Unisys history

1888 Burroughs' granted patent for adding machine with nine-digit adding and printing mechanism, designed to record only the final result of the calculation.

Creating a commercially viable version proved difficult; Burroughs was unable to patent a salable model until 1892.

Once on the market though, the adding machine became a success--in 1897 Burroughs was awarded the Franklin Institute's John Scott Medal in honor of his invention.

1904 American Arithmometer Company renames itself Burroughs Adding Machine Company and moves to Detroit, beginning construction on a huge plant; company soon becomes the biggest adding machine company in America.

The Burroughs Corporation began as the Burroughs Adding Machine Company in 1905, producing the world’s first practical adding machines, which had been perfected by the inventor William Seward Burroughs a decade or so before.

1909 Remington Typewriter Company introduces first "noiseless" typewriter.

1910: Sperry Gyroscope Co. is formed as a maker of aircraft instruments.

1911 Burroughs introduces first adding-subtracting machine.

By 1915, Burroughs Adding sold more than 90 different data processing machines, mainly to accountants.

Accountants formed the core customer base, and in 1917 Burroughs increased courtship of those customers with the debut of a magazine devoted to accounting called Burroughs Clearing House.

Growth continued in 1921 with the acquisition of Moon-Hopkins Billing Machine.

1923 Burroughs introduces the direct-multiplication billing machine.

1927: Remington merges with Rand Kardex to form Remington Rand.

1928 Burroughs ships its one millionth adding machine.

The Sperry Corporation arose out of the merger of North American Aviation Company, Curtiss-Wright Corporation, and Sperry Gyroscope in 1933.

1942-45 The Sperry S-1 precision bombsight becomes "standard" equipment when used in some United States Army Air Force bombers early in World War II.

By 1945, sales had neared the $100 million mark.

All of that changed, however, as a result of J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly's invention of ENIAC, the first electronic computer, in 1946.

The latter introduced the world's first business computer, the 409, in 1949.

1950: Eckert and Mauchly found Eckert-Mauchly Corporation, which is acquired later in the year by Remington Rand.

1951 Remington Rand delivers UNIVAC, the first commercial computer, to the United States Census Bureau.

When the Defense Department awarded the design contract for the new SAGE early-warning computer system in 1952, Burroughs, IBM, RCA, Remington Rand, and Sylvania were all prime choices.

1953 Burroughs introduces first 10-key adding machine.

In 1955 Sperry merged with Remington Rand, Inc., becoming Sperry Rand Corporation.

In 1956 Burroughs introduced its first commercial electronic computer and acquired ElectroData Corporation, a leading maker of high-speed computers.

Burroughs also entered the field of automated office machines, introducing the Sensitronic electronic bank bookkeeping machine in 1958.

1960 Sperry Rand's Ship Inertial Navigation System (SINS) enables the USS Triton submarine to circumnavigate the world without surfacing.

In 1964 Ray Macdonald became executive vice president and began overseeing the company’s day-to-day operations.

1965 Sperry introduces the UNIVAC 1108, the first multiprocessor computer.

Macdonald succeeded Eppert as CEO in 1967.

A UNIVAC 1108, the first multiprocessor system, processes the 1970 United States Census.

Burroughs completed the Illiac IV supercomputer in 1972.

Foremost among his talents was a genius for salesmanship, and the company’s efforts to market its high-speed accounting machines won a considerable chunk of the market from rival NCR. In 1974 Burroughs entered the facsimile-equipment business when it acquired Graphic Services for $30 million.

1976 Sperry introduces first cache memory disk subsystem.

______, “How Ray Macdonald’s Growth Theory Created IBM’s Toughest Competitor,” Fortune, January 1977.

In 1979 IBM announced a powerful new generation of computer systems.

Blumenthal’s reforms did not come without cost, however; in July 1980, the company reported its first drop in quarterly profits in 17 years.

In 1981 the company covered one weak spot by acquiring System Development Corporation, a software-development firm, for $9.6 million.

Sperry had been a takeover candidate since holding unsuccessful merger talks with ITT in March 1984.

Blumenthal eventually decided that economies of scale were necessary to compete with IBM. In 1985 Burroughs launched a $65-per-share takeover bid, worth $3.7 billion, for Sperry Corporation.

The purchases boosted sales by roughly $1 billion. Its 2200 Series, shipped in 1986, would also play an instrumental role in the development of the ClearPath HMP system.

In 1987 Unisys obtained Timeplex, a high-tech communications equipment company, for $300 million, and Convergent Technologies, a maker of office workstations, for $351 million.

Unisys also found itself caught up in the Pentagon procurement scandal of 1988.

By 1989 the company had begun to move into the small and mid-sized computer market, adopting AT & T's popular Unix operating system as the standard configuration for Unisys machines.

Unisys was much smaller--revenues had totaled $10.11 billion in 1990--but much more profitable.

According to Paul Mann of Aviation Week & Space Technology, the company settled its part in the Operation Ill Wind court case in September 1991, pleading guilty to fraud and bribery and agreeing to pay a record of up to $190 million in damages, penalties, and fines.

Amid a depressed global economy, Unruh managed to turn Unisys's fortunes around by 1992 through a draconian restructuring, the success of which surprised many observers.

For the year, Unisys posted net income of $510.7 million on sales of $7.54 billion, its best year since 1993.

By 1994 the company's 'services and solutions' unit was generating more revenue than the mainstay mainframe hardware operations.

Services revenues were growing about 30 percent per year but the company had failed to make a profit from its new activities, losing about $54 million during 1995 alone.

In April 1996 Unruh managed to defeat Greenway Partners' proposal to shareholders for a breakup of Unisys into three parts. (Greenway held nearly a five percent stake in Unisys.) A similar breakup proposal one year later failed as well.

Nevertheless, most observers praised Unruh's shift into services, and during 1997 that unit finally turned its first profit.

The company began outsourcing the manufacture of such hardware to Hewlett-Packard in 1998.

Wienbach's efforts appeared to pay off according to a November 1999 InformationWeek article that described Unisys as "a $7 billion former mainframe manufacturer whose big moneymaker has become sales and service of hardware with Intel processors running Windows NT."

2000 Unisys begins shipping ES7000 servers - the first in the market to take advantage of Windows 2000 Datacenter Server's support for 32-processor scalability.

2001 The Unisys CS7802 ClearPath® Plus Server provides exceptional flexibility by allowing users to partition computing resources on the fly, adjusting to varying workloads.

With sales of $6.9 billion and 37,000 employees, Unisys is working toward of goal of deriving half of its revenues from e-business by the year 2002.

2004 New Unisys 3D Blueprinting™ introduces a new way of seeing the inner workings of an organization that makes predicting the outcome of change more a matter of analysis than of guesswork.

2006 Unisys ES7000/one Enterprise Server gives clients a foundation for combining Windows and Linux applications in their data centers.

2007 Unisys opens a data center in Eagan, Minnesota with innovative "green" design - from energy-efficient servers to restoration of surrounding prairie lands.

On October 7, 2008, J. Edward Coleman replaced J. McGrath as CEO and was named Chairman of the board as well.

2009 Unisys completes security certification for 14 multi-client service centers worldwide to help clients maintain stringent security for business-critical information.

2010 Unisys launches the Unisys Hosted Secure Private Cloud Solution, giving clients the primary benefits of both provider-hosted clouds and private clouds.

2011 Unisys rolls out its most powerful ClearPath® system to date - the Libra and Dorado 800 Series.

2012 Application development services of Unisys Global Services, India, achieves CMMI-Dev version 1.3 Maturity Level 5.

2013 Unisys announces availability of its Unisys Stealth® for Mobile solution using microsegmentation to address the major security concerns facing enterprises as growing numbers of their employees use consumer devices at work.

On October 6, 2014, Unisys announced that Coleman would leave the company effective December 1, 2014.

2015 Unisys integrates the capabilities of the ClearPath® and Forward™ platforms to create the consolidated ClearPath Forward®

2016 Unisys inaugurates its newest United States client service center in Augusta, Georgia, helping spur that city's growing economy and supporting its emergence as a global hub for cybersecurity.

2017 Latest version of Unisys Stealth® microsegmentation security software introduces greater interoperability and scalability to protect data in hybrid cloud environments.

2018 Unisys launches CloudForte®

As of November 2021 the most powerful computer in the world is the Japanese supercomputer Fugaku, developed by RIKEN and Fujitsu.