UNISYS

UNISYS

EMCC, UNIVAC, SPERRY-RAND, BURROUGHS CONSOLIDATED CHRONOLOGY

1873	Having excellent business and factory skills, and seeing a potential new industry, the Remingtons bought the rights to Christopher Shole's early typewriter machine.
1886	The American Arithmometer Company marketed adding machines invented by William Seward Burroughs.
1893	Remington was not only producing typewriters, it had bought out or merged with the following competitor companies: o Standard Typewriter Company o Yost Writing Machine Company o Monarch Typewriter Company o Densmore Typewriter Company, and o Smith Premier Typewriter Company.
1904	Elmer A. Sperry markets the Sperry Calculator, a circular slide-rule.
1905	The American Arithmometer Company officially becomes the Burroughs Adding Machine Company.
1905	American Arithmometer changes its name to Burroughs Adding Machine Company.
1910	Elmer A. Sperry, a brilliant inventor and businessman, founded "Sperry Gyroscope Company," makers of gyrocompasses and other directional finding devices.
1911	First Sperry gyrocompass tested in the U.S. in Delaware.
1921	Burroughs acquires Moon-Hopkins Billing Machine Company, maker of billing and bookkeeping machines.
1927	Sperry Corporation used to be called "Sperry Rand." "Rand" came from the family that operated the "Rand-Kardex" office machine business. In the early 1920's, James H. Rand, Jr. built a $10 million dollar business based on his father's patented record keeping system. In 1927, his company, Rand-Kardex, merged with five different companies: Remington Typewriter, Dalton Adding Machine Company, Powers Accounting Machine Corporation, and the Safe Cabinet Company. The new combined company was called "Remington Rand."
1943	1943-1947. First functioning prototype Business Computer, the Rand Model 2, was developed by Loring P. Crosman at Remington Rand.
1944	The Moore School agreed to contract with the Army and work on the ENIAC was begun. In August of 1944, John von Neumann regularly came to discuss the logical designs of the ENIAC, especially with regard to the mathematical analyses involved. The ENIAC project involved at least 21 people, with John P. Eckert as chief engineer and John Mauchly as senior consultant. Kay Mauchly Antonelli was one of the ENIAC's first programmers. Arthur Burks, an engineer at the Moore School, was the organizer of the public debut of the ENIAC. The ENIAC was over 100 feet long, circling a room 30 feet by 50 feet. It was 10 feet high and about 3 feet deep. The ENIAC contained over 18,000 vacuum tubes and programs had to be physically wired into the computer. The ENIAC weighed about 30 tons and was used to Integrate ballistic equations and calculate trajectories of naval shells. The ENIAC was completed in 1946 and remained in use until 1955. The original cost of the system was about $486,000
1946	March. Eckert and Mauchly leave the Moore School of Engineering because of a dispute over patent rights.
1946	The Electronic Control Company (ECC), founded by Eckert and Mauchly in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, receives a grant of $75,000 from the National Bureau of Standards for research into mercury delay line memory and tape input/output devices.
1947	1947-1951. The Remington Rand Model 3 (precursor to the Rand 409), was developed by Frank Hannon, Loring P. Crosman, and others at Remington Rand.
1947	May. Eckert and Mauchly name their computer research project the UNIVAC for "Universal Automatic Computer."
1947	October. Eckert and Mauchly agreed to build the BINAC ("Binary Automatic Computer") for Northrop Aircraft Company. The BINAC used the stored-program concept.
1947	December. The Electronic Control Company was incorporated as the "Eckert Mauckly Computer Corporation ("EMCC").
1949	Grace Murray Hopper joins the Eckert Mauchly Corporation as senior mathematician.
1949	August. Eckert and Mauchly turn over the BINAC to from Philadelphia to Northrop's headquarters in California.
1949	BINAC is completed. J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly were the designers and builders of the BINAC. It was 20 square feet in size, utilized 700 tubes, mercury delay lines, and was a general purpose computer.
1950	February 1. Eckert Mauchly Computer Corporation was sold to Remington-Rand Corporation. It became the "UNIVAC Division" of Remington-Rand. EMCC shareholders receive a total of $100,000, plus 49% of profits received over the next eight years.
1950	Remington Rand purchased the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company (the first real computer company in the United States). J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly were the designers and builders of the ENIAC (1946), Binac (1949) and UNIVAC (1951). The Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company, now absorbed by Remington Rand, became its "UNIVAC Division." For a while, the whole company was promoted in advertisements as "Remington Rand UNIVAC" since the name "UNIVAC" had become synonymous with computers.
1951	March 29. The first UNIVAC machine passes its formal acceptance test. 25 feet by 50 feet, 5,600 tubes, 18,000 crystal diodes, 300 relays. Serial circuitry, 2.25 MHz bit rate, internal storage capacity 1,000 words or 12,000 characters. Mercury delay line, magnetic tapes, typewriter output. Used for general purpose computing with large amounts of input and output. Power consumption 120 kva. Processing speed: arithmetic functions, 0.525 ms; multiplication, 2.150 ms; division, 3,890 ms, comparison, 0.365 ms. UNIVAC I became the first commercially available computer.
1951	UNISERVO tape drives were made part of UNIVAC I architecture. They used metal tape (nickel-plated bronze alloy) of 1/2 inch width. Each tape was 1200 feet long, with a density of 128 characters per linear inch. Tape speed was 100 inches per second and a tranasfer rate of 12,800 cps.
1951	December. Remington Rand acquires Engineering Research Associates (ERA), another early computer company based in St. Paul, Minnesota. ERA had a tabulating machine which it had built at its Norwalk, Connecticut plant.
1952	J Presper Eckert, John Mauchly, John von Neumann, Herbert Goldstine and A. W. Burks teamed to work on a computer called the EDVAC. The conceptual design for the EDVAC was completed in 1946 and the system was delivered to the Ballistic Research Laboratories at Aberdeen, Maryland in 1949. The EDVAC was completed in 1952. The EDVAC utilized 3,600 vacuum tubes and was the first stored program computer. The EDVAC was used at the Ballistic Research Laboratories at Aberdeen, Maryland. It was operational until December 1962.
1952	February. UNIVAC Serial #2 completed for the Air Force Comptroller. It was shipped to the Pentagon and in 1958 was shipped to the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.
1952	April. UNIVAC Serial #3 is turned over to Army Map Service. In September it is moved to Washington D.C.
1952	UNIVAC Serial #4 used by the Army in the UNIVAC factory until it was turned over to the Atomic Energy Commission at New York University.
1952	UNIVAC Serial #5 used by the Army at the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore, California.
1952	Remington Rand bought Engineering Research Associates (ERA), leader in electronic communications and cryptographic equipment. When Sperry joined up in 1955, the name of this whole collection of companies was changed again, this time to "Sperry Rand."
1953	A-2 Compiler for the UNIVAC was developed by Grace Hopper.
1953	Earl Masterson and J. Presper Eckert developed the UNIPRINTER, the first commercially available high speed printer. The UNIPRINTER was a line printer, capable of printing 120 characters simultaneously. The UNIPRINTERs were sold as an optional printer with the UNIVAC I. It was based on a rotating drum containing a series of complete characters. It could print at 600 lines per minute, which was four times faster than its closest competitor's printer, IBM's tabulators.
1953	April. UNIVAC Serial #6 turned over to the Applied Mathematics Laboratory of the U.S. Navy
1953	UNIVAC Serial #7 installed at Remington Rand's sales office in New York.
1953	UNIVAC Serial #8 installed for General Electric. This is the first non-government customer for a UNIVAC. General Electric's Appliance Division created the first successful industrial payroll application for the UNIVAC I in 1954
1953	Burroughs changes its name to Burroughs Corporation.
1954	A Second UNIVAC I is purchased by the U.S. Census Bureau (kept until 1963), Commerce Department, Suitland, Maryland
1954	UNIVAC Serial #10 installed for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in New York.
1954	UNIVAC Serial #11 installed for Franklin Life Insurance in Springfield, Illinois.
1954	September. UNIVAC Serial #12 purchased by DuPont
1955	UNIVAC I purchased by John Hancock.
1955	August. UNIVAC Serial #9 installed for the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company.
1955	1955-1957. Other UNIVAC I customers included U.S. Steel, Sylvania, Carborundum, Navy Bureau of Ships, Air Materiel Command, Internal Revenue Service.
1955	Sperry merges with Remington Rand to become Sperry-Rand.
1956	UNIVAC I purchased by Life and Casualty of Tennesee (kept it until 1970).
1956	A UNIVAC I is donated by Remington Rand to Harvard University.
1956	Two additional UNIVAC I computers purchased by Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.
1956	Burroughs seriously entered the digital computing arena with the purchase of ElectroData Corporation, makers of the "Datatron," a successful mid-sized computer.
1956	In 1956, Westinghouse Electric Company installed a UNIVAC computer in its East Pittsburgh plant. The UNIVAC was used to calculate company payrolls, sales records, analysis of sales performance and other company business. The UNIVAC could perform 90,000 transactions per month
1957	A UNIVAC I is donated to the University of Pennsylvania.
1957	A UNIVAC I is donated to the Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland.
1958	John Mauchly resigns his position with Remington-Rand and goes into private consulting.
1959	Burroughs establishes electronics research laboratory in Philadelphia.
1961	Burroughs introduces the B5000; considered by many to be a decade ahead of its time, it is the first in the current Unisys A series.
1971	Sperry Rand expanded its computer business when it paid $490 million for RCA's computer operations. RCA was eager to get out of the highly competitive computer field.
1979	Sperry drops the name "Rand" from its title.
1980	Burroughs acquires Memorex , a leading manufacturer of information storage and retrieval equipment and data communications products.
1981	Burroughs acquires System Development Corporation, a leading supplier and systems integrator for U.S. Government agencies.
1986	American Arithmometer Company markets the adding machines invented by William Seward Burroughs.
1986	Burroughs and Sperry merge to form UNISYS.
1988	Unisys acquires Timeplex, and industry leader in voice and data Networking.
1988	Unisys acquires Convergent Technologies, a leader in open systems and networking.
1993	NASDAQ Stock Market, Inc. signed a five-year, $25 million contract with UNISYS for two of its 2200/900 mainframe computer systems. The UNISYS systems and support will be used to handle NASDAQ's 800 million share per day trading volume, at its Trumbull, Connecticut and Rockville, Maryland data centers.
1995	1995-1996. UNISYS announced plans to split into three different business units: computer systems, information service and customer service. An estimated 7,900 jobs would be eliminated in the restructuring.