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Archive of the Present

Sucessors

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This article illuminates one of the key differences between the ENIAC and the BINAC- the BINAC featured a memory function.

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An ad for the UNIVAC

The BINAC was Mauchly and Eckert's next attempt at a computer, although it was more of an afterthought in comparison to their future projects. The BINAC was ordered by the Northrop Aircraft Corporation to help calculate flight trajectories- it was delivered by the new Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, and then never worked correctly again, due to either errors in packaging during shipping or errors during installation. Either way, the BINAC was decidedly a failure, and the brand new Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation would be sold to Remington Rand, and the two would continue work on the UNIVAC. 

The UNIVAC would be widely considered the first sucessful commercial computer, with 46 UNIVAC models sold for over $1,000,000 each. It was known for it's 'mercury memory' consisting of several tanks of mercury within the machine that allowed it to implement delay-line memory.