UNIVAC I ships to the Census Bureau
The first computer sold to a customer instead of built for one
Quick facts
- Built by
- J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly (Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation)
- Delivered
- Dedicated 14 June 1951, Census Bureau
- Input
- Magnetic tape, plus punched cards
- Notable use
- Correctly forecast the 1952 presidential election on live television
What happened
Eckert and Mauchly, the engineers behind ENIAC, began building UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) in 1948 through their own company, later acquired by Remington Rand. On 14 June 1951, officials from the Census Bureau attended a dedication ceremony at the Eckert-Mauchly Laboratory in Philadelphia. UNIVAC read data from magnetic tape rather than only punched cards, used vacuum tubes for processing, and could print results or store them back to tape. It was the first computer built as a commercial product for sale to any customer rather than a one-off machine built for a single research or military purpose.
Why it matters
On election night in 1952, a UNIVAC correctly forecast Dwight Eisenhower's landslide win from a sliver of early returns, an event CBS was initially too skeptical to broadcast; it introduced the American public to the idea that a machine, not just a person, could process data and make predictions. UNIVAC's commercial sale model, rather than one-off government contracts, established the computer industry as a business.
How we know
The U.S. Census Bureau's own history page documents the March 1951 contract signature and the June dedication ceremony; the Computer History Museum's 'This Day in History' entry documents the November 1952 election-night broadcast.
Sources
- U.S. Census Bureau. UNIVAC I · Reputable sourcecensus.gov · The domain "census.gov" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Computer History Museum (This Day in History). November 4: CBS News Uses UNIVAC Computer to Predict Election · Reputable sourcecomputerhistory.org · The domain "computerhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry.
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