(UNIVersal Automatic Computer) The first mass produced and commercially ... the memory in the UNIVAC I was made of mercury-filled acoustic delay lines that held 1,000 12-digit numbers.

Enormous dimensions, complicated military calculations, and thousands of vacuum tubes—this was the early supercomputer.

Konrad Zuse, a German engineer, completes the first general purpose progammable ... develops the transistor in 1947. UNIVAC, the Universal Automatic Computer (pictured below), is developed in ...