[2] Even before the completion of the Atlas (UNIVAC 1101), the Navy asked Engineering Research Associates to design a more powerful machine.
In 1952, Engineering Research Associates asked the Armed Forces Security Agency (the predecessor of the NSA) for approval to sell the Atlas II commercially.
[4] The successor machines are the UNIVAC 1103A or Univac Scientific, which improved upon the design by replacing the unreliable Williams tube memory with magnetic-core memory, adding hardware floating-point instructions, and perhaps the earliest occurrence of a hardware interrupt feature.
[8][9][1][page needed] Significant new features on the 1103A were its magnetic-core memory and the addition of interrupts to the processor.
The 1103A was contemporary with, and a competitor to, the IBM 704, which also employed vacuum-tube logic, magnetic-core memory, and floating-point hardware.
A version of this machine was sold to the Lewis Research Center, NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) in Cleveland, Ohio.
The 1104 system is a 30-bit version of the 1103 built for Westinghouse Electric in 1957, for use on the BOMARC Missile Program.
However, by the time the BOMARC was deployed in the 1960s, a more modern computer (a version of the AN/USQ-20, designated the G-40) had replaced the UNIVAC 1104.