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1951 – It was the first commercial general-use computer. The UNIVAC I was unveiled in Washington DC. It was developed for the US census bureau. It stood 8 foot high and used magnetic tape at 10,000 characters a second.UNIVAC is an acronym for the Universal Automatic Computer. The computer itself was delivered to the United States Census Bureau on March 31st, 1951. UNIVAC I was also used to predict the result of the 1952 Presidential election.

UNIVAC I cost around 1.2 million to build, which was a lot larger than their estimated price of $159,000. 46 units were built and delivered. 5,200 vacuum tubes were used to run UNIVAC I. It performed 1,905 operations per second.

Want more info on UNIVAC? Check out A Few Good Men From Univac (History of Computing) on Amazon

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for June 14

• 1938 – The First Superman comic
• 1985 – Apple lays off 1,200 employees
• 1997 – Tamapittchi, a cellular phone with a Tamagotchi built into it, is released in Japan
• 2006 – Google Maps for Enterprise
• 2009 – #CNNFail