LARC (Livermore Atomic Research Computer) was one of the first supercomputers. Built by the UNIVAC division of the Sperry Rand Corporation, two LARC computers were delivered to the government for advanced research purposes: one went to the Lawrence Radiation Labs in Livermore, California for use in atomic research (from whence the acronym "LARC" is derived), and the other was installed at the David Taylor Model Basin (which later became the Naval Ships Research and Development Center) located near Washington, D.C. Delivered in 1960, both LARC computers were taken out of service by the late 1960s.

LARC is considered a second-generation computer because its processing units used transistor circuitry, versus the vacuum tubes employed by earlier, first generation computers. There were several unique features of LARC. First, arithmetic computations were performed on decimal numbers (i.e., numbers represented in the familiar...