ABSTRACT
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, some thirty firms entered the computer business in the United States. The third class of firms to enter the computer business- and in many ways the most interesting- was the entrepreneurial start-up. When Eckert and Mauchly established their Electronic Control Company in March 1946, they were almost unique in seeing the potential for computers in business data processing, as opposed to science and engineering calculations. The first American stored-program computer to operate, the Binary Automatic Computer (BINAC) was never a reliable machine. International Business Machines (IBM) institutionalized its attitude to electronics and computers through the slogan "evolution not revolution". Apart from IBM, none of the office-machine firms entered the postwar world with much in the way of electronics experience, nor any interest in making computers. By the beginning of 1951, Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC) was functioning as a computer and would soon be ready to commence its acceptance tests for the Census Bureau.
