Four Remington Rand Univac 1105 computers will be used in tabulating the data for the 1960 U.S. census. The machines replace Univac I, used in the 1950 census. The 1105 is a large-scale, random-access computer with a magnetic drum storage. Its access times are put at 34 msec maximum and 17 msec average. The magnetic-tape storage includes up to 20 uni-servo tape-handling units. The non-volatile magnetic core storage consists of 36 magnetic core matrices. Storage capacity is said to be 12,288 36-bit words. According to Remington Rand, any word is available in 8 µsec.
Two of the machines are installed at the Bureau of Census Headquarters at Suitland, Md., and the other two are at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and in the Armour Research Laboratories of the Illinois Institute of Tech-nology in Chicago. (Electronic Design, April 13, 1960, p. 8)
It's interesting to look over those memory and storage specs in the old computers. But that limited storage made programmers careful with the size of their programs, which gave rise to the Y2K concerns.
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