YouTube – Remington-Rand Present the Univac
“The finest computational system ever devised by man, Remington Rand
presents the UNIVAC. Capable of processing twelve thousand digits per
second, its giant dynamic mercury delay-line memory tanks are surely
the greatest technical achievement in the history of electronic
difference engines. This newsreel explains it all.”
(Courtesy Michael Rudas on the WFTL mailing list)
Where do i sign up to become a computer programmer?
12k digits/sec is tape read speed. Compute speed might have been similar, though, perhaps 1 KIPS or so. That’s faster than my first calculator, i think.
Early Voyager data was on 7 track tape. Someone at NASA noticed that 7 track tape drives were becoming scarce, and transfered the data to CD. Quite a project. But the alternative is to re-fly the mission, which would take another 15 years.