Technical Details
The system used electrostatic storage, consisting of 36 Williams tubes with a capacity of 1024 bits each, giving a total random access memory of 1024 words of 36 bits each. Each of the 36 Williams tubes was five inches in diameter. A magnetic drum memory provided 16,384 words. Both the electrostatic and drum memories were directly addressable: addresses 0 through 01777 (Octal) were in electrostatic memory and 040000 through 077777 (Octal) were on the drum.
Fixed-point numbers had a 1-bit sign and a 35-bit value, with negative values represented in ones' complement format.
Instructions had a 6-bit operation code and two 15-bit operand addresses.
Programming systems for the machine included the RECO regional coding assembler by Remington-Rand, the RAWOOP one-pass assembler and SNAP floating point interpretive system authored by the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation of Los Angeles, the FLIP floating point interpretive system by Consolidated Vultee Aircraft of San Diego, and the CHIP floating point interpretive system by Wright Field in Ohio.
Read more about this topic: UNIVAC 1103
Famous quotes containing the words technical and/or details:
“Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“There was a time when the average reader read a novel simply for the moral he could get out of it, and however naïve that may have been, it was a good deal less naïve than some of the limited objectives he has now. Today novels are considered to be entirely concerned with the social or economic or psychological forces that they will by necessity exhibit, or with those details of daily life that are for the good novelist only means to some deeper end.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)