Finding Aids

Harry Lobe Straus (1896-1949) was an early computer engineer and developer of totalisator or "tote board," an electronic system that printed and issued betting tickets at racetracks, automatically computed the bets and odds, and displayed them on a large board. This collection is a small group of papers preserved by his personal secretary, Christine Behm Nunus (1906-1998). It includes financial statements, business letters, estate papers, and items relating to Straus's biography, "Win. Place. Show."

The Sperry Corporation was an electronics company and the UNIVAC Division manufactured the first commercial digital computer. The Sperry UNIVAC division has its origins in the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC), founded in 1946 by J. Presper Eckert (1919-1995) and John W. Mauchly (1907-1980), the developers of ENIAC, the first electronic digital computer. This collection consists of the administrative, financial, marketing, personnel, and legal records of Sperry UNIVAC and its predecessor companies. Also included are manuals, reports, and publications on hardware and software developed by Sperry UNIVAC; task force reports and studies for developing new products; printed materials from the Systems Programming Library Service; and biographical and historical data.