THE FOUNDERS
Dr. John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert founded the company after they had developed the first electronic computer, the ENIAC (Electronic Numeric Integrator And Computer), and designed the EDVAC (Electronic Discreet VAriable Computer) at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering in the University of Pennsylvania. The Moore School introduced the ENIAC on February 14, 1946. Problems arouse over the assignment of commercial patents to them for their future work, thus Pres and John left Penn in March 1946 and founded the Electronic Control Company that became EMCC. The first office was located at 1215 Walnut Street, then Broad and Spring Garden, then 3747 Ridge Avenue. The Ridge Avenue site had been a knitting mill. It had a few offices at the front of the building, but the rest was open space with groups at desks or workspaces clustered together for each department. The basement was reserved for the Magnetic Tape Development and Production and the second floor housed the Programmers. Surrounded by cemeteries and especially close to John Wanamaker’s burial ground, the bells that chimed for that renowned Philadelphian floated through that old mill on schedule.
MONEY PROBLEMS
Despite the wonderful atmosphere, the company faced horrendous problems. Both Pres and John were technical people and neither had business skills plus it was a time of great political anxiety. Banks saw no possible way that they or other businesses would ever use computers. (No Startup Capitalists such as those who funded Silicon Valley were around then.) Despite this atmosphere, three groups funded the company: The Census Bureau to handle the decennial census as well as many others in between, the Prudential Life Insurance Company and A. C. Nielson, the company that counted how many people watched various TV shows.
THE BINAC SOLUTION
What Pres and John wanted to build was the UNIVAC, but they were running out of money so they took a contract with Northrop Aircraft to build BINAC. They reasoned that it would bring money into the company plus it would test components that would be used in the UNIVAC. BINAC used the binary number system and was the first Stored Program computer. What is a Stored Program? A computer needs data on which it performs operations, and it needs instructions telling it what operations to perform. A Stored Program computer stores both data and instructions in its memory and operates on both in the same way. This gives great flexibility in what a computer can do and how easily humans can plan the control of it.
BINAC consisted of twin computers that compared the data cycle time by cycle time. It was designed to control the SNARK Missile. Obviously, if a computer is to control a missile, it must not make a mistake. The BINAC passed its acceptance test for Northrop in August 1949 and became the first commercial computer. The SNARK Missile Program was cancelled. The technology was not there for a computer to fly as it was too heavy. Northrop used it as a laboratory computer.
THE UNIVAC
While the BINAC was being designed and built so was the UNIVAC. It was a decimal machine that could handle both numbers and alphabetic data. Besides its internal memory, the most important accessory to the UNIVAC was the Magnetic Tape for mass storage. The Magnetic Tape had to be a reliable permanent storage device that could be used to save data, update data and read data into the UNIVAC to perform all kinds of operations on it. John Mauchly called it as important a development as the UNIVAC. It had to be high quality: strong and store a lot of data. A Production Line had to be designed and built to mass produce it.
A device had to be designed and built to read and write data fast enough to keep up with the UNIVAC. This device was called the Uniservo and it was a thing of beauty. The Magnetic Tape reels held 1200” of tape that could store over a million alphanumeric characters. The Uniservo could read or write on the tape at a speed of over 10,000 alphanumeric characters per second. Many other devices had to be designed and built as accessories to the UNIVAC: the Console to control and run it, a Uniprinter to provide documents from the Magnetic Tape, a Unityper to type on the magnetic tape for program or data input, a Card-to-Tape Converter that read from punched cards which contained the permanent records for most companies and put the data on Magnetic Tape.
SUCCESS AT LAST
One of the most exciting events that took place from this Ridge Avenue site was the election night of 1952 when CBS had contracted to use the UNIVAC to predict the election’s outcome. Shortly after the polls closed, the UNIVAC predicted an Eisenhower landslide with over 32,000,000 votes for Eisenhower and less than 19,000,000 for Stevenson. The electoral vote prediction was 438 for Eisenhower and 93 for Stevenson. Walter Cronkite of CBS was too stunned to give out such numbers so the programmers fudged the parameters to predict the odds of 6 to 7 in favor of Eisenhower. When the votes were counted, it turned out that the UNIVAC prediction was off by only 4 electoral votes out of a total of 531. The UNIVAC outdid the humans! The publicity was terrific, probably better than if the original predictions had been announced when they came in.
The Census Bureau received the first UNIVAC in March 1951 but left it on-site at Ridge Avenue and ran it from there. Of the 46 total UNIVAC systems which were built, only 5 or 6 were actually built at Ridge Avenue because the company moved to 23rd and Allegheny. The company had been sold to Remington Rand and was called UNIVAC, Division of Remington Rand.
HISTORIC SITE MARKER
A Historic Site Dedication Ceremony was held on September 28, 2006 at 3747 Ridge Avenue. An official marker commemorating the birthplace of the world’s first commercial digital computer was installed as part of the ceremony.
The Marketplace at East Falls, which fronts Ridge Avenue, is the vision of Jeff Baskin and Lisa Berger Baskin. Having owned and operated a produce stand in Seattle's Pike Place Market, Jeff envisioned bringing that energy and opportunity to East Falls and its surrounding communities. A place to buy fresh produce, meats, fish, flowers, coffee, pastas, cheeses, wine and other gourmet and premium prepared foods right in the neighborhood.
On display throughout the Marketplace are pictures and other memorabilia commemorating the birth of the Computer Age.
The Marketplace at East Falls is open
Tuesday through Sunday, 8:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Phone: 215-228-0969
Website: www.marketplaceateastfalls.com
Memorabilia donated by
Unisys Blue Bell Retirees Group
Phone: 215-368-4833
Website:
http://hometown.aol.com/unisysbbretirees/
myhomepage/business.html
THE DAWNING OF THE COMPUTER AGE
Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation
3747 Ridge Avenue is the birthplace of the first electronic commercial computers BINAC in 1949 and UNIVAC in 1951 designed by Dr. John Mauchly and
J. Presper Eckert
THE BUILDING
3747 Ridge Avenue was the home of the Eckert Mauchly Computer Company, (EMCC) where the BINAC (BINary Automatic Computer) and the UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer) were developed and built. It was filled with enthusiastic and talented Engineers, Programmers, Logic Designers, Technicians and Support Staff. It was hard to separate work from play as most everyone used lunch hours and coffee breaks to seek out those they needed to ask questions or to discuss ideas. The place fairly tingled with ideas and curiosity. Everyone knew they were pushing back frontiers and it was exciting. Nobody wanted to be anywhere else because they knew they were leading the way in developing computer technology. Nowhere else could they be on the cutting edge.
On September 28, 2006, the building where the first electronic digital commercial computer was designed and built was dedicated as a historic site. A commemorative plaque was placed at 3747 Ridge Avenue in Philadelphia, PA. This was the Eckert - Mauchly Computer Company was first located. The event included reminisces from several of the Pioneers who worked with John Mauchly and Presper Eckert. The event was capped of by the unveiling of the plaque by members of the Mauchly and Eckert families as well as several of the Pioneers.
The building is currently undergoing a restoration and will reopen soon as “Marketplace of East Falls”, a collection of upscale produce and craft shops. It will also house an area set aside for the display of Univac Memorabilia and photographs
On or about May 29, 2007. The new Univac Historical Site was scheduled to open.
Here are some photographs donated by Arnold Winkler of the Unisys Blue Bell Retiree Group (UBBRG)