Today in 1951, the first commercial computer, UNIVAC I, was unveiled.
A little background from Infoplease: The first fully automatic calculator was the Mark I, or Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, begun in 1939 at Harvard by Howard Aiken, while the first all-purpose electronic digital computer, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator), which used thousands of vacuum tubes, was completed in 1946 at the Univ. of Pennsylvania. UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer) became (1951) the first computer to handle both numeric and alphabetic data with equal facility; this was the first commercially available computer.
I wasn't around for another few years, but I remember UNIVAC...punch cards. Do not fold, spindle or mutilate. It was built with vacuum tubes, not transistors, and took up an incredible amount of space. Data was on magnetic tape. Guys in short sleeved white shirts, narrow black ties, pocket protectors and glasses walked around looking serious. Jeesh, things do change.
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