Giving Phila. its digital due

Jeff Hurvitz

is a Philadelphia native who writes from Abington

When Iowa farm product Philo Farnsworth invented the first television in 1926, little did he know that the recognition of the world-changing invention was soon to be bestowed upon RCA Corp. in New York.

Just over a decade later, another invention of humongous proportions both in girth and life impact was being developed in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania. So, too, the inventors and location of that first commercial computer - the ENIAC - would become mere footnotes next to the names of Apple, Macintosh, Gates and Silicon Valley.

With the announcement that Unisys Corp., the incarnation of the first computer entity, will relocate its corporate headquarters to Center City, the opportunity is suddenly at hand for this region to be recognized as the true birthplace of the commercial digital world.

Unisys will move its 225 management positions from suburban Blue Bell into offices at Two Liberty Place. That location will serve as the cornerstone for the company, which has some 29,500 employees worldwide.

Much like a racehorse whose reins had been held back only to be given the slack necessary to move to the fore, hopefully the names Eckert and Mauchly, UNIVAC, the University of Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia may finally be able to move to the prominence they deserve.

J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly designed what was known as ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering, between 1943 and 1946. The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) gave way to the UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) in 1951. Hardly of laptop proportions, its weight was listed at 16,000 pounds.

Aside from being the first computer made for commercial purposes in the United States, this UNIVAC I product was also the first designed for business use. The invention - owned by a company known as Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp. - would be sold in 1950 to Remington Rand Corp. after the death of Eckert-Mauchly's financier in a plane crash.

The Eckert-Mauchly division's factory was at 3747 Ridge Ave., near Lehigh Avenue, in North Philadelphia. It was at that site that the first sale of a commercial computer occurred on March 31, 1951. The buyer was the U.S. Census Bureau.

The second computer sold went to the Pentagon in 1952. In that same year, CBS bought one, which served to predict the outcome of the 1952 presidential election, won by World War II hero Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Philosopher Hans Reichenbach once defined a posit as "a statement which we treat as true although we do not know whether it is so. . . . We try to select our posits in such a way that they will be true as often as possible."

Just as posits by Eckert and Mauchly allowed them to change the world, typewriter manufacturer Remington to see an approaching sea change in the exchange of information, and CBS to take a chance on new technology in that 1952 election, so, too, Philadelphia has an opportunity to create a posit of its own.

The administration of outgoing Mayor Street brought Unisys back to its roots with the infusion of a $1 million yearly tax incentive for jobs creation. Incoming Mayor Michael Nutter has an opportunity to pick up the baton and create a new legacy for the city and his administration.

Let's see Philadelphia use this opportunity to build a living shrine, a base for sharing the origins of this world-altering, incredible engineering feat. In a city so rich in museums that explain how we got where we did and why, why not create a high-tech museum, a testimony to the world of "how abouts," "what ifs" and "let's sees?"

Let's all create that posit - and see how it can come to fruition.