1951 UNIVAC I - Mercury delay line Memory for computers

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1951 UNIVAC I Mercury delay line Memory Tank. The UNIVAC computer was used to accurately predict the 1952 Election win of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Results were not immediately reported by Walter Cronkite because they were not believed to be accurate.
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For in depth details see:
UNIVAC I - MAINTENANCE MANUAL
For Use With Univac I Central Computer
Remington Rand Univac
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/vs-uni...
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/vs-UNI...

http://cs-exhibitions.uni-klu.ac.at/i...
Mercury was used because the acoustic impedance of mercury is almost exactly the same as that of the piezoelectric quartz crystals; this minimized the energy loss and the echoes when the signal was transmitted from crystal to medium and back again. The high speed of sound in mercury (1450 m/s) meant that the time needed to wait for a pulse to arrive at the receiving end was less than it would have been a slower medium,

More design details are described in the original
US Patent: 2629827
Filing date: Oct 31, 1947
Issue date: Feb 24, 1953
pages 6-8 has more detailed explanation on the delay line.
http://www.google.com/patents/US26298...

Delay line memory overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_li...

TilTul http://tiltul.com LinksYouWantToRemember

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  Science & Technology

[rachushetty]

any one here could you post me the details of why mercury is used? and how does it stores the data??

[TilTuli]

For more details

click on "Show more" to access more technical links to UNIVAC I - MAINTENANCE MANUAL, the US Patent "MEMORY SYSTEM" by John Presper Eekert et al and a general explanation on the selection of Mercury as a medium for the delay line.

[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.

[John Hunt]

far more complicated I mean :)

[John Hunt]

How is this more complicated than your PC processor? It's far, far, far less complicated, and far more cutting edge. Don't get me wrong, hats off to the people who came up with this machine but the tech we have now is just as, if not more impressive - it's just we're used to seeing it every day.

[Jafromobile]

My father was the vice president of Sperry-Univac. I lived in Louisville, Ky on a farm until I was 3. I fell in the pool learning to walk. My 4 year old brother saved my life. I wish I had better stories to tell, but for cryin' out loud, I was 3. I wasn't on the R&D team at Univac or anything... I was 3.

[revcletis]

Hg used for liquid DRAM. Sounds like something out of Science Fiction !!! XD

[MrMjsmith626]

Thanks to the Remington Rand Corporation for such a great invention.

[Neojhun]

I love the background laugh at 1:16 where i laughed to. It's when you realize the amount of effort and materials and just sheer awesome engineering to create something in such a simple functionality. Make a gap in time that electrical state can exist. Mind blowing for 1951.

[Peter Todd]

I wonder how audible the process was, and how it sounded

[neocoders]

That is the sexiest memory device ever. Looks like an interplanetary starship.

[rachushetty]

thank you