Heavy Duty Computing: Univac 1219 In Action 

Holy crap! Ever since I was a little kid I wanted to see one of these things actually work! I only saw them in a book. This! This is why I'm subscribed

I was on the USS Norton Sound 1968-70, and they had a Mark 86 fire control system. (In fact, it was the ship it was originally tested on.) As I recall, it used a Univac 1219. That is actually the militarized designation. The civilian version was the 418-II. The 418-I was the first of the series with the "4" being for the 4-microsecond memory cycle and the "18" being for the 18-bit word. Later variants, like the 418-II were faster though so the "4" didn't represent the actual speed anymore. The first laser gyroscope was sea-tested on the Norton Sound, and I recall being told it also involved a 1219. It had to deal with the same issues of mechanical gyroscopes about the Earth actually being round and not flat. For example, if you circumnavigated the Earth, the gyroscope would think the ship's yaw had gone end over end.

I could almost smell the oil and feel the warm air coming off that last mechanical marvel. I didn't start using computers until around '85, but we were still using the same mechanical printers and tape machines. Ah, ancient memories...

Fascinating! This brings back great memories. I worked for Sperry Univac in the 1970 and early 80s as a test engineer. Our facility (Bristol Tn) built peripherals like printers , tape drives, and disc drives. It was the era just before the PC tsunami.

I was a US Navy Data Systems Technician (DS2) on the USS Forrestal (CV-59) and USS Dale (CG-19/ Terrier Missile platform) and these were the Computers and Periphs that ran the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) onboard. We did very little real troubleshooting... if the System "malfunctioned" while underway we became expert card swappers. We used to made keychains out of those small business card-sized circuit boards....if we couldn't repair them down to component-level at the test bench

There’s something very special about these properly old computers - and it’s so good to see one actually still able to run.

As a kid in the early 70's my Dad would take me to their computer room at the office. He explained how they managed the parts inventory for a large earth moving company. Absolutely loved the sights, sounds, smells, temperatures and knowing that a couple of years earlier people landed on the moon and excited about what would be next. We eventually got a 300 baud modem.and I played (with miles amd miles of paper rolls) 'moon lander' ('landed like a piece of pocket gnur floating to the floor'...or some such phrase when you nailed it) and 'colossal cave' ( 'you are facing west') that they had programmed in. Great video Fran, ignited lots of memories.

I took care of our four AN/UYK-7 Sperry/Univac computers on my submarine. I had to program in Ultra-32 Assembler. Learned so much that’s just taken for granted today.

Now, imagine a VACUUM TUBE computer of more or less this scale. At Californite Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, CA, they had an old Burroughs vacuum tube computer. It filled a room. The power supplies involved seven 11 KVA transformers as I recall. And it had a big memory drum slightly smaller than a 55-gallon drum. The "floating point" unit alone must have had 50 to 100 plug in units, each with four tubes. When I was a student there, I had a part time job in the department that had it and one summer my job was disassembling it for scrap which also involved leaving stuff in the hallway for students to take and salvage for their projects. I did keep the memory drum but shortly gave it to a computer science student who drooled over it more than I did. They also had an NEC transistorized computer in another room (also long since removed, I think) which I guess would have been the model NEAC2201 or NEAC2203. Today, it seems hard for some to believe anyone would build things as ponderous as these things. But they were all important steppingstones along the way. Not only for the technical hardware architecture and software aspects, but also for introducing the technology into commercial and military applications, and then your home, and then your back pocket.

All that wire wrap reminded me of a 1960s summer installing audio and signal wiring for a large TV production facility. We used wire wrap and pyramid blocks because the telephone company swore by them for ease of installation, long TBF, and, most importantly, signal quality.

I wire wrapped a 4K expansion board for my VIC 20 using a diagram I got out of BYTE magazine. I can't imagine the dedication and frustration involved to wire wrap something like this.

I love that everything slides or folds out for easy access to work on, or just admire. Great design for serviceability.

I was a Fire Control Technician aboard USS Sellers DDG-11. Worked in the missile computer room. We had these UNIVAC 1219's as our missile fire control computers. I worked on 2 of them for the four years I was aboard. Very reliable! We had a newer I/O console with cassette tapes for program loading so we did not have the large tape handlers shown here. A great piece of nostalgia for me! Thanks!

A Univac destined for NASA was once delayed in shipping because someone who worked in the assembly area on the third shift stuck a cigarette in the backplane wiring. The test engineers spent two days testing every board and wiring harness because the backplane had already been tested before somebody stuck the cigarette in it and fused some wires. Smoking cigarettes was not permitted in the assembly area, obviously, but it was the late 60s and it was hard to make people not smoke.

When he unscrews the locking bolt with that little T-wrench so he can slide out the rack it reminds me of '2001' when Dave unlocks the latches on the main door to the computer room.

I was a Data Systems Technician (USN) in the 80's. They were still teaching and using the Univac 642A / 642B mainframes in the fleet. I've got my keyring also 🙂.

"Made in Canada" stamped on the cards

Univac put the syllable "Uni" in front of a lot of their products. So much so, that the service engineers would drag in a vacuum cleaner to suck up the dust. They called it the "Uni-suck".

Wow, this took me down memory lane. This was the first computer that I worked on when I was in the Navy back in the early 90s. A couple differences I saw were that our teletype and paper tape reader were contained in one unit and the panel that he used to get the software loaded was on the top on ours.

This brings back some very fond memories. What a beautiful hunk of quality engineering. When I saw it, I thought "that's military hardware" - looks a lot like the military mainframes of my time, early '70's. Lovely stuff. These blinkenlights remain wonderful, and this setup has plenty of them. Thanks Fran!

I was a Unisys engineer. It was pretty good. Lot of jobs that payed good. Fun computers with big tapes.

I started my IT career programming physics simulations in FORTRAN on a 1200 back in the early 80's. Decks of punch cards and magtape. Took forever to run.

In the days of 8080 microcomputer, we had an old dual cassette drive we sometimes played with, but was mostly obsolete. Hans always wanted me to make a CP/M bios that made it drives C and D. One day, it quit working. I was not going to worry about it since we did not actually use it for anything, but Hans wanted it fixed. Inside, I found bunches of wire wrap. On the connector to the computer, there was a pin with the wire bunched around the bottom. So I straightened the wire and wrapped it correctly with my seldom used wire wrap tool. That thing never failed again. Hans was so happy he could read and write his old tapes again. I made a program following the code they used to toggle into the old Intel computer to copy files to and from the tape.

Thanks. Interesting video of past machines. I remember these systems for picking and shipping items from a warehouse and a huge printouts for the daily pics. That was in the early '70s

Back in the 1970's I worked for Lockheed Electronics the manufacturer of the MK86 Fire Control system which used the 1219 computer before upgrading to the AN/UYK-7 which was much smaller and more powerful. I remember most of the ships found that the 1219 would run forever if you did not turn it off! Did not like power cycles for some reason.

The wattage in noise loss alone.LOL Thanks Fran! Love it!

Parodied on "The Jetsons" as "Uniblab"

That sort of brings me back, my first programs was done on a Univac 1100, it could handle up to about 100 users i belive, but was rather slow when that happend. There was VDU and punch card access and a couple of printers for output, the fastest printer being 1000 lines a minute on 132 column fanfold

Thanks Fran, great to see this old technics in great condition and operational. Cheers from Sydney, Australia

Wow,so cool .Probably worth an absolute fortune back in the day!

That young dude was kinda dreamy.

Computer technology had advanced alot through out the years.....in the UK I had a company thrown out a mainframe system like this during the 1980's...... amazing machines....

Great seeing an old UNIVAC running for once! Sort of tired of all those overpriced IBM boxes (but then I'm really a UNIVAC person ;D)! Have worked with later 1100 and 2200 so the 1219 is marvelous to see!

The cards with discrete transistors are very like the ones in the GE 635 that I worked on once upon a time. Those serpentine tape tensioners are interesting - I never saw those on half-inch drives before (¾-inch drives used them). The half-inch drives I used all had vacuum columns. The height of the tape loops in the columns was sensed with a series of vactrols. I also worked with a Univac 1103 around 1980. It was pretty superannuated at that point. It eventually got replaced with one of the last Multics systems ever built, on a Honeywell 68/40. At one point my office was on the mezzanine above the factory floor for Honeywell mainframes. There was automated Wire-Wrap equipment - NC, rather than CNC, with the coordinates on paper tape. When the pinner (the machine that installed the pins that the wires wrapped around) was running, the noise was deafening, even upstairs! The DEC 2500 paper tape reader eventually was replaced in DEC's product line with one that used fanfold paper tape and had a stacker, so you never had to reel the stuff. MAJOR improvement! There were two punches available. One was conventional, the other had heated dies and melted its way through Mylar tape. It was neater and quieter, but less reliable. Those Model 35 KSR teletypes were built like tanks. I saw one once get (AAAAUGH!) dropped down a flight of stairs onto a concrete floor. It still worked after that trip!

I started my career designing Univac machines Iin the seventies. I wire wrapped my first personal computer front Univac scrapped parts.

I am old enough to remember using a Teletype to interface with Data General Minicomputers back in the 70's. We would feed in test programs via paper tape. Like a different world back then.

I've never seen a tape drive with vacuum column and mechanical tensioners. I always thought they were mutually exclusive. BTW, vacuum column drives are superior because the only item that touches the magnetic portion of the tape is the head, though I have heard of at least 1 manufacturer that had a tape-cleaner, so maybe 2 devices. No pinch-rollers, because the capstan has vacuum holes and literally sucked the backside of the tape. Lot's of very clever engineers back in the day created some impressive machines; so glad to see some of them are still living and appreciated.

I swear to god for a second I thought the thumbnail was of a walkman.Then the scale --- oh, ok.

Thank you so much for posting, Fran! That was a trip down memory lane. I was in the USN from 80 to 86. This is the Terrier MK152 Fire Control Computer Complex. (MY system!) It was hooked to the 55B Fire Control Radar, the missile launcher and NTDS. Each computer had 32K of magnetic core memory with .5 microsecond access time. I still remember some of the machine code instructions. Here's some trivia - if, when you open the drawer with the cards and pull it all the way out, you can reach your whole arm inside to the back and just barely be able to reach the row of fuses so conveniently placed. Luckily, none of them ever blew. "Terrier. When you care enough to send... the very best!"

I studied computer science at the University of Alabama in the mid to late seventies. They had a Univac. Punch cards, wide fan fold paper, cake carrier disc holders, refrigerator sized tape drives, washing machine sized disc drives, 17 inch wide line printers- state of the art!

My grandparents had an old vacuum tube TV that used wire wrap....not entirely, but it was there. I would love to see that old computer in operation....

This looks like the cooles museum ever. Also cool because of the size of the air conditioners.

Fascinating! I worked in 2 computer rooms loading magnetic tape and cassettes!

Very cool, Fran! Thank you so much for sharing - what a treat!

Simply fascinating! When you were mentioning the backplane, I was like "just wait until you see that discombobulated mess of wires!". A splendidly built and huge machine - the build quality compares to Bendix G15 on UsagiElectric's channel. Keep'em VCF East videos coming - I'm still a bit disappointed there was no livestream at all. All work and no play makes Univac a dull computer. All work and no play makes Univac a dull computer. All work and no play makes Univac a dull computer. All work and no play makes Univac a dull computer. ...

Incredible Germaniums. Wirewrap is king, I remember a conference in Reno Nevada on the subject by IWCS/US Army Fort Monmoth, circa 1988, there was young engineer showing the reliability of Solderless wrapped connections in his slideshow presentation.

I've seen plenty of recent pictures posted online of these old computers in museums as well as vintage video footage dating back to the 50's, 60's, and 70's, showing them in operation fully functioning. It is amazing see a machine like this still in existence. To see it still functioning in 2024 is REMARKABLE!!!! This computer was extremely well designed and engineered. Then again, I understand that it had to be in order to endure the rigorous environment if a naval vessel and still be very reliable. It's great to see that it's also well maintained and in great hands today at this museum. Computers such as this UNIVAC along will all the other big iron mainframes of the 50's, 60"s, and 70's were long before my time. As a kid growing up watching classic sci-fi T.V. shows and movies from that era, I've seen computers like these many times used as props (notably Burroughs equipment as well as portions of the SAGE computer). I've been fascinated by them ever since. Thanks for sharing this.

Thanks Fran. This old octagenarian worked one of the three first U S Navy ships to use those dual tape drives along with the AN-USQ-20 NTDS computer by Univac. Ours was all prototype equipment. I also had a punched paper tape drive to boot up that system, which went down a lot in the early days. A floor full of punched paper tape had to be worked around, at sea on a moving deck when it was necessary to reboot. This was in 1963-4 in the Pacific.

Hey Usagi Electric was at this show!!

Fantastic camera work on this! Felt like I was there in person. Thank you Fran!

Thanks Fran, great video.

Like a lot of Univacs, it's one's complement arithmetic. Its Nike Zeus computers from the early 60s were two's complement and variously 22 and 23 bit words.

Awesome. Never worked with machines of that vintage, but the sound of a noisy server room sure brings back memories. Wish I was young again.

That's totally effing awesome!! Thanks Fran !!

It was really nice to see your videos in my feed again Fran. 😊

THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO! This was really perfect for me!

Build quality is sick. Respect.

The HP 2114 computer I got to operate while a student in Junior High School came with a paper tape reader. After the tape was read and it was now on the floor we used the hand held motorized tape winder that was provided with the computer to wind up the tape so it was ready for the next time we needed to use it. The operator in this video had to manually rewind the mylar tape.

Incredible. We all TRULY stand on the shoulders of giants! Thank you SO MUCH for sharing this.

The smell of hot wiring and gear oil :) And the noise!

Thanks Fran...brings back memories of those days (and nights) I spent debugging and fault finding!

Great video Fran! Thanks

Was this at VCF East? Usagi Electric has just put out a great video looking around this museum - with most of the machines off so it's a lot quieter! Great that you can show us a look into this machine!

I was kind of expecting that tape reader to automatically rewind the tape by itself after it finished reading

Fascinating, the mechanical construction and electronics packaging techniques.

I’ve got a sudden urge to write something in FORTRAN. 😂

Super cool! Thx for bringing us along Fran! 🎉

An old professor said, "You would not believe the strange contraptions we tried to compute with!"

1219B or not 1219B? that is the question..fascinating, thanks for sharing!

It's nice to see old computers in action, not sitting there lifeless. I started programming in 1972, when computers were fun to watch.

Bonjours de France, Fran ;) . Always superbe , amazing ... Bravo

OMG! memories thank you Fran 👏🏻👍✌️

I believe the AN/SPN42C Automated Carrier Landing System (ACLS) used the univac 1219 to process data and control the radar system and send commands up to the aircraft as it landed.

Nice Fran, also a genuine 16-year old geek nerd in the background who's parents weren't even born when this was introduced.. Now find us a "Burroughs B205" to show off! Thanks Fran

I started working at Sperry UNIVAC in 1985 with 1100/10 and some tape drive models such as Uniservo 16 , Uniservo 20 and 0770 printer, all very well built equipments.

I maintain equipment with wire wrapped backplanes just like that one. We even have all the tooling to do the wrapping.

There was one of these on CVN-65, USS Enterprise, until about 1979 that I know of.

He’s the last Electro-mechanical teck , I worked with a few of them 😊

I was able to see a (?) version at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1970. It was used for molecular modeling that my neighbor was investigating. He gave me a personal tour of his lab as well as the computing room. Just calculating one microscopic crystal required half a room of print outs in boxes. The data had to be consolidated and rerun numerous times to come up with a 3D model.

I worked for Sperry Univac on model 1150. Which was a later model. It didn't look as cool as this does but it was bigger, 1180 maybe...

11:02 I still can't believe it's done that way.

I have seen a lot of machines and admit I have never seen that one. Complete with the "mod" take drive.

My favorite was the Eleniak model. Specifically, the Erika.

You can tell that machine was built to withstand some rough environments. Probably why it still works.

I've done my fair share of replacing the indicator lights on equipment like that. I'm one of the few people I work with that knows anything about wire-wrapping.

Wow. This brings back memories of standing /inside/ a PDP11 to swap out circuit cards from the depths of the cabinet.

Nostalgic video for me, as I worked with some univacs in the 80s, learning programming with Fortran and Cobol languages. Also horrific to see the machines in a museum, really brought home to me how quickly time flies 😂

12:50 Seeing that kid wind the tape reminds me of how many MILES of paper tape I've wound in my day.

All effords were taken to compute missile trajectory

Memories of the beginning of my career come to life. Paper tape! And some joker on the crew labelled the manual tape winder... "this is NOT a pencil sharpener".

Brilliant! Even love the size of the red Dymo label at 21:02 with 1532-2 written on it!

I recognize this! I was just there two weeks ago. Great to experience in person.

when i was in college they had a Sperry Univac mainframe in an air conditioned room that was off limits to mere mortals like myself . another university in the area was Carnegie Mellon they had a Cray 9000 that sat in a swimming pool size cooling bath it ran the university and several companies in Pittsburgh also used it

I remember this computer from my Navy days in the early '70's. I was an Electronics Tech (Radar), not Data Systems, so I never knew much about it except that one of the radars I worked on, the AN/SPN-10, was an all weather carrier controlled approach radar that locked onto a corner reflector on the plane's nose gear and guided it in to a perfect landing. I think this computer did all the number crunching. I distinctly remember the data techs pulling out the drawers and showing me the hundreds of tiny cards full of discrete transistors. I worked the RF and antenna end and a bit on the display electronics of that radar and several other radars associated with carrier air traffic control center. Fun times.

5:51 the young man has a device in the palm of his hand that's more powerful than anything in that room, yet everything in that room led to the device that he has in his hand,

I was involuntarily saying “Oh wow!” out loud myself. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Fantastic footage, Fran!

Lots of nostalgia

And in this box, we have our proudest piece of our collection, a single flip-flop with reset and enable pin. As you can see we polish it every day, to keep its black anthracit color. In the future, we expect the computers to have perhaps 4 flip flops....😁

Looking like the port of San Diego aircraft carrier museum? The tour lasts 2 hours, we did 6.