Comments on: An Old Univac Ad: “You’re Trying to Divide by Zero”

By: bG

bG — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:26:24 +0000

To Bill Meers: that isn’t a screen. It is a built in keyboard with a blank area for placing papers above it. If you look at other pictures of the Univac system (like the ones with Cronkite during the 1952 election), there was an additional typewriter-like device (like the one on the right in the picture above) that would be used for printing short messages. The other typewriter-like device (on the left) is probably a key-to-tape data entry machine (like a keypunch machine).

There are lots of pictures and pdf’s of old documentation on the Univac and other old systems at bitsavers.org.

One thing I noticed from the documentation: the high speed printer was fed output from a tape drive, not from the CPU. Reading, writing and buffering was handled by two cabinets of hardware. So, the tape drive, printer and two big boxes behind them in the picture above has been replaced by a laser printer fed output via a wire directly from the computer, all of it driven by software now! Wow, miniaturization!

By: Darryl

Darryl — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 10:00:53 +0000

Joey — my friend just discovered a “divide by zero” error in his new Nikon P6000 (which is how I ended up on your blog). Turns out that when the built-in GPS in the Nikon can’t determine location (no sat coverage, whatever), it sets the lat/long to 0. But not just 0 or 0.0, but 0/0. I don’t know how those jackasses didn’t think that’d be a problem but apparently when Phanfare (the photo-hosting site my buddy and I use) tries to parse the geodata in order to provide a nice pop-up Google map for the photo, it barfs.

Anyways, I read your blog years ago (likely following a link from BB), and it was nice to reacquaint myself with your more recent writing.

By: Jonathan Feinberg

Jonathan Feinberg — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:33:33 +0000

http://flickr.com/photos/jdf/3274229187/sizes/o/

By: [?php bloginfo('name'); ?>[?php wp_title(); ?>

[?php bloginfo('name'); ?>[?php wp_title(); ?> — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:45:26 +0000

[...] An Old Univac Ad: “You’re Trying to Divide by Zero” un anuncio de 1956 [...]

By: Bert Lev y

Bert Lev y — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:00:54 +0000

Most of the comments on the UNIVAC ad had an historic perspective. For me it was nostalgic. In addition to those many electron tubes, not thousands, there were two, I think, drums containing twelve thousand little pools of mercury. Each pool carried the coding for one alfa-numeric charicter as a soulnd wave. This was for its figurative fifteen minutes of fame, the great breakthrough in storage. The large pictured storage cabinet had its own air conditioning. This perk provided storage for your brown bag, when you were on the midnight shift.

By: Geek shirts

Geek shirts — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:22:20 +0000

this guy should be wearing the "think" captcha shirt...

By: Andy Brice

Andy Brice — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:14:34 +0000

“I see you are Trying to Divide by Zero”

Wow – clippy was around in 1956?

By: Bruce

Bruce — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 06:31:33 +0000

Hell, I liked COBOL. I could code the hell out of anything with COBOL and a little Assembler mixed in for a moment of speed. I miss using my hex calculator! And then those great chip assembler codes and instruction sets when the litlle machines came in. Full control. Now it’s a bunch of C++ wimps I gotta deal with.

By: MartinS

MartinS — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 05:26:09 +0000

You must have an aspiring when your head aches, it is a solution to a real problem. Vitamins, on the other hand, don’t solve any problems directly. It would be nice to have some, but you don’t feel as if you must have some.

By: Bill Meers

Bill Meers — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 05:11:55 +0000

Here, the graphic depicts a keyboard and a screen in 1956?? Wouldn’t work for ‘66. Mohawk Data Sciences invented keyboard input in late 60s and the first real screen I ever saw was about 1983 and cost $9,000 through Compugraphics.

By: MikeA

MikeA — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 03:25:53 +0000

Univac made a “Solid State” computer by about 1956, but it was intended to compete with the (tube) IBM 650 and with card-based Tab equipment. I owned one, some time ago. Long story. Anyway, the one in the picture looks more like a “Univac” (no model number or name), the original, which indeed used tubes, lots of them. Of course, even the Univac Solid State90 (mine) had some tubes, including over 60 Thyratrons, in the printer.

Transistors did replace tubes fairly quickly, but a bit later. And there were definitely many production machines based on tubes (e.g. IBM 701, Univac, Bendix/CDC G-15…)

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 03:25:20 +0000

“It can now carry out commands given in simple business English.” – so advertising hasn’t changed too much.

By: Mr Downtown

Mr Downtown — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:58:31 +0000

No, they were solid state by this time. Only the first couple of experimental computers in the 1940s tried to use vacuum tubes.

How many of you have forgotten that Xerox made mainframe computers? A Xerox mainframe was “the computer” at my university in 1976.

By: Joey deVilla

Joey deVilla — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:30:10 +0000

@Eric Barbour: The Univac was a series of tubes!

By: Joey deVilla

Joey deVilla — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:28:18 +0000

@Anon: You may have a point there. I guess that’s my old-fart-ness showing.

When I was a kid, people would refer to “getting Xeroxes” of a document. Perhaps I should’ve said “the way ‘iPod’ is synonymous with ‘MP3 player’.”

By: Jonas

Jonas — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:09:24 +0000

USA is almost the size of half the earth , wow

By: Anon

Anon — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:57:04 +0000

It’s not fair to liken an old (and not likely known) synonym with another old (and not likely known) synonym – ‘in the same way that “Xerox” was once synonymous with “photocopier”’. What if your readers are young eh?

Never mind that I can’t come up with a better example myself (maybe post it notes?)…

By: EricBarbour

EricBarbour — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:12:35 +0000

And just remember, all of those early Univac computers were made entirely of vacuum tubes. Thousands of them.

By: Joey deVilla

Joey deVilla — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:03:03 +0000

@Steve: Huh?

By: Joey deVilla

Joey deVilla — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:50:19 +0000

@Anonymous: You’ve got a point: if you’re using the term “vitamins” to refer to the nutrients in food, then vitamins are indeed a must-have and aspirin is a nice-to-have.

I think Dodge was using “vitamins” in the “vitamin supplement pills” sense, which is the sense used in his metaphor. From a “pills” point of view; I’ll pick aspirin over vitamins any day; you can get your vitamins by eating right.