjoys today.
We have described the movement of computers from vacuum tubes (1951) to
transistors (1959) to integrated circuits (1965). By 1960, a number of companies had
entered the computer market, among them Control Data Corporation (CDC), National
Cash Register (NCR), and General Electric.
In 1964, after reportedly spending a spectacular $5 billion, IBM announced an
entire new line of computers called the System/360, so-called because they covered
«360 degrees» of a circle. That is, the System/360 came in several models and sizes,
with about 40 different kinds of input and output and secondary storage devices, all
compatible so that customers could put together systems tailor-made to their needs
and budgets. Despite the tremendous disruption for users, the System/360 was a
resounding success and repaid IBM's investment many times over.
But in the 1960s and 1970s, competitors to IBM saw holes they could fill. Large
mainframe computers began to be supplemented by minicomputers, such as those
made by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Data General Corporation, and
Hewlett-Packard. Cray, formed by Seymour Cray, began developing the
supercomputer. A former IBM employee named Gene Amdahl marketed his Amdahl
470V/6, which was one and one-half times faster than a comparable IBM computer,
yet cost less and occupied only a third the space.
Besides General Electric, RCA also tried to penetrate the mainframe computer
market, but later withdrew. Of the original mainframe makers, the survivors today are

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