UNIVAC120

"UNIVAC120" was completed by Remington Rand Co. Ltd. In 1950 based on the first commercial computer "UNIVAC I" in which vacuum-tube logic circuits were utilized for the first time in the world.

The system consisted of the card Sensing-Punching Unit (punching speed of 150 cards per minute for 90 columns card) and the CPU unit, and the memory system could store the memory of 60 columns of 120 rows by use of cold cathode discharge tubes. The computer has no stored program. Programing was made by two plug-boards.

The input-output panel indicates the card fields to be sensed, punched and reproduced. The constant program panel indicates the program to be followed, step by step, and the constant values which will be used. Computing speed was 10 msec for an add-subtraction operation and 50 msec for multiplication-division operation; these values were astonishingly high at that time.

The displayed computer was the 1st generation commercial computer imported from the U.S. for the first time in Japan in 1955, sold to Nomura Securities Co.,Ltd. in February, 1955 as the Japan-first commercial computer and served for stock business, etc. for eight years. Since then, the computer had been kept in Nomura Computing Center Co.,Ltd (presently Nomura Research Institute, Ltd.) and was donated to Museum of Science, TUS* in 2012 at the occasion of 50th anniversary of the Center.

In Showa-30's, after the import of UNIVAC120 the computerization of office business has rapidly progressed and opened the computer era in Japan.

(*Tokyo University of Science)