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409 Time Line:
Related People, Facilities & Events -
Revised October, 1997
By W.B. Wenning and Eric Rambusch
1943
Loring P. Crosman was hired at Remington Rand facility Brooklyn, NY, NY [Flatbush & Tillery Aves.]. Joseph Milkman, a mathematician, joined prior to 1945.
1945
Ed Smith was employed in late 1945 as the first electronics engineer in the Crosman group.
1946
Brooklyn operations including Crosman and his group moved to 333 Wilson Avenue, South Norwalk, CT, (Rand's) Laboratory for Advanced Research. Crosman's group joined numerous transferees and new hires including Tom Sharpe from Dupont. Al Greenfield, electrical engineer, was added to the Crosman staff.
1948
L.P. Crosman and staff moved to the "Barn" in 1948. The Barn was the Carriage House for the Rockledge Estate, on Highland Avenue, Rowayton, CT. William Henrich also an electrical engineer joined and Ed Smith departed. The group was expanded by the addition of Gordan Chamberlain who setup a fabrication group to begin the building of Crosman's first engineering model.
1948
General Leslie Groves arrived at the Advanced Research Center in March, reporting to Alan Ross. General Groves had been responsible for the development of the atomic bomb a few years earlier.
1949
W.B. Wenning joined the Crosman group - nine strong - assigned to work on computer developments which eventually became known as the Model 409. Crosman's technical teams were led by Frank Hannon and William Henrich. In place was a demonstration unit called the Model 3, the immediate predecessor to the 409. Demos using this unit were carried out at the Barn in 1950 to a large number of potential customers.
1949
Jacob A. Randmer was hired to provide expertise to the new labs at Wilson Avenue. Jake's knowledge was well founded in vacuum tube technology. Among his responsibilities was the solution of the reliability problem with the cold cathode tube, which was fundamental to the design of the 409 computer.
1949
Dave Bernard and Al Stillman assigned to study Crosman's 409 design to prepare for arrival of a large staff in early 1950 at the Barn. This group which included several engineers from ERA [Engineering Research Associates], headed by Joe Brustman, were assigned the responsibility of developing a computer in competition with the Crosman team.
1950
Spring of 1950, Remington Rand acquires the Eckert/Mauchley Company providing Rand with the resources that developed the first Univac computer.
1950
Mike Norelli, Les Henchcliffe, Bob Brink and numerous other professionals were added to the Crosman Barn Group to complete the design and build of the first of five engineering prototypes for the planned 409 Computer.
1951
General Douglas Mac Arthur joined Remington Rand in the Spring of 1951. ERA [Engineering Research Associates] was acquired to enhance the corporation's computer and peripheral design and manufacturing capabilities.
1951
The Crosman group was moved to 336 Wilson Avenue, South Norwalk, to a newly constructed Butler Building which was built to house the engineering and manufacturing activities for the Model 409 program. The development team was split in two and each significantly augmented with new hires:
* The engineering group was housed on the second floor.
* The remaining group, located on the first floor, was assigned to building and debugging the first 409 systems. This group became responsible for establishing the manufacturing process for the production of the units that would follow the prototypes. The first floor group consisted of two departments; one was responsible for production, the other was responsible for developing a final test system, training of marketing, service, manufacturing, applications programming personnel and Product Engineering. Upon completion of the first five prototypes the first floor group was assigned to the Manufacturing Division. The technical group reported to both the Engineering and Manufacturing Divisions.
1951
Very shortly after the Crosman group was moved to Wilson Ave., the Brustman group was moved into the Butler Building, second floor in the vicinity of the Crosman engineering activities. The Brustman group was also building five prototypes of their own computer design. It is understood that the engineering problems could not be overcome in a reasonable period of time and the project was canceled. Supposedly all hardware and perhaps documentation was deliberately incinerated. A relatively small number of people were transferred to the engineering and manufacturing groups while the remainder moved on to new product development responsibilites.
1951
The first prototype was unveiled to potential customers July 1951. See Crosman IEEE article, October 1953, for design details. The second 409 prototype was installed at the IRS center in Baltimore. Gordon Chamberlain supervised the shipping and installation of this landmark product.
1953
The last quarter of 1953 saw the marketing introduction of an upgraded Model 409: the Univac 60/120. The inclusion of the name "Univac" was to take marketing advantage of the image of the Univac Computer. The 60/120 portion of the title was a statement of memory size: 60 positions of memory versus 120 positions of memory. Production of this unit at the Wilson Avenue facility eventually reached one unit per week just before the transfer of the program to a formal manufacturing facility.
1955
All of the production activities for this series of computers was transferred to the manufacturing site in Ilion, New York.
1961 - February
Project Fix started in the Barn under the direction of John Croyle, Director Customer Engineering. A feasibility study was conducted with regard to significant improvements that could be made to the aging punch card equipment line. The study resulted in a recommendation for the development of an entirely new line of equipment based on the IBM 80-column punch card.
1961 - August
The responsibility to commercialize the Project Fix recommendations were assigned to the Univac Vice President of Engineering, Burke Horton.
1961
Between August and October 1961, a project team was assembled in the Barn with people from Univac, Blue Bell, Pennsylvania; Wilson Avenue, South Norwalk, Connecticut; Ilion, New York and members of the Project Fix team. The program was code named "Bumble Bee." This project team, under the direction of W.B. Wenning, Program Manager, conducted an in depth investigation of the specific recommendations which resulted in a significant redirection of the program. The new program's primary objective was to develop a replacement for the Univac 60/120 computer which had reached the end of its life. Other related punch card products were included in this redirected activity. The new program statement was approved by Dause Bibby, President of the Univac division. Operating staffs from Manufacturing Engineering, Marketing, Service, Purchasing and Quality Assurance were added to the project as the program expanded. At one time, the facility housed over 185 people including a security team. Security was at such a level that to this day you will find numerous people from the organization who never knew the project was housed at the Barn. Management reviews were conducted at the highest levels every four weeks on Wednesday nights at 8:00 p.m., which was the typical end of the work day formost of the staff.
1962 - June
In June, 1962, the Univac 1004 computer was publicly announced. The initial core of sales people were trained at the Corporate Headquarters across from the Barn.
1962 - August
In August, 1962, the Univac 1004 computer was released to Manufacturing. The manufacturing process commenced immediately, due to the fact that Manufacturing Engineering, which approved and signed off all drawings for manufacturing, was integrated into the development program.
1963 - February
The first production unit of the Univac 1004 computer rolled off the manufacturing line in Ilion, New York. This was the most commercially successful punch card computer in the history of the Remington and Univac organizations.
1966
The life and marketability of the Univac 1004 was greatly enhanced by converting external plugboard programming to internal programming. Model number changed to Univac 1005. Initial production began February 1966.
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