Software Development at the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company Between 1947 and 1955

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© 2003 The Charles Babbage Institute for the History of Information Technology 

211 Andersen Library, 222 – 21

st

 Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455  USA 

 

Software Development at the Eckert-Mauchly 

Computer Company Between 1947 and 1955 

 

Arthur L. Norberg 

Charles Babbage Institute 

 

Date published: 31 December 2003 

 

Abstract: Histories of Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company (EMCC) 

center on the hardware design and development of the BINAC and 

UNIVAC. Important as this side of the story is, it is not the whole story. 

Unlike several companies entering the new area, which designed computer 

systems and left the software development to the customer, EMCC tried to 

provide more to the customer. In addition to their hardware design and 

development program, John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert organized a 

software development program to educate the customer about the ability 

and use of a computer system. This software program influenced and was 

influenced by hardware developments. Mauchly, especially, saw the 

importance of software needs even before he and Eckert embarked on 

their industrial adventure and he worked for many years on providing the 

software customers would need if EMCC were to play a major role in the 

computer market.   

 

Keywords: coding techniques, programming systems, Eckert-Mauchly Computer 

Company (EMCC), John Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert, software development, EDVAC II, 

Frances Elizabeth Holberton, Betty Jean Bartik, ENIAC, UNIVAC I, BINAC, Jean 

Jennings, Hubert M. Livingston, Arthur J. Gehring, Grace Murray Hopper, UNITYPER, 

IBM Defense Calculator, Laplace boundary value problem, automatic programming, 

subroutines, differentiator, compilers, assembly routines, Short Code, William F. Schmitt, 

Albert B. Tonik, Robert Logan, A-O, neutral corner concept, Richard Ridgway, Lloyd 

Stowe, Pseudo-code, Math-Matic, Flow-Matic, UNIVAC Fac-tronic System 

 

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istories of Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company (EMCC) center on the 

hardware design and development of the BINAC and UNIVAC, systems 

developed originally for the Northrup Aviation Company and the Census 

Bureau. As there was no market for computer systems outside government 

circles in the second half of the 1940s, Eckert and Mauchly pursued their 

dream by garnering contracts for machines in the hope that they could 

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Iterations – Norberg – Software Development at EMCC 

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spread the development cost over enough contracts. Repeatedly, they 

underestimated the costs and design obstacles of a new technology. Eckert 

and Mauchly saw the BINAC, part of a military missile system contract, 

as a prototype of the UNIVAC, and another way to spread the costs. Try 

as they might, there was simply not enough funds to achieve their goal. 

Yet they were close in late 1949 when they realized new funds could only 

come if they sold a portion or all of the company. Remington Rand bought 

the company in early 1950, paid the accumulated debts, laid out funds for 

construction of UNIVAC systems, and tried to renegotiate the contracts in 

force to stem the tide of losses. Remington Rand needed a number of years 

to turn the corner of profitability for computer systems, something they 

achieved by the early 1960s.  

 

There is certainly enough drama in these events as evidenced in the 

several books and numerous articles on them that have appeared. EMCC 

represents a quintessential example of the startup company in a new 

technological area that encounters financial difficulty and can only 

continue by selling out to a group with deeper pockets. Important as this 

side of the story is, it is not the whole story. Unlike several companies 

entering the new area, which designed computer systems and left the 

software development to the customer, EMCC tried to provide more to the 

customer. In addition to their hardware design and development program, 

they organized a software development program to educate the customer 

about the ability and use of a computer system. This software program 

influenced and was influenced by hardware developments. Mauchly, 

especially, saw the importance of software needs even before he and 

Eckert embarked on their industrial adventure and he worked for many 

years on providing the software customers would need if EMCC were to 

play a major role in the computer market.   

 

Early Developments 

 

Addressing the history of software development of the earliest period of 

electronic digital computing has yielded some useful information about 

the approaches used by the early companies to incorporate new abilities 

into computer system designs. Historians placed an early focus on 

instruction sets and structures, and virtually always noted the absence of 

applications programs for any of these new systems.

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 They, then, seemed 

to have hurried on to describe what has come to be seen as the major 

revolutionary development of the mid-1950s: higher-level languages such 

as FORTRAN and COBOL. Readers often get the impression that little or 

no software development went on in the first decade of the industry’s 

history. This article, focused on the software efforts of the Eckert-Mauchly 

Computer Company (EMCC) in the early decade, is intended to illustrate 

the types of software issues of concern to a new manufacturer in this new 

industry, a situation not uncommon in other companies as well.  

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