The JOHNNIAC or John (v. Neumann) Integrator and Automatic Computer, an early computer built by RAND, was based on the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) architecture developed by John von Neumann and named in his honor. As with all computers of its era, it was a one of a kind machine that could not exchange programs with other computers (even other IAS machines).
JOHNNIAC operated from 1953 until February 11, 1966, logging over 50,000 operational hours. After two "rescues" from the scrap heap, the machine currently resides at the Computer History Museum (http://www.computerhistory.org) in Mountain View, California.
One JOHNNIAC legacy was the JOSSprogramming language (the JOHNNIAC Open Shop System), an easy-to-use language which catered to novices. JOSS was an ancestor of DEC's FOCAL and of MUMPS.
The JOHNNIAC was one of an illustrious group of computers built in the early 1950's, all inspired by the IAS computer designed by John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
JOHNNIAC was also one of the first users of magnetic core memory, which dominated computer memories for the next 25 years.
JOHNNIAC went operational for the first time in the first half of 1953 (no one seems to know the exact date of this event) with 256 40-bit words of RCA Selectron Tube storage, a 40-column numeric printer, a converted IBM Collator for a card reader and a converted IBM Summary Punch.
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