Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation
More info
- Creator
- J. Presper Eckert, John Mauchly
- Released
- 1946 (as Electronic Control Company)
- Type
- Computer manufacturer
- Successor
- Remington Rand (1950)
The world's first computer company built two of history's most important machines and went under by quoting them at a fixed price.
Eckert and Mauchly left the Moore School in 1946 after the university demanded they sign over their patent rights. They set up the Electronic Control Company, incorporated in December 1947 as the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation. The BINAC order came from Northrop Aircraft and the UNIVAC order from the Census Bureau — both fixed-price, both badly underquoted, because nobody had ever built a computer to order and so nobody knew what one cost.
The company ran on borrowed money. Its principal backer, Harry Straus, was killed in a plane crash in October 1949, and with him went any room to lose more of it. In February 1950 the firm was sold to Remington Rand. UNIVAC I shipped the following year and became somebody else's triumph. Grace Hopper joined in 1949 and wrote her first compiler there.