Neat! Hard to believe that this was made just a few short years before I was born. An old coworker of mine (years ago) worked for Sperry Univac back in the day. His opinions on the company were... mixed. He said that they cut corners when they didn't need to, such as use very brittle plastic power switches on their terminals, making it a 100% probability that every terminal would be sent back for service when everything about it still worked, but you couldn't turn it on anymore. He also recounted a meeting at which one of the big wigs there encouraged attendees to "aim to be Number Two." The idea being that aiming for Number One was just too expensive, but by intentionally being second best, they would get a lot of business on the budget end. This did not go over well with the fellow that I worked with many years later. (All of this is, of course, second-hand information, but my coworker was a trustworthy guy, so I have no reason to doubt it, even though I cannot verify any of it.)

I was driving around in my Chevette when this film was made.

@wmffmw1854

Жыл бұрын

I was working on Mainframe Computers and designing Microprocessor based equipment.

0:22 this guy is walking around with a write-protect ring in his hand, and looks like he applies it to one of the reels on top of the tape drive just at it cuts to the next clip. One of the most ingenious standardized ways to write protect reel-to-reel tape. Much more durable than the sticky tape that went on the later floppy disks lots of cool tech stuff in this video, though, and some I had no idea Sperry was involved in

Thanks, CHAP, for once again bringing such a wonderful presentation to KZread.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

Жыл бұрын

Hi Head Pox, Thank you for the kind words. (This film was a rare find!) ~ VK

Of course the tecnology has been largely improved today, but most of those things were the starting point of things (the ECG machine, the mail sorting machine) that we mostly give for granted in our world.

Actually there was a push to develop MiniComputers and Microprocessor based Systems while Mainframes where being phased out as I.C.'s became denser.

Cool. Thanks for the look back.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

Жыл бұрын

B Blod, You are most welcome.

Very cool video, thanks for sharing.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

10 ай бұрын

Hi @Brian-li5up, glad you enjoyed it. : )

You can see what a diverse bunch of machines they made. I guess that’s why they lost there way in the computer hardware business 😮

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

Жыл бұрын

Hi Bill, well that could be quite true, and also when Burroughs Company bought Sperry in 1986, the Burroughs and Sperry/Univac computers were not such compatible housemates. Thanks for your feedback! : ) ~ Mark

@stevew8233

Жыл бұрын

I worked for Univac/Sperry/Unisys for 34 years. There was always a problem with incompatible major product lines. ERA & Univac & Remington & RCA & Burroughs, let alone the smaller systems which were taken over with corporate aquisitions plus Defense vs Commercial. Always a St Paul, Mn vs Bluebell, Pa dichotomy. If it were not for a bunch of lucrative Govt. contracts I think the conglomerate would have died in the '70s.

@lewiscole5193

Ай бұрын

> [...] I guess that’s why they lost there > way in the computer hardware business Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but IMHO diversity of products had very little (if anything) to do with the Company's decline. At the time this film was made, Sperry was a conglomerate like many other companies of the time. Starting some time in the 1970s to 1980s, however, it began to divest itself of every that didn't have to do with mainframe computers. Sperry Vickers, Sperry New Holland, and Sperry Remington were sold off well before 1986 when Burroughs took over Sperry (euphemistically called "The Merger"). At the time of the takeover, the old IBM 360/370 clones (Spectra 70 and 90 Series) were gone as was the old 490 Series leaving just the 1100 Series. The Company was definitely starting to go downhill before then, but ISTM that the Big Thing behind this was that we weren't selling to lots of new customers and so the Company had been doing lots of cost cutting shit. I remember one suit from Blue Bell saying that we (meaning the Company) had to come up with more sources of income as we couldn't cost our way to profitability. It was nice to hear that the suits understood the obvious ... it's too bad that they didn't seem to do much (if anything) in light of the obvious. Then in 1986, W. Michael Blumenthal, CEO of Burroughs, came along. He apparently believed that the reason why IBM was doing better than us was because of "critical mass". If only the Company he headed were larger, then some sort of "economies of scale" would kick in which was supposedly what IBM had which his company didn't. Blumenthal thought that if Burroughs combined with Sperry, then the resulting company would have the required "critical mass". Sperry management was not interested in such a combination and cooked up a "poison pill" to make a take over undesirable by boosting the stock price. Burroughs went ahead with the take over anyway. Now you could say that the resulting Company, soon to be re-named Unisys, was too diverse with just the two dissimilar product lines they produced -- A-Series at Burroughs and the 1100 Series at Sperry -- but I for one think that the more pressing problem was that the takeover had put the Company more than *A BILLION DOLLARS* into debt. And how do you chip away at that sort of financial black hole if you can't come up with a way to bring in lots of bucks real fast? Why you cut costs, of course. And what's your biggest expense? Well, I don't know, but Sperry employed about 60,000 people worldwide and Burroughs employed about the same, at the time of the takeover, and starting maybe a year or two after the takeover, the Company began pissing away about 10,000 employees per year every year even after the total number of employees dropped down to around 60,000. The thing is that the Sperry and Burroughs mainframes are what kept money coming into the Company. But the mainframes are sold in relatively small numbers which historically commanded high profit margins accompanied by lots of hand holding. That was all well and good until the likes of DEC and Dirty Genitals (AKA Data General) began selling more and more relatively dirt cheap minis and IBM and HP and everyone under the sun started selling micros with a trivial no profit and no support. (And yes, Sperry did sell some IBM PC clones, but they existed basically so they could be given away dirt cheap to customers who bought their mainframes.) Sperry/Burroughs/Unisys didn't know how to do well in such an environment. So around 1996, Unisys came out and told its employees that the Company was going to become a (low profit margin) "services" company and began funneling the profits into the money losing part of the company year after year after year. Eventually, the Company got to the point where services did make money and IIRC, that's where the Company currently makes its bucks. The 1100 Series (now known as the 2200 Series) still exists, but not as real hardware, but rather as a software emulation running on top of Intel servers which they sell. A-Series presumably also still exists (I think), but again as a software emulation. The Company is still around today, but the last time I looked at their share holder material, the words were all too familiar when it comes to their mainframes. Certain market segments -- banking, airlines, and governmental agencies (with maybe a couple others that I can't remember) -- are the only market the Company is in and appears willing to try to compete in ... just as was the case back before the takeover.

America was a much better place than today, in 1978...🇺🇸 😎👍☕ (low-wattage trolls may dessent below)

@sabrinatirabassi3529

Жыл бұрын

You had better cartoons and serial in those days, I'm sure, but you couldn't walk around your place writing things on the internet on a hand device the way you can do today.

Lyet (Lee-ayyy) died 2 years after retiring after 35 years with the company. he was only 67. life is precious and we should enjoy it while we can. stop being slaves to technology and to the system and make do with what you have.

@sabrinatirabassi3529

Жыл бұрын

Yeah, you for example could give up your smartphone and stop writing on the internet. It's such a wasteful useless thing to do...

@davidjames666

Жыл бұрын

@@sabrinatirabassi3529 see…. You want to take my statement to the extreme? Can you just for a minute understand that there are people out there that are absolutely addicted to technology! They do not even know how to properly function in society. They spend their days alone without any personal growth or enrichment