Feb. 1 marks 50 years
of computing in Air Force
by Lori Manske
Air Force Communications Agency Public Affairs
02/01/02 - SCOTT AIR
FORCE BASE, Ill. (AFPN) -- When the Air Force
stepped into the computer age 50 years ago, it was
with a garage-size central processing unit that ran
at a then-astronomical rate of 2.25 megahertz. It
covered at least 352 square feet of floor space and
came with more than a dozen desk- or refrigerator-size
peripherals.
On Feb. 1, 1952, the
Air Force became the second government agency to get
a Universal Automatic Computer, or UNIVAC, from Remington
Rand, Inc. It was installed in the basement of the
Pentagon where the Air Force comptroller operated
it until 1958.
"In the history of the
20th century, no technological advancement affected
American society, and the world, as profoundly as
the computer," said Col. Thomas J. Verbeck, commander
of the Air Force Communications Agency here. "In 1951,
the UNIVAC became the standard for technological innovation
at the dawn of the computer age. It was the sign of
things to come in the technology revolution."
The UNIVAC was the first
computer that businesses could actually order and
purchase back in 1951. Most computers were one-of-a-kind
machines. Only 46 UNIVAC Is were made, but that was
considered mass production then.
The UNIVAC was designed
by Dr. John Mauchly, a physicist, and John Presper
Eckert Jr., an engineer. The UNIVAC I was delivered
to its first customer, the U.S. Census Bureau, in
1951, and the third computer went to the Army in 1952.
Mauchly and Eckert contracted
with the U.S. government to provide three computers,
at a price of $159,000 for the first and $250,000
for each of the other two, even though more than $1
million was spent on its development. Later UNIVAC
Is sold for more than $1 million.
The UNIVAC I's first
task for the Air Force was to run a linear programming
model to do logistics calculations for war planning.
When it outlived its usefulness there in 1958, the
machine was shipped to the Air University at Maxwell
Air Force Base, Ala.
Today's personal computer
processors clock speeds at more than 2 gigahertz.
In the age of silicon chips and the Internet, a personal
computer can add numbers 26,000 times faster than
the UNIVAC.
While the UNIVAC is a
dinosaur compared to today's workstations, it was
a technological marvel in 1951. It was used to tally
part of the 1950 U.S. population census, drastically
reducing the workload of the human tabulators. The
original UNIVAC I from the U.S. Census Bureau is now
at the Smithsonian Institution preserved as a forefather
of the computer revolution.
The UNIVAC's predecessor
was the Electronic Numerator, Integrator, Analyzer,
and Computer. This 30-ton mathematical monster was
developed during World War II for the military and
was considered the original modern computer.
Back in the days when
mass storage was massive, the ENIAC had 30 separate
units, plus power supply and forced-air cooling, and
weighed more than 30 tons. Its 19,000 vacuum tubes,
1,500 relays, and hundreds of thousands of resistors,
capacitors, and inductors consumed almost 200 kilowatts
of electrical power. But ENIAC was the prototype from
which most other modern computers evolved.
By comparison, the more
petite UNIVAC weighed about 16,000 pounds, used 5,000
vacuum tubes, and could perform about 1,000 calculations
per second. The premier UNIVAC was a leaner, meaner
version of ENIAC.
UNIVAC's place in history
was set on election night in 1952, when, based on
early returns in the presidential vote, a UNIVAC stamped
with serial number "5" correctly predicted Dwight
D. Eisenhower's landslide electoral victory over Adlai
E. Stevenson. Skeptical broadcasters chose not to
air the UNIVAC prediction, acknowledging its accuracy
only after the election had been decided.
The UNIVAC used magnetic
tape for input/output rather than the punch card technology
of its contemporaries. The central complex housed
the mercury memory unit and all the central processing
unit circuitry. A clear Plexiglas door provided access
to the center of the system: it was a walk-in computer.
The vacuum tubes generated an enormous amount of heat,
so a high-capacity chilled water and blower air conditioning
system cooled the unit.
The first computer "bug"
failure was actually a computer "fish." One UNIVAC
was cooled with water from the local river and failed
from overheating. The cause was traced to a fish blocking
one of the intake pipes.
Besides the central complex,
there were eight tape drives, an operator console,
and a console typewriter/printer. The complete system
had 5,200 vacuum tubes, weighed 29,000 pounds, and
consumed 125 kilowatts of electrical power.
Unisys' ES7000 server
today offers 216,000 times the speed and 7.6 million
times the memory of the UNIVAC, while consuming just
fractions of the electrical power and weight.
"UNIVAC marks a milestone
in the history of computing, making the 20th century
a time of innovation," Verbeck said. "Today, a Valentine's
card with an electronic music chip inside has about
as much computing power as the ENIAC. A laptop computer
has more power than the combined power of all the
computers in the world 50 years ago."
What once filled an entire
room is now on a tiny card costing a few dollars.
"Talented, innovative
people improved on what those early computer geniuses
began," Verbeck said. "Computers got smaller, faster,
and smarter. Fifty years later, we're still moving
quickly along the road of progress and productivity.
The coming years will reveal what computing and networks
are really about -- new ways to communicate, do business,
organize, think, and live."
Today, computers do much
more than just compute. Supermarket scanners calculate
grocery bills and at the same time, keep inventory;
computerized telephone switching centers manage millions
of calls and keep lines of communication untangled;
and automatic teller machines allow people to conduct
banking transactions from virtually anywhere in the
world.
"Information capabilities
-- the combination of computing power and communications
links that provide data, information, and knowledge
-- have changed the world," Verbeck said. "In the
air operations and tanker airlift control centers,
commanders depend on computers and communications
systems for situational awareness, mission planning,
and command and control. Linked to sensors and control
centers, warfighters have the advantages of power,
speed, flexibility, and precision on the battlefield.
"Rapid innovations in
Web-enabled processes, wiser use of technology, and
network-centric operations, have demonstrated the
combat power of the network at work in the hands of
every one of us," he said.
| Related
Images |
 An
overall view of the UNIVAC I installed in the
Pentagon in 1952. (Courtesy photo) |
|
