Unisys – A History of Excellence

Unisys was created in 1986 from the merger of two American companies, Sperry Rand and Burroughs Adding Machine Co. 

These companies had quite a history of their own prior to this time. In the case of Burroughs, this history dated back to the year 1886 when William Seward Burroughs founded the American Arithometer Co, the company that put the first commercial calculating and listing machines on the market. Renamed as Burroughs Adding Machine Co in 1905, it went on to sell many innovative products over the years.

Sperry Rand had similarly innovative roots, itself coming into existence following a merger, i.e. that of Remington Rand and Sperry Gyroscope, two companies that were also established in the first decade of the 20th century.

Sperry manufactured and sold navigation systems, while Remington achieved fame with its first "noiseless" typewriter and invented the first electric typewriter as early as 1925. Remington introduced its Remington Eniac, the first digital computer, in 1945 and the Univac in 1950, the machine that proved to be an important ancestor of our modern digital systems.

Unisys is still an important player today in the market for powerful systems, including, among many others, the ES7000 server supply for Microsoft Windows 2000 Data Center and the ClearPath Plus systems that form the heart of many data centres among clients such as the New York Nasdaq exchange and AT&T.

Over recent years, Unisys has gained recognition by achieving fifth place in the Fortune Survey of America’s Most Admired Companies, sixth place in Upside magazine’s e-Bizz 150 listing and a sixteenth place in the IT Services Business Review’s top fifty. The 2,400 patents which enabled Unisys to reap substantial rewards through the years are the supreme symbol of the corporation’s technological knowledge and leadership.