Books offered by JF Ptak Science Books

A Very Early, In-Depth Description of the UNIVAC (1950)

Preliminary Description of the UNIVAC

 

Preliminary Description of the UNIVAC for EMCC Personel Only.

11x8 inches. 54 leaves (printed on one side only). Offset printed (?).  Intended as an internal document, only.  Copyright and printed 1950 (Revised.  7/19/50) by the Ekert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, a Subsidiary of Remington Rand Inc. Marked: “U-300” and "#192".  RARE. $2250

A note on the author: who is identified on as  “HFMjf:mb” (as the last line of the document). This is almost certainly Herbert F. Mitchell, Jr., who we find identified in the Grace Hopper papers at the Smithsonian Institution (and who was author of  “Outline for First Lecture: Programming Course for EMCC's Engineers”, 4/4/50; A-TC-7 by HFM jr (Herbert F. Mitchell, Jr.), 4 pages and “Outline for Second Lecture: Programming Course for EMCC's Engineers”, 11 April 1950; A-TC-7, no author but probably by H.F. Mitchell (see First Lecture), 2 pages. AND  with J. Presper Eckert, Jr., James R. Weiner, H. Frazer Welsh “The UNIVAC System”, American Institute of Electrical Engineers Institute of Radio Engineers Conference, pp. 6-16, December, 1951.  Dr. Herbert F. Mitchell was the Director of the Computational Lab at Ekert-Mauchly: . “Dr. Grace Hopper was among the staff as well as Betty Holberton, Al Tonik, Art Katz, Hildegard Nidecker, and Dick Woltman. Paul Chinitz, Steve Wright, Harvey Rubinstein, Lloyd Stowe…”    ALSO:  Mitchell:  Ph.D. Applied Mathematics, Harvard, 1948 (helped Howard Aiken build the Mark II); joined Ekert-Mauchly in November, 1949 and continued with Univac and Sperry Rand until 1959 (and was chief programmer on the UNIVAC I, and later, sales manager).

This work is composed of 26 sections, as follows, and seems to be a rather complete description of the running of the UNIVAC as could be in 54 pages:

1. Introduction
2. Initial read Operation
3. Four-stage Cycle of Operation
4. Data Transfers 
5. Arithmetic Operations
6. Overflow
7. Addition
8. Overflow Routine
9. Subtraction
10. Shifts
11. Multiplication
12. Division
13. Extraction
14. Control Transfers
15.  Tape Instructions
16.  Read Instructions
17. The Write Instructions
18. Read Tape Instructions
19. Supervisory Control Operations
20. Recorder Transfer of Control
21. The Writer Operations
22. The rewind Instruction
23. The Breakpoint Instruction
24. Supervisory Control Input
25. Tape Reversal
26. Checks

 

There are also two full page sheets of block diagrams:

--Simplified Block Diagram Central Input-output and Interlock Circuits

--Simplified Input circuits // Simplified Output circuits

 

Binding:  punch-bound in a period manila binding with metal compressors. Cloth tape spine.  Typed, home-made (contemporary) title on front of binding. 

 

Everything in VERY GOOD condition. Rare.   Only three copies found in OCLC/WorldCat. 

 

From Book Rags:

"UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was the first mass-produced commercial computer. UNIVAC was the result of a collaborative effort between computer pioneers John Mauchly (1907-1980) and J. Presper Eckert (1919-1995). Their partnership in building advanced computers began in the early 1940s at the Universityof Pennsylvania's Moore School of Engineering. At the Moore School , Mauchly and Eckert took lead roles in building ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), the world's first general-purpose electronic computer, and its successor EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer), one of the first computers to implement the stored-program principle. The two men drew heavily on their experiences with ENIAC and EDVAC in the creation of UNIVAC."

 

The First Differential Analyzer in Great Britain, 1935

Two Early Papers on the Differential Analyzer   //   The First Differential Analyzer Built in Great Britain  1935

D.R. Hartree.  "The Differential Analyzer".  In:  Nature, 8 June 1935, col 135, #3423, pp940-943.  We offer the entire weekly issue in the original wrappers (the issue containing pp 933-972, plus 8pp illustrated ads.  This issue was removed from a larger, bound volume and shows evidence of such at the spine.  Two ex-library stamps on the front cover from the Smithsonian Institution,  Nice copy.  Scarce. 

(____.)  “The Differential Analyzer for the University of Manchester”.  News item covered in the “News and Views” section of the 6 April 1935 issue of Nature magazine, amounting to about one full column (of a double column pages).  Announcing the arrival of Dr. Hartree’s machine at Manchester. We offer the entire weekly issue in the original wrappers (the issue containing pp 933-972, plus 8pp illustrated ads.  This issue was removed from a larger, bound volume and shows evidence of such at the spine.  Two ex-library stamps on the front cover from the Smithsonian Institution,  Nice copy.  Scarce.  Pp 521-560, plus several pages of ads. 

Also of advanced interest:  N(icholas) Rashevsky’s article on "Mathematical Biophysics". (Pp 528-530). The pair:  $450