The Univac
Well, they didn't have desktop computers in my last life, so I
didn't get to be a coder. I did come close, though, when I was going
to college at Texas Tech. Some of the graduate students got hold of
an unused loom in the basement of the Textile Engineering Building,
strung a bunch of basketballs on it like a giant Abacus, and powered
it up with an old Electrolux Vacuum Cleaner, which sucked the
basketballs from one position to another.
Later, they hooked up a whole battery of vacuum cleaners to make it
faster. They called first one "Univac" because it only needed one
vacuum cleaner to run it. The second version with the multiple vacuum
cleaners was called "Multivac."
Doug