Editing UNIVAC I (section)

===Market positioning===
[[Image:UNIVAC 1 demo.jpg|right|200px|thumb|[[Remington Rand]] employees, Harold E. Sweeney (left) and [[J. Presper Eckert]] (center) demonstrate the U.S. Census Bureau's UNIVAC for CBS reporter [[Walter Cronkite]] (right).]]
[[File:Univac I at CHM.agr.jpg|thumb|UNIVAC I operator's console close-up]]
The UNIVAC I was the first American computer designed at the outset for business and administrative use with fast execution of relatively simple arithmetic and data transport operations, as opposed to the complex numerical calculations required of scientific computers. As such, the UNIVAC competed directly against [[punched card|punch-card]] machines, though the UNIVAC originally could neither read nor punch cards. That shortcoming hindered sales to companies concerned about the high cost of manually converting large quantities of existing data stored on cards. This was corrected by adding offline card processing equipment, the UNIVAC Tape to Card converter, to transfer data between cards and UNIVAC magnetic tapes.<ref>Univac i. (2003). In Encyclopedia of computer science. Retrieved from http://literati.credoreference.com/content/entry/encyccs/univac_i/0</ref> However, the early market share of the UNIVAC I was lower than the Remington Rand Company wished.{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}

To promote sales, the company partnered with [[CBS]] to have UNIVAC I predict the result of the [[1952 United States presidential election]] live on television. The machine predicted that [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] would win in a [[landslide victory|landslide]] over [[Adlai Stevenson II|Adlai Stevenson]] at a chance of 100 to 1, receive 32,915,949 votes and win the [[United States Electoral College|Electoral College]] 438–93. It was opposed to the final [[Gallup, Inc.#Gallup Poll|Gallup Poll]], which had predicted that Eisenhower would win in a close contest. The CBS crew was so certain that UNIVAC was wrong that they believed it was not working, so they changed a certain "national trend factor" from 40% to 4% to obtain what appeared more correct 268–263, and released that for the television. It was soon noticed that the prediction assuming 40% was closer to truth, so they changed it back.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Murphy |first1=Eugene F. |title=The Computing Machinery Field 1953-01: Vol 2 Iss 1 |last2=Berkeley |first2=Edmund C. |date=1953-01-01 |publisher=Berkeley Enterprises |pages=27–28 |language=en |chapter=AUTOMATIC COMPUTERS ON ELECTION NIGHT |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/sim_computers-and-people_1953-01_2_1/page/n29/}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Chinoy |first=Ira |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.13982281 |title=Predicting the Winner: The Untold Story of Election Night 1952 and the Dawn of Computer Forecasting |date=2024 |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |doi=10.2307/jj.13982281 |isbn=978-1-64012-596-4}}</ref>

On election night, Eisenhower received 34,075,029 votes in a 442–89 Electoral College victory. UNIVAC had a [[margin of error]] of 3.5% of Eisenhower's popular vote tally and was within four votes of his electoral vote total.{{citation needed|date=July 2022}} The prediction and its use in CBS's election coverage gave rise to a greater public awareness of computing technology,<ref>Brinkley, Alan.  [[American History: A Survey]].  12th Ed.</ref> while computerized predictions became a widely used part of election night broadcasts.{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}