Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation
Encyclopedia
The Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) (March 1946 – 1950) was founded by J. Presper Eckert
and John Mauchly
, and was incorporated on December 22, 1947. After building the ENIAC
at the University of Pennsylvania
, Eckert and Mauchly formed EMCC to build new computer designs for commercial and military applications. The company was initially called the Electronic Control Company, changing its name to Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation when it was incorporated. In 1950 the company was sold to Remington Rand
, which later merged with Sperry Corporation
to become Sperry Rand, and survives today as Unisys
.
— the successor machine to the ENIAC — at the university's Moore School of Electrical Engineering
. However, new university policies that would have forced Eckert and Mauchly to sign over intellectual property rights for their inventions led to their resignation, which caused a lengthy delay in the EDVAC design efforts. After seeking to join IBM
and John von Neumann
's team at the Institute for Advanced Study
in Princeton, New Jersey
, they decided to start their own company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
.
to order an "EDVAC II" computer — a model that was soon renamed UNIVAC
— receiving a contract in 1948 that called for having the machine ready for the 1950 census
. Eckert hired a staff that included a number of the engineers from the Moore School, and the company launched an ambitious program to design and manufacture large-scale computing machines. A major achievement was the use of magnetic tape for high-speed storage. During development Mauchly continued to solicit new customers and started a software department. They developed applications, starting with the world's first compiler for the language Short Code
.
, a small computer (compared to ENIAC) for the Northrop
corporation. Original estimates for the development costs proved to be extremely unrealistic, and by the summer of 1948, EMCC had just about run out of money, but it was temporarily saved by Harry L. Straus
, vice president of the American Totalisator Company, a Baltimore company that made electromechanical totalisators. Straus felt that EMCC's work, besides being promising in general terms, might have some application in the race track business, and invested $500,000 in the company. Straus became chairman of the EMCC board, and American Totalisator received 40 percent of the stock. When Straus was killed in an airplane crash in October 1949, American Totalisator's directors withdrew their support.
BINAC was eventually delivered in 1949, but Northrop complained that it never worked well for them. (It had worked fine in acceptance tests at EMCC, but Northrop, citing security concerns, refused to allow any EMCC employees onto their site to reassemble it after shipping. Instead, Northrop hired a newly-graduated electrical engineer to assemble it. EMCC claimed that the fact that it worked at all after this was testimony to the quality of the design.) It was generally believed at EMCC that Northrop allowed BINAC to sit, disassembled, in their parking lot for a long time before any effort toward assembly was made...
era. The company lost its clearance for government work, and company president and chief salesman Mauchly was banned from the company property. He challenged the accusations, but it took two years before a hearing allowed him to work at his company again; by then the UNIVAC was seriously behind schedule. The programming to allow the UNIVAC I
to be used in predicting the outcome of the 1952 Presidential election
had to be done by Mauchly and University of Pennsylvania statistician Max Woodbury at Mauchly's home in Ambler, Pennsylvania
.
. Remington Rand made the first offer, and purchased EMCC on February 15, 1950, whereupon it became the UNIVAC division of Remington Rand
. The first UNIVAC was not delivered until March 1951, over a year after EMCC was acquired by Remington Rand, and too late to help much for the 1950 census. However, upon acceptance at the company premises, truck load after truck load of punched cards arrived to be recorded on tape (by what was called jokingly the card to pulp converters) for processing by UNIVAC. The Census Bureau used the prototype UNIVAC on EMCC premised for months. Mauchly resigned from Remington Rand in 1952; his 10-year contract with them ran until 1960, and prohibited him from working on other computer projects during that time. Remington Rand merged with Sperry Corporation
in 1955, and in 1975, the division was renamed Sperry UNIVAC. The company's corporate descendant today is Unisys
.
There is a story about the acceptance by the Census Bureau that must not be lost to history. On the appointed morning officials from the Census Bureau arrived for a briefing about the acceptance test. The briefing was followed by a long lunch off site, at which Remington shavers were presented to all. While all that went on, the EMCC team ran the acceptance test and recorded the results on a magnetic tape, leaving that tape near the computer. After lunch, the acceptance team gathered to witness the test. The test tape was installed on a magnetic tape drive, and the operator sat at the supervisory control console. With all ready, the operator then hit the wrong button, erasing the test program tape. Disaster? No! He then got up, installed the program tape to run what was called the "New Old Faithful" program tape, and ran that program which exercised every function UNIVAC could perform. That went on for the expected time, after which the operator stopped the program, rose, removed the tape from the tape drive, went behind the tape drives (a row of machines about the size of file cabinets), and swapped the tape he had removed for the morning's acceptance test results tape. That tape was then installed on the printer and the expected results were printed to the delight of the acceptance team. The name of the operator has been omitted for obvious reasons.
J. Presper Eckert
John Adam Presper "Pres" Eckert Jr. was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. With John Mauchly he invented the first general-purpose electronic digital computer , presented the first course in computing topics , founded the first commercial computer company , and...
and John Mauchly
John Mauchly
John William Mauchly was an American physicist who, along with J. Presper Eckert, designed ENIAC, the first general purpose electronic digital computer, as well as EDVAC, BINAC and UNIVAC I, the first commercial computer made in the United States.Together they started the first computer company,...
, and was incorporated on December 22, 1947. After building the ENIAC
ENIAC
ENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems....
at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, Eckert and Mauchly formed EMCC to build new computer designs for commercial and military applications. The company was initially called the Electronic Control Company, changing its name to Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation when it was incorporated. In 1950 the company was sold to Remington Rand
Remington Rand
Remington Rand was an early American business machines manufacturer, best known originally as a typewriter manufacturer and in a later incarnation as the manufacturer of the UNIVAC line of mainframe computers but with antecedents in Remington Arms in the early nineteenth century. For a time, the...
, which later merged with Sperry Corporation
Sperry Corporation
Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the twentieth century...
to become Sperry Rand, and survives today as Unisys
Unisys
Unisys Corporation , headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, United States, and incorporated in Delaware, is a long established business whose core products now involves computing and networking.-History:...
.
Founding
By the spring of 1946, Eckert and Mauchly had procured a [United States Army|U.S. Army] contract for the University of Pennsylvania and were already designing the EDVACEDVAC
EDVAC was one of the earliest electronic computers. Unlike its predecessor the ENIAC, it was binary rather than decimal, and was a stored program computer....
— the successor machine to the ENIAC — at the university's Moore School of Electrical Engineering
Moore School of Electrical Engineering
The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania came into existence as a result of an endowment from Alfred Fitler Moore on June 4, 1923. It was granted to Penn's School of Electrical Engineering, located in the Towne Building...
. However, new university policies that would have forced Eckert and Mauchly to sign over intellectual property rights for their inventions led to their resignation, which caused a lengthy delay in the EDVAC design efforts. After seeking to join IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
and John von Neumann
John von Neumann
John von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath who made major contributions to a vast number of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, geometry, fluid dynamics, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis,...
's team at the Institute for Advanced Study
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...
in Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...
, they decided to start their own company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
.
UNIVAC
Mauchly persuaded the United States Census BureauUnited States Census Bureau
The United States Census Bureau is the government agency that is responsible for the United States Census. It also gathers other national demographic and economic data...
to order an "EDVAC II" computer — a model that was soon renamed UNIVAC
UNIVAC I
The UNIVAC I was the first commercial computer produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC...
— receiving a contract in 1948 that called for having the machine ready for the 1950 census
Census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...
. Eckert hired a staff that included a number of the engineers from the Moore School, and the company launched an ambitious program to design and manufacture large-scale computing machines. A major achievement was the use of magnetic tape for high-speed storage. During development Mauchly continued to solicit new customers and started a software department. They developed applications, starting with the world's first compiler for the language Short Code
Short Code (Computer language)
Short Code was one of the first higher-level languages ever developed for an electronic computer. Unlike machine code, Short Code statements represented mathematic expressions rather than a machine instruction.-History:...
.
BINAC and fiscal difficulties
Cash flow was poor and the UNIVAC would not be finished for quite some time, so EMCC decided to take on another project that would be done quickly. This was the BINACBINAC
BINAC, the Binary Automatic Computer, was an early electronic computer designed for Northrop Aircraft Company by the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1949. Eckert and Mauchly, though they had started the design of EDVAC at the University of Pennsylvania, chose to leave and start EMCC, the...
, a small computer (compared to ENIAC) for the Northrop
Northrop Corporation
Northrop Corporation was a leading United States aircraft manufacturer from its formation in 1939 until its merger with Grumman to form Northrop Grumman in 1994. The company is known for its development of the flying wing design, although only a few of these have entered service.-History:Jack...
corporation. Original estimates for the development costs proved to be extremely unrealistic, and by the summer of 1948, EMCC had just about run out of money, but it was temporarily saved by Harry L. Straus
Harry L. Straus
Harry L. Straus, born Henry Lobe Straus, was an American electrical engineer, horse and cattle breeder, sportsman, entrepreneur and computer pioneer...
, vice president of the American Totalisator Company, a Baltimore company that made electromechanical totalisators. Straus felt that EMCC's work, besides being promising in general terms, might have some application in the race track business, and invested $500,000 in the company. Straus became chairman of the EMCC board, and American Totalisator received 40 percent of the stock. When Straus was killed in an airplane crash in October 1949, American Totalisator's directors withdrew their support.
BINAC was eventually delivered in 1949, but Northrop complained that it never worked well for them. (It had worked fine in acceptance tests at EMCC, but Northrop, citing security concerns, refused to allow any EMCC employees onto their site to reassemble it after shipping. Instead, Northrop hired a newly-graduated electrical engineer to assemble it. EMCC claimed that the fact that it worked at all after this was testimony to the quality of the design.) It was generally believed at EMCC that Northrop allowed BINAC to sit, disassembled, in their parking lot for a long time before any effort toward assembly was made...
Accusations of Communist infiltration
EMCC also received contracts for one UNIVAC machine each for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. These contracts were eventually canceled after the company was accused of having hired engineers with "Communistic leanings" during the McCarthyMcCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
era. The company lost its clearance for government work, and company president and chief salesman Mauchly was banned from the company property. He challenged the accusations, but it took two years before a hearing allowed him to work at his company again; by then the UNIVAC was seriously behind schedule. The programming to allow the UNIVAC I
UNIVAC I
The UNIVAC I was the first commercial computer produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC...
to be used in predicting the outcome of the 1952 Presidential election
United States presidential election, 1952
The United States presidential election of 1952 took place in an era when Cold War tension between the United States and the Soviet Union was escalating rapidly. In the United States Senate, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin had become a national figure after chairing congressional...
had to be done by Mauchly and University of Pennsylvania statistician Max Woodbury at Mauchly's home in Ambler, Pennsylvania
Ambler, Pennsylvania
Ambler is a borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, in the United States, approximately 16 miles north of Philadelphia.- Village of Wissahickon:...
.
Sale to Remington Rand
As had happened with BINAC, EMCC's estimates of delivery dates and costs proved to be optimistic, and the company was soon in financial difficulty again. In early 1950, the company was for sale; potential buyers included National Cash Register and Remington RandRemington Rand
Remington Rand was an early American business machines manufacturer, best known originally as a typewriter manufacturer and in a later incarnation as the manufacturer of the UNIVAC line of mainframe computers but with antecedents in Remington Arms in the early nineteenth century. For a time, the...
. Remington Rand made the first offer, and purchased EMCC on February 15, 1950, whereupon it became the UNIVAC division of Remington Rand
UNIVAC
UNIVAC is the name of a business unit and division of the Remington Rand company formed by the 1950 purchase of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, founded four years earlier by ENIAC inventors J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, and the associated line of computers which continues to this day...
. The first UNIVAC was not delivered until March 1951, over a year after EMCC was acquired by Remington Rand, and too late to help much for the 1950 census. However, upon acceptance at the company premises, truck load after truck load of punched cards arrived to be recorded on tape (by what was called jokingly the card to pulp converters) for processing by UNIVAC. The Census Bureau used the prototype UNIVAC on EMCC premised for months. Mauchly resigned from Remington Rand in 1952; his 10-year contract with them ran until 1960, and prohibited him from working on other computer projects during that time. Remington Rand merged with Sperry Corporation
Sperry Corporation
Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the twentieth century...
in 1955, and in 1975, the division was renamed Sperry UNIVAC. The company's corporate descendant today is Unisys
Unisys
Unisys Corporation , headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, United States, and incorporated in Delaware, is a long established business whose core products now involves computing and networking.-History:...
.
There is a story about the acceptance by the Census Bureau that must not be lost to history. On the appointed morning officials from the Census Bureau arrived for a briefing about the acceptance test. The briefing was followed by a long lunch off site, at which Remington shavers were presented to all. While all that went on, the EMCC team ran the acceptance test and recorded the results on a magnetic tape, leaving that tape near the computer. After lunch, the acceptance team gathered to witness the test. The test tape was installed on a magnetic tape drive, and the operator sat at the supervisory control console. With all ready, the operator then hit the wrong button, erasing the test program tape. Disaster? No! He then got up, installed the program tape to run what was called the "New Old Faithful" program tape, and ran that program which exercised every function UNIVAC could perform. That went on for the expected time, after which the operator stopped the program, rose, removed the tape from the tape drive, went behind the tape drives (a row of machines about the size of file cabinets), and swapped the tape he had removed for the morning's acceptance test results tape. That tape was then installed on the printer and the expected results were printed to the delight of the acceptance team. The name of the operator has been omitted for obvious reasons.
External links
- John W. Mauchly, Sperry Univac Point of View address, 13 November 1973, Rome, Italy at Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota. Discusses challenges in building ENIACENIACENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems....
at Moore School of Electrical EngineeringMoore School of Electrical EngineeringThe Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania came into existence as a result of an endowment from Alfred Fitler Moore on June 4, 1923. It was granted to Penn's School of Electrical Engineering, located in the Towne Building...
, University of Pennsylvania; also describes the Eckert-Mauchly Computer CorporationEckert-Mauchly Computer CorporationThe Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation was founded by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, and was incorporated on December 22, 1947. After building the ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania, Eckert and Mauchly formed EMCC to build new computer designs for commercial and military applications...
and the UNIVAC 1 computer. - John W. Mauchly and the Development of the ENIAC Computer
- Arthur L. Norberg, Computers and Commerce: A Study of Technology and Management at Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company, Engineering Research Associates, and Remington Rand, 1946-1957 (MIT Press, 2005). ISBN 978-0-262-14090-4
- Machine Launched a World of Change, by Kay Mauchly AntonelliKathleen AntonelliKathleen "Kay" McNulty Mauchly Antonelli was one of the six original programmers of the ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer.-Early life and education:...
, one of the first ENIAC programmers, and wife of J. W. Mauchly - Oral history interview with Isaac Levin Auerbach Oral history interview by Nancy B. Stern, 10 April 1978. Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota. Auerbach recounts his experiences at Electronic Control Company (later the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company) during 1947-1949. He evaluates BINACBINACBINAC, the Binary Automatic Computer, was an early electronic computer designed for Northrop Aircraft Company by the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1949. Eckert and Mauchly, though they had started the design of EDVAC at the University of Pennsylvania, chose to leave and start EMCC, the...
, UNIVACUNIVACUNIVAC is the name of a business unit and division of the Remington Rand company formed by the 1950 purchase of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, founded four years earlier by ENIAC inventors J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, and the associated line of computers which continues to this day...
, and the roles of the National Bureau of Standards, Northrop AircraftNorthrop CorporationNorthrop Corporation was a leading United States aircraft manufacturer from its formation in 1939 until its merger with Grumman to form Northrop Grumman in 1994. The company is known for its development of the flying wing design, although only a few of these have entered service.-History:Jack...
, RaytheonRaytheonRaytheon Company is a major American defense contractor and industrial corporation with core manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. It was previously involved in corporate and special-mission aircraft until early 2007...
, Remington RandRemington RandRemington Rand was an early American business machines manufacturer, best known originally as a typewriter manufacturer and in a later incarnation as the manufacturer of the UNIVAC line of mainframe computers but with antecedents in Remington Arms in the early nineteenth century. For a time, the...
, and IBMIBMInternational Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
. - Oral history interview with Earl Edgar Masterson, Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota. Masterson recounts his job interview with J. Presper EckertJ. Presper EckertJohn Adam Presper "Pres" Eckert Jr. was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. With John Mauchly he invented the first general-purpose electronic digital computer , presented the first course in computing topics , founded the first commercial computer company , and...
and Fraser Welch and his work with the Eckert-Mauchly Computer CorporationEckert-Mauchly Computer CorporationThe Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation was founded by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, and was incorporated on December 22, 1947. After building the ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania, Eckert and Mauchly formed EMCC to build new computer designs for commercial and military applications...
, especially his work with the UNIVAC 1 and his design of a functional high-speed printer