1949 - Technology

Technology

The Binary Automatic Computer (BINAC) introduced by J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly of 1946 ENIAC fame stores information on magnetic tape rather than on punched cards. The two established a manufacturing company last year and will sell their Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp. next year to Remington Rand (see Sperry Rand, 1955). By 1966 Eckert will have received 85 patents, most of them for electronic inventions.

Nebraska-born MIT electrical engineer Jay W. (Wright) Forrester, 31, devises a memory system that replaces electrostatic tubes and stores information in three dimensions. His random-access magnetic cell will prove far superior to the slow, unreliable storage systems that have retarded development of computers (see Manchester Mark I, 1948) Forrester and Kenneth Olsen will assemble the first real-time computer in 1951 and call it the Whirlwind.