ABSTRACT
Desk Set was also, however, a remarkably insightful mirror of a key period in the history of modern computing. Although the name Electro-Magnetic Memory and Research Arithmetic Calculator (EMERAC) is an obvious play on both the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) and UNIVAC, the computer manufacturer most closely associated with Desk Set was the International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation. Most of IBM's competitors were obsessed with designing central processing units, or "CPUs", and tended to neglect the system as a whole. There were plenty of technical people in IBM similarly fixated on the architecture of computers: "Processors were the rage", one IBM technical manager recalled. The origin of the 1401 was the need to create a transistorized follow-up to the tube-based model 650 Magnetic Drum Computer. The IBM 407 accounting machine remained IBM's most important product right up to the end of the 1950s.
