UNIVAC I (1951) - Dawn of Computers

1952 Presidential Election

Enter poll data (% of vote):

State Stevenson Eisenhower

New York

California

Pennsylvania

Illinois

Ohio

Texas

UNIVAC I

1951 — Eckert-Mauchly / Remington Rand

The Universal Automatic Computer was the first commercial computer produced in the United States. Designed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly (creators of ENIAC), UNIVAC I used mercury delay line memory and magnetic tape for mass storage.

It could perform 1,905 operations per second and stored 1,000 words of 12 characters each in its 1,000-word mercury delay line memory.

Election Night 1952: CBS used UNIVAC to predict the presidential election. With just 7% of votes counted, UNIVAC predicted Eisenhower would win 438 electoral votes. CBS thought this was absurd and suppressed the result. The final count: Eisenhower won 442. UNIVAC was off by less than 1%.