UNIVAC 1101

The ERA 1101, later renamed UNIVAC 1101, was a computer

system designed and built by Engineering Research Associates
UNIVAC 1101
(ERA) in the early 1950s and continued to be sold by the
Remington Rand corporation after that company later purchased
ERA. Its (initial) military model, the ERA Atlas, was the first
stored-program computer that was moved from its site of
manufacture and successfully installed at a distant site. Remington
Rand used the 1101's architecture as the basis for a series of
machines into the 1960s.

UNIVAC 1101
Contents Also known as ERA 1101

History Developer Engineering

Codebreaking Research
Commercialization Associates (ERA)

Description Manufacturer Engineering

Instruction set Research
Associates
See also
Release date 1950
References
Dimensions 38 ft (12 m) long,
External links
20 ft (6.1 m) wide
Mass 8.4 short tons
History (7.6 t)
Successor UNIVAC 1103

Codebreaking

ERA was formed from a group of code-breakers working for the United States Navy during World War II.
The team had built a number of code-breaking machines, similar to the more famous Colossus computer in
England, but designed to attack Japanese codes. After the war the Navy was interested in keeping the team
together even though they had to formally be turned out of Navy service. The result was ERA, which
formed in St. Paul, Minnesota in the hangars of a former Chase Aircraft shadow factory.

After the war, the team continued to build codebreaking machines, targeted at specific codes. After one of
these codes changed, making an expensive computer obsolete, the team convinced the Navy that the only
way to make a system that would remain useful was to build a fully programmable computer. The Navy
agreed, and in 1947 they funded development of a new system under "Task 13".

The resulting machines, known as "Atlas", used drum memory for main memory and featured a simple
central processing unit built for integer math. The first Atlas machine was built, moved, and installed at the
Army Security Agency by December 1950.[1][2][3] A faster version using Williams tubes and drums was
delivered to the NSA in 1953.
Commercialization

The company turned to the task of selling the systems commercially. Atlas was named after a character in
the popular comic strip Barnaby,[4] and they initially decided to name the commercial versions "Mabel".
Jack Hill suggested "1101" instead; 1101 is the binary representation of the number 13. The ERA 1101
was publicly announced in December 1951.[5][3] Atlas II, slightly modified became the ERA 1103,[6]
while a more heavily modified version with core memory and floating point math support became the
UNIVAC 1103A.

At about this time the company became embroiled in a lengthy series of political maneuverings in
Washington, D.C. Drew Pearson's Washington Merry-Go-Round claimed that the founding of ERA was a
conflict of interest for Norris and Engstrom because they had used their war-time government connections
to set up a company for their own profit. The resulting legal fight left the company drained, both financially
and emotionally. In 1952 they were purchased by Remington Rand, largely as a result of these problems.

Remington Rand had recently purchased Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation, builders of the famed
UNIVAC I, the first commercial computer in the US. Although ERA and UNIVAC were run separately
within the company, looking to cash in on the UNIVAC's well known name, they renamed the machine to
become the "UNIVAC 1101". A series of machines based on the same basic design followed, and were
sold into the 1960s before being replaced by the similar-in-name-only UNIVAC 1100 family.

Description
This computer was 38 ft (12 m) long, 20 ft (6.1 m) wide, weighed
about 8.4 short tons (7.6 t)[3][7][8] and used 2700 vacuum tubes for
its logic circuits. Its drum memory was 8.5 in (22 cm) in diameter,
rotated at 3500 rpm, had 200 read-write heads, and held 16,384 24-
bit words (a memory size equivalent to 48 kB) with access time
between 32 microseconds and 17 milliseconds.

Instructions were 24 bits long, with six bits for the opcode, four bits
for the "skip" value (telling how many memory locations to skip to
get to the next instruction in program sequence), and 14 bits for the
memory address. Numbers were binary with negative values in ATLAS
ones' complement. The addition time was 96 microseconds and the
multiplication time was 352 microseconds.

The single 48-bit accumulator was fundamentally subtractive, addition being carried out by subtracting the
ones' complement of the number to be added. This may appear rather strange, but the subtractive adder
reduces the chance of getting negative zero in normal operations.

The machine had 38 instructions.

Instruction set
[9]

Conventions

y is memory box at address y

X = X-Register (24 bits)
 ( ) is interpreted as the contents of
Q = Q-Register (24 bits)

A = Accumulator (48 bits)

Arithmetic

Insert (y) in A
Insert complement of (y) in A

Insert (y) in A [multiple precision]

Insert complement of (y) in A [multiple precision]

Insert absolute value (y) in A

Insert complement of absolute value (y) in A

Add (y) to (A)

Subtract (y) from (A)

Add (y) to (A) [multiple precision]

Subtract (y) from (A) [multiple precision]

Add absolute value of (y) to (A)

Subtract absolute value of (y) from (A)
Insert (Q) in A
Clear right half of A

Add (Q) to (A)

Transmit (A) to Q

Insert [(y) + 1] in A

Multiply and divide

Form product (Q) * (y) in A

Add logical product (Q) * (y) to (A)

Form logical product (Q) * (y) in A

Divide (A) by (y), (quotient forms in Q, non-negative remainder left in A)

Add product (Q) * (y) to (A)

Logical and control flow

Store right half of (A) at y

Shift (A) left

Store (Q) at y
Shift (Q) left

Replace (y) with (A) using (Q) as operator

Take (y) as next order

Replace (y) with (A) [address portion only]

 Take (y) as next order if (A) is not zero
Insert (y) in Q
Take (y) as next order if (A) is negative

Take (y) as next order if (Q) is negative

Input Output and control

Print right-hand 6 digits of (y)

Optional Stop

Print and punch right-hand 6 digits of (y)

Intermediate Stop

Final Stop

See also
List of UNIVAC products
History of computing hardware

References
1. McMurran, Marshall William (2008). ACHIEVING ACCURACY: A Legacy of Computers and
Missiles (https://books.google.com/books?id=UU3v0tbq8acC&q=ERA+Atlas+1950&pg=PA
36). Xlibris Corporation. pp. 36–37. ISBN 9781462810659.
2. "1. The ERA 1101 Computer" (https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/AD0694600). Digital
Computer Newsletter. 3 (1): 1, 2. April 1951.
3. Boslaugh, David L. (2003). When Computers Went to Sea: The Digitization of the United
States Navy (https://books.google.com/books?id=Mi8MhzheOokC&q=ERA+Atlas+1950&pg
=PA96). John Wiley & Sons. pp. 96–98. ISBN 9780471472209.
4. "Characters: Barnaby, page 1" (http://www.ksu.edu/english/nelp/purple/characters/cartoons.
html#atlas). Crockett Johnson Home Page. Atlas.
5. Pugh, Emerson W. (1995). Building IBM: Shaping an Industry and Its Technology (https://boo
ks.google.com/books?id=Bc8BGhSOawgC&q=ERA+1101+commercial&pg=PA142). MIT
Press. p. 142. ISBN 9780262161473.
6. Flamm, Kenneth (2010). Creating the Computer: Government, Industry and High Technology
(https://books.google.com/books?id=WqrJkVLxonkC&q=ERA+Atlas+1950&pg=PA45).
Brookings Institution Press. ISBN 978-0815707219.
7. Weik, Martin H. (December 1955). "UNIVAC-SCI (ERA-1101)" (http://ed-thelen.org/comp-his
t/BRL-t-z.html#UNIVAC-SCI%20%28ERA-1101%29). ed-thelen.org. A Survey of Domestic
Electronic Digital Computing Systems.
8. (16,000 lbs + 17,400 lbs ) / 2 = 16,700 pounds (8.4 short tons)

16,000 pounds (8.0 short tons; 7.3 t)

17,400 pounds (8.7 short tons; 7.9 t)

9. "Automatic Computing Machinery: Discussions - Minimum Access Programming" (https://do
i.org/10.1090%2FS0025-5718-52-99392-7). Mathematics of Computation. 6 (39): 172–182.
1952. doi:10.1090/S0025-5718-52-99392-7 (https://doi.org/10.1090%2FS0025-5718-52-993
92-7). ISSN 0025-5718 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0025-5718).
External links
Engineering Research Associates and the Atlas Computer (UNIVAC 1101) - Unisys History
Newsletter, Volume 3, Number 3 (https://web.archive.org/web/20170913135254/https://wiki.c
c.gatech.edu/folklore/index.php/Engineering_Research_Associates_and_the_Atlas_Compu
ter_(UNIVAC_1101)) at the Wayback Machine (archived September 13, 2017)
Introducing the ERA 1101: An operationally proven high-speed, electronic, general purpose
digital computer, ERA, no-date. (8 pp) [1] (http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/ERA-1101-f09-Intro
ductingERA1101.pdf)
Oral history interviews with ERA personnel on 1101 (http://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/112
99/59493/browse?type=subject&order=ASC&rpp=20&value=ERA+1101+%28Computer%2
9), Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Interviewees include Arnold A.
Cohen (http://purl.umn.edu/107220); Arnold Dumey [2] (http://purl.umn.edu/107760); John
Lindsay Hill (http://purl.umn.edu/107360); Frank Mullaney (http://purl.umn.edu/107538); and
William C. Norris [3] (http://purl.umn.edu/107551).
ERA 1101 Documents (http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/ERA-1101-documents.html) (archive
(http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/univac/1101/)) list of 44 scanned course notes on 1101 by H. C.
Snyder USN
Summary of Characteristics Magnetic Drum Binary Computer, Engineering Research
Associates Pub No. 25, 30 November 1948 (http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/ERA-1101-f01-M
agneticDrum.pdf)

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