Roots of the 30-bit CP-823/U Univac 1830 computer

1/30/2012

The Univac 1830, DOD designated CP-823/U Digital Avionics Engineering Prototype computer is a direct descendant of several discrete 30-bit Univac / Military shipboard computers. The AN/USQ-17 (NTDS) 6-built, the CP-642A (Univac 1206) 142 built and the CP-642B (Univac 1212) 241 built. Although the CP-823/U was the first digital computing system and was designed and built from the ground up, the 30-bit Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) it used was tried and true.

1 Comment

David Boslaugh

1/30/2012 08:52:04 am

I am Dave Boslaugh, a retired naval engineering duty officer. I wrote the book "When Computers Went to Sea", a history of the Naval Tactical Data System, and am presently working on the NTDS history project for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Global History Network web site. I have been searching for some time to find descriptions and photos of descendants of the original 30-bit architecture NTDS unit computers and finally found the CP-823/U first Navy airborne computer description and photo on Todd's excellent web site. He has been good enough to let me post the photo in the NTDS web article. If you wish to view the article log on to ieeeghn.org and type Naval Tactical Data System into the search box. I think we all owe Todd a vote of thanks for storing and preserving this historic machine for more than four decades.

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Roots of the 30-bit CP-823/U Univac 1830 computer

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