1951 UNIVAC I - Mercury delay line Memory for computers

[n0tyham]

I went to Control Data Institute in 1975. CDC sold the 200-UT (User Terminal), which used a Magnetostrictive Delay Line memory. That is, a wire with piezoelectric crystals at both ends. One crystal acted like a speaker, and the other like a microphone. Acoustic memory pulses would be launched down the wire and received at the other end. The transistorized circuitry would keep the keep the pulse train recirculating. The train of pulses represented the pixels on the rastered CRT screen!

[killyoulikeapig]

Will it blend?

[3Deity]

I knew a guy who went for a job with a company in 1986 at the arches under London Bridge station. They had something like this and every time a train went over they had to stop work until the mercury settled down - its one of London's busiest stations!

[evilunixuser1]

But can it cook a pizza?

[tempetiger]

That thing looks sort of like some kind of sub-atomic particle generator!

[towner7]

I saw my first, and only one of these back in 1963 in Pa..In the basement of the Math Department at the University of Pa. It was being taken out..

[29riteshkakkar]

nice video.........................­­.....

[thayraful]

legal gostei muito...

[Szmajdziul]

It looks epic... like a part from LHC or something like that :)

[VirtualVikki]

Absolutely fascianting!



[douro20]

Any UNIVAC I systems still working?

[ZXRulezzz]

It could be awesome to hook it up to some modern PC or a microcontroller and actually make it work again :D

[LordGeorgeRodney]

I thought Williams Tube was the first?

[PERIZ99]

Excellent stuff...

[raymondleeleggs]

It looks like the Power glove from hellboy!

[yaglourt]

en voilà une grosse barrette de RAM :-)

[bob4analog]

@muskypucker

All good points. However, we only know about the now and past. If we were around back then, the same applies. To go back to that time, we'd have to 'think' like that time. Things were indeed better, but in a different way than we imagine now. We've come a long way and have built on what we've done back then; that's how computers got where they are today. Imagine how much better today's computers would work if they were resourceful--they're resource hogs today!

[sbalogh53]

@muskypucker I think you have missed the point of this video by a long shot. This device would have been very sophisticated for its time 60 years ago. Your 0.8 nm wafer will look primitive compared to the technology which may be available in 60 years time... make that 10 years time. Everything is relative. Then again, perhaps you were just trying to be funny. :)

[sbalogh53]

I have a module from an early Elliot (I think) computer which used an audio delay line to store about 1000 bits of information. Same concept as the mercury delay line but it used a loose coil of wire which transmitted the sound. This memory used early germanium transistors instead of valves so was obviously more recent than the device in this video.

[Jordainio]

Wow i could totally overclock that to like 3 bits

[lazzer408]

@Jordainio It's already 18bit. Count it.

[TBA810ASx]

It can give you a flu shot .

[Minifig666]

Why doesn't the memory in the Z3 or even earlier computers count?

[XanaduZune]

This seems like a ridiculous way to store information.

[CabbageNappa]

I wonder if tape delay could be used as RAM...

[mashersmasher]

they had vacuum tube based logic gates right? couldn't they have made a D latch out of nand gates?

[jorgen180]

This surely seems like over-engineering from today's point of view :)

[oc5nsli341nforce4]

@jorgen180

Back then every thing was quality and mean to last. Now it is viewed like a pair of cheap shoes. Once they are out of style it is either closet or the dump ware people like my self salvage this old tech. I still got a working 386 unmarked.

[cyther39]

looks like a helicopter engine.

[roethle]

6 bits of memory. for reference a gigabyte is 8,589,934,592 bits.

[heatflash888]

It was a tragedy when Colonel Sanders heard the urban legend about the Kentucky fried rat and thought it was true, he was never the same afterward. One minute he was experimenting with finger licking good recipes and the next he was a computer museum guide.

[gli7utubeo]

Your links are dead.

Nice video.

Thanks.

[mihaiviteazu5]

i love computers and the technological upgrades in ears end is more easy to work with computers

[bumtownv2]

There's your series of tubes.

[gonepishing]

too bad they didn't have glass delay lines at that time...

[scott93257]

Incredible...Just incredible

[howmuchart]

that is just amazing...

[coldfusion1111]

Amazing ..now atoms can be used !

[dragonheadthing]

Using mercury to store information as pulses... it's amazing what they came up with in the early days of computers.

[StereoMike06]

Amazing, using analog technology is so much more complicated. Scientist back then really were cutting edge. There was no such thing as programmable chips everything had to have a physical mechanism to carry out a command. Very impressive.

[trewlert44]

This piece was only the 'memory chip' of the Univac

[Nothingismagnificent]

@StereoMike06 Amazing stuff. Ingenious.

[MIKEPREAMP]

The computer was supposed to provide a print-out of the Presidential choice on live tv, but the show's producers, previewing the results, were sure that it was wrong, and feigned a technical malfunction; no print-out occured. An omen that they had "pulled their punches took place when one of the show's performers dropped his hand-held microphone.

[Gardoglee]

Unbeleivable! I had read about this stuff, but had never actually seen it. This is real metal computing!