[COFF] 70 years of commercial computing

[COFF] 70 years of commercial computing

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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Seen in my calendar yesterday:

  Jun 15  UNIVAC I delivered to the Census Bureau, 1951

70 years!  And Unix has been around for nearly 52 of those years.

Amusingly, though, the next entry is:

  Jun 16  First publicized programming error at Census Bureau, 1951

Which suggests that they were able to install the machine and getting
it running in only one day.

Greg
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Re: [COFF] 70 years of commercial computing

[Peter Jeremy via COFF]

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On 2021-Jun-16 10:35:39 +1000, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:
>Seen in my calendar yesterday:
>
>  Jun 15  UNIVAC I delivered to the Census Bureau, 1951
>
>70 years!  And Unix has been around for nearly 52 of those years.
>
>Amusingly, though, the next entry is:
>
>  Jun 16  First publicized programming error at Census Bureau, 1951
>
>Which suggests that they were able to install the machine and getting
>it running in only one day.

The one day difference strikes me as extremely unlikely.  It might be useful
to look into references to verify those dates.

For an alternative view, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer) says
LEO 1 carried out "a simple test program" on 1951-02-15, though it didn't
start running the intended business applications until September.

-- 
Peter Jeremy

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Re: [COFF] 70 years of commercial computing

[Adam Thornton]

I would suspect that “delivered” means, in this context, “powered up and passed diagnostics” and that it might well have been on-site for months prior to that.

> On Jun 15, 2021, at 6:54 PM, Peter Jeremy via COFF <coff@minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> On 2021-Jun-16 10:35:39 +1000, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:
>> Seen in my calendar yesterday:
>> 
>> Jun 15  UNIVAC I delivered to the Census Bureau, 1951

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Re: [COFF] 70 years of commercial computing

[Tony Finch]

Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:

> Seen in my calendar yesterday:
>
>   Jun 15  UNIVAC I delivered to the Census Bureau, 1951
>
> 70 years!  And Unix has been around for nearly 52 of those years.

And the LEO computer based on EDSAC ran its first demo program on 15th Feb
1951: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer)

Tony.
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