UNITE Inc.

USE Inc. began life as the Univac Scientific Exchange, which was formed at a meeting in Los Angeles, Calif., on December 19-20, 1955, of users of Remington Rand's Univac 1103A computer. The original members were the Boeing Airplane Company, Holloman Air Force Base, Lockheed Missile Systems Division and Ramo-Woolridge Corporation.

As commercial installations of the UNIVAC computers increased in the mid-1950s the need for a user's support group, where problems about performance and programming could be discussed, became clear. One of the reasons IBM was so successful was that it pioneered in providing customer support for technically unsophisticated users. By the mid-1950s, Remington Rand had decided to follow IBM's lead and establish a users group, a policy that was carried out by its successor, Sperry Rand Corporation. Initially, membership was restricted to users of the UNIVAC 1103A Scientific computer. The group established standards, programming and publications committees to deal with issues of common concern. Among the accomplishments of these committees were: the establishment of a USE language for communications, the development of standard formats for the coding of routines and subroutines, and the creation of a common compiler. This information was disseminated in an informal publication which became known as USEFUL NOTES. The organization was expanded to include users of the Univac 1105 in 1958, the 1107 in 1961, and the 1108 in 1965.

By 1960 the USE group, which had begun with four members, had grown to seventeen. Semi-annual conferences usually attracted between sixty and eighty attendees. These meetings focused on software issues. In 1959, the new COBOL language was the major agenda item. By 1962, FORTRAN was the prime programming language of interest. During the mid-1960s USE was represented on Sperry Univac's standards committee which was responsible for the development of programming languages. In 1964 the USE group was expanded to include the users of all large scale computers manufactured by Sperry Rand. The name was formally shortened to "USE" in 1969. Until 1974, Sperry Univac provided full administrative management support for USE. This was partially withdrawn in the 1974, and USE was incorporated as an independent non-profit corporation, USE Inc., on June 2, 1975. It continued, however, to be primarily concerned with the technical development of large Sperry Univac computers.

Members of USE Inc. voted in December 1993 to merge with CUBE, another computer users group, to form UNITE Inc. (Unisys Information Technology Exchange), an Illinois not-for-profit corporation.

From the description of Records, 1955-1997. (Hagley Museum & Library). WorldCat record id: 122516179