Editing UNIVAC 1101 (section)

===Codebreaking===
ERA was formed from a group of code-breakers working for the [[United States Navy]] during [[World War II]]. The team had built a number of [[code-breaking]] machines, similar to the more famous [[Colossus computer]] in England, but designed to attack [[World War II cryptography#Japan|Japanese codes]]. After the war the Navy was interested in keeping the team together even though they had to formally be turned out of Navy service. The result was ERA, which formed in [[St. Paul, Minnesota]] in the hangars of a former [[Chase Aircraft]] shadow factory.

After the war, the team continued to build codebreaking machines, targeted at specific codes. After one of these codes changed, making an expensive computer obsolete, the team convinced the Navy that the only way to make a system that would remain useful was to build a fully programmable computer. The Navy agreed, and in 1947 they funded development of a new system under "Task 13".

The resulting machines, known as "Atlas", used [[drum memory]] for [[main memory]] and featured a simple [[central processing unit]] built for integer math. The first Atlas machine was built, moved, and installed at the [[Army Security Agency]] by December 1950.<ref>{{cite book|last1=McMurran|first1=Marshall William|title=ACHIEVING ACCURACY: A Legacy of Computers and Missiles|date=2008|publisher=Xlibris Corporation|isbn=9781462810659|pages=36–37|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UU3v0tbq8acC&q=ERA+Atlas+1950&pg=PA36|language=en}}{{self-published source|date=December 2017}}</ref>{{Self-published inline|certain=yes|date=December 2017}}<ref>{{Cite journal|date=April 1951|title=1. The ERA 1101 Computer|url=https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/AD0694600|journal=Digital Computer Newsletter|language=en|volume=3|issue=1|pages=1, 2}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Mi8MhzheOokC&q=ERA+Atlas+1950&pg=PA96|title=When Computers Went to Sea: The Digitization of the United States Navy|last1=Boslaugh|first1=David L.|date=2003|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=9780471472209|pages=96–98|language=en}}</ref> A faster version using [[Williams tube]]s and drums was delivered to the [[National Security Agency|NSA]] in 1953.