The First Supercomputer Vs. 'The Desk Set'

The First Supercomputer Vs. 'The Desk Set' Enlarge this image toggle caption Hulton Archive/Getty Images/Life Hulton Archive/Getty Images/Life UNIVAC Predicts The 1956 Election YouTube Kee Facts: A Few Things You Didn't Know NPR librarian Kee Malesky has been dubbed "the source of all human knowledge," saving NPR hosts and reporters from themselves for 20 years. Decades before today's microprocessors, the first commercially available computer used magnetic tape and 5,600 vacuum tubes. In 1955, William Marchant wrote a play on that theme, called The Desk Set, pitting a fictional computer very much like UNIVAC against the reference library staff of a major radio-television network, otherwise known as "the desk set." Some years ago, I had the opportunity to interview one of the real librarians at CBS News who provided the inspiration for The Desk Set.