Remington Rand 409
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The Remington Rand 409, is a series of punched card calculators that were programmed with a plugboard. The prototype model was designed in 1949 and finished completion in 1951.
The commercial version was sold in three models:
- the UNIVAC 60, which released in December of 1951 (delivered in early 1952), originally under the name Remington RAND 409-2. Before rebranding as the UNIVAC 60, the machine underwent revisions 409-2R, 409-2A, and finally 409-2B. In particular, the jump from 409-2R to 409-A replaced relays with cold cathodes that resulted in faster response times.
- the UNIVAC 120, which released in 1953.[citation needed]
- the UNIVAC 40, which released in 1955.
The model number referred to the number of decimal digits the device could read from each punched card.
The machine was designed in "The Barn", at 33 Highland Ave. in Rowayton, Connecticut, a building that currently houses the Rowayton Public Library and Community Center.
These machines were discontinued when the UNIVAC 1004 was introduced in 1962. A total of 1080 units of the series had been produced by the end of 1961.
Architecture
Numbers were fixed-point and of variable length (one to ten digits). Arithmetic was done in floating point, but all results were converted to fixed point when stored in memory.
Digits are represented in bi-quinary coded decimal. Each digit of memory storage contained five tubes. Four of these represented the digits 1, 3, 5, and 7, while the fifth tube represented 9 if activated alone but added 1 to the value if activated together with another tube.
| Digit | 1 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | |||||
| 1 | * | ||||
| 2 | * | * | |||
| 3 | * | ||||
| 4 | * | * | |||
| 5 | * | ||||
| 6 | * | * | |||
| 7 | * | ||||
| 8 | * | * | |||
| 9 | * |
Hardware
| RR 409 | model 60 | model 120 |
|---|---|---|
| Number of tubes | ? | 800 |
| Decimal digits of storage | ? | 438 |
| Weight | ? | 3,230 lb |
See also
Notes
Further reading
- Electronic Brains: Stories from the dawn of the computer age, chapter 3 (pp.53–73), Mike Hally, 2005, ISBN 978-0-309-09630-0.
External links
- A Third Survey of Domestic Electronic Digital Computing Systems Report No. 1115, March 1961 by Martin H. Weik
- A Third Survey of Domestic Electronic Digital Computing Systems Report No. 1115, March 1961 by Martin H. Weik
- at bitsavers.org