German data center

Coordinates: 49 ° 52 ′ 17.2 ″  N , 8 ° 38 ′ 17.6 ″  E The German Computer Center (DRZ) in Darmstadt was in the early days of electronic data processing (DV) a central facility, the only one for scientists from all Parts of the Federal Republic provided a mainframe computer . In the 1960s, it was one of the most modern facilities of its kind in Europe and did pioneering work by introducing scientists from almost all disciplines to the new technology of electronic computing, teaching them in courses and seminars, and using its own specialist staff to help them solve their problems.

Its special merit was that it

• provided valuable start-up assistance through user service, user advice and training
• Due to his diverse working contacts with IT developers and users, he assumed an important catalyst function for the spread of IT in Germany.

history

At the end of the 1950s, the plans for the establishment of a central German computer center matured from the consideration that it was extremely important for German research to provide high-performance auxiliary equipment, in particular electronic calculating machines . The German data center was founded on October 3rd, 1961. It was the first computer center in Germany that was set up independently of a university and enabled all universities and non-university research institutes to process scientific problems on a mainframe computer.

A mainframe computer was understood to mean a system that was significantly more powerful than the majority of the computers available at the time and that was therefore particularly suitable for solving "large", complex tasks. At the same time, however, such a facility was also physically large at the time, and its operation required a lot of space and personnel.

The establishment of the DRZ goes back to plans of the "Commission for Electronic Computing Systems" of the German Research Foundation (DFG) since 1956. Thereafter, a larger number of “local” and “regional” data centers with small and medium-sized machines should be created at the universities. In addition, a “supra-regional” large data center was to be set up in order to carry out those tasks that could not be handled by the data centers of a university. The realization of this idea began in 1958.

Alwin Walther , builder of the Darmstadt computer DERA and head of the Institute for Practical Mathematics (IPM) at the Technical University of Darmstadt , was a driving force in this development. He was a member of the Commission for Electronic Computing Systems and has been promoting the establishment of a supra-regional large-scale computing center since 1956. His concept, however, provided for computer research to be located in the DRZ in addition to services . According to the will of the donors, however, the DRZ should primarily become a service facility for German research.

In 1958, the company IBM Germany offered the DFG to provide an IBM 704 computer system free of charge and to take over its maintenance. When the system came to Germany in November 1960, the building for the German data center in Darmstadt was not yet ready. That is why they were first brought to the IBM data center in Düsseldorf and from August 1961 to the Institute for Physics of Jet Propulsion in Stuttgart-Vaihingen (later part of the DLR Research Center) until the construction was completed . In April 1962, around two and a half years after the start of construction, she finally moved into the new building on Rheinstrasse in Darmstadt. But the following year, the DFG replaced this system with funds from the Volkswagenwerk Foundation with an IBM 7090 (six times more powerful) with an IBM 1401 peripheral system .

The official inauguration of the DRZ took place on June 12, 1963 as part of an open house with the participation of numerous prominent guests of honor and visitors with demonstrations and great response in the press.

At the end of April 1966, the IBM 7090 was converted into an IBM 7094 by the company IBM Germany to promote German research - again free of charge. This increased the performance by 30 to 40%.

By 1966 at the latest, it became clear that the concept of a supraregional service company had fully paid off: The systems ran at full load, in three shifts. The number of institutes using it had risen from around 20 in 1961 to around 340 in 1966.

Due to the rapidly growing use of its computing capacity, the DRZ felt compelled from 1966 to use additional free capacity in other computing centers; these included the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Garching, the Institute for High Energy Physics at the University of Heidelberg, the European Space Flight Control Center ( ESOC ) in Darmstadt and the Jülich Nuclear Research Facility (KFA).

In view of the overloading of its systems, the DRZ submitted an application to the DFG in 1965 for the procurement of a more powerful system IBM System / 360-75 as well as remote transmission facilities. This request was not granted. Instead, the DFG ordered the TR 440 computer system from AEG-Telefunken as a research grant for the DRZ . It was delivered in February 1969, but initially could only be operated with a temporary operating system. The final version was available from December 1970.

In the second half of the 1960s, the expansion of the local and regional data centers at the universities made very rapid progress. Very powerful computers soon found themselves in considerable numbers in science, business and the public sector. The technical requirements for access to remote computers (remote data processing) and the network of independent computers (network systems) were basically created. This meant that at least one of the original tasks of the DRZ, namely the central provision of computing capacity, became obsolete.

In the early 1970s, planning and considerations for the future development of the DRZ, based on its work, its experience and the foreseeable requirements, concentrated on the subject of remote data processing and computer network networks as well as a connection to the large research facility GMD-Forschungszentrum Informationstechnik founded in 1968 .

On January 1, 1973, the Society for Mathematics and Data Processing took over the DRZ as the GMD Institute for Remote Data Processing .

tasks

The main tasks of the DRZ were:

• Service: The solution of scientific problems from all disciplines and from institutes all over Germany with the help of its data processing systems;
• Research: one's own research and development in the field of computer science and applications;
• Education: The education of scientists and technical specialists in the field of computer science.

service

The service operation of the DRZ was available to all non-profit scientific research institutes, which were mainly funded by the public sector. These included B. the scientific universities and university institutes in Germany, institutes of the Max Planck Society and institutions of the federal and state governments with research tasks. Tasks for commercial use (e.g. from industry and business) were not allowed to be carried out in the DRZ.

The spectrum of disciplines from which the users of the DRZ came was already extremely broad in the early days. In addition to the main applications from natural sciences, technology and mathematics, tasks from special areas were repeatedly brought to the DRZ, such as B. Studies on price formation for slaughter cows, on cultural change in Nigeria or on federal elections, cytological analyzes, weather forecast, Braille translation, Sanskrit dictionary and computer art . The ZVS (Central Office for the Allocation of Study Places) also calculated in Darmstadt for many years.

Numerous user rooms and peripheral devices were available in the DRZ for users arriving. In order to save external users time and costs of the trip, an order service was set up in the DRZ, which took care of the execution of the orders on behalf of the users. Frequently used programs were deposited with this contract service. The proportion of tasks handled by the contract service was up to 50%.

Programming courses and seminars were held for users so that they could work on their tasks independently.

A general program advisory service was readily available to assist users with difficulties in using the systems. In some cases, employees and users have developed a program together. A large program library was also available. In the end, it contained over 1000 own and third-party programs, not least thanks to the lively program exchange with around 20 countries from all over the world.

Research and Development

The tasks assigned to the DRZ required that the scientific work of the employees mainly related to applications. It included advising scientists from other institutes on solving their problems, but also researching, developing and testing new methods and procedures of the DV. Examples from your own research are work on Egyptology, philological text indexing or the creation of timetables. The scientific staff was divided into numerics (with topics from mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering), statistics (with psychology, medicine, biology, economics and social sciences) and non-numerics (linguistics, philology, historical, legal and literary studies, library science ). These subjects pretty much represented user interest in applications.

Scientists from very different disciplines met at the DRZ. They all wanted to use the mainframe to solve their problems, but initially had little experience with it. This led to an interdisciplinary collaboration. As a result, DRZ employees examined the question of whether and which sub-problems were common to the various IT applications and how they could be solved across disciplines with general purpose modules. For this purpose, algorithms and programs were developed, stored in a program library, published and made available to users.

Another regular activity of the DRZ consisted of testing new mainframe computers coming onto the market. The systems were tested for their performance with benchmarks and according to scientific methods either by manufacturers or during initial installations in Europe and the USA.

The results achieved by users and employees have been published.

education

The German Computer Center regularly held courses and seminars on DV topics and trained high school graduates to become mathematical-technical assistants. There was no computer science degree at that time.

Interested users were trained in the then current programming languages ​​and program applications in one- or two-week courses. A large number of the participants were university assistants and students. The programming languages ​​taught mainly included FORTRAN , but also ALGOL , COBOL , LISP , FORMAC, SIMSCRIPT and others. From 1961 to 1970, approximately 3,650 users received programming training. Specialty courses dealt with more specific topics, such as: B. mathematical formula processing with the computer, non-numerical problems, simulation languages, applications for economists and social scientists, psychologists and medical professionals, regional planners, jurists and linguists. Accompanying course documents were developed.

A teaching institute for mathematical-technical assistants (MTA) was affiliated to the DRZ , in which high school graduates were trained to become state-certified MTAs. The Hessian Ministry of Culture had issued examination regulations. The examination was carried out by the Darmstadt Regional Council. The training lasted two years and included attending mathematical lectures (4th semester) at the TH Darmstadt. By January 1970, 37 skilled workers had been trained in this way.

building

The new building in Darmstadt cost around 5 million DM. For comparison: The IBM 7090 had a list price of around 15 million DM at the time. The reinforced concrete and glass structure that still exists today consisted of a three-storey central building and two single-storey wings. It had 85 rooms on a usable area of ​​2150 m². In an air-conditioned part of 575 m² were the rooms for the IT systems, as well as punch card system , program library and magnetic tape storage. A kind of walkway ran around these machine rooms, with offices and other workrooms lined up on the outside. The DRZ building on Rheinstrasse in Darmstadt was recognized as being architecturally and technically outstanding.

According to the chairman of the Scientific Council Alwin Walther , the DRZ offered something like “monk cells for modern scientists”. Instead of retiring to their study with pencil and paper, they would now go to Darmstadt to use the computers there to find out in days what would otherwise have taken them years. For their (possibly several days) stay in the DRZ, the arriving scientists had some single rooms with a desk, armchairs and couch, and some two-bed rooms with simple desks and chairs. The water-flowing inner courtyard, with its old trees, was a delightful contrast to the objectivity of the rooms.

The building is still located at Rheinstrasse 75 and now houses the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology .

Equipment and personnel

The DRZ had been working with an IBM 7090 since March 1963 (which was about five times more powerful than its predecessor, the IBM 704 ). It was upgraded to an IBM 7094 (Model I) in 1966 (which brought another 30% gain in performance). The latter had 13 magnetic tape units and a disk memory for storing data and programs. There were also two IBM 1401s as peripheral computers, as well as card readers, card punches and printers. The value of the entire system was around 18 million DM. These were all computer systems of the second generation, set up in a fully air-conditioned machine hall of around 340 m² and to be admired by visitors through an approximately 25 m long glass front.

The IT systems worked in batch mode, which means that the orders were processed without any user dialogue. The programs and data of the users were punched on punch cards and read in by a 1401 via punch card reader and written on magnetic tape for processing on the 7094. The 7094 delivered the results on magnetic tape to the 1401; there they were output , depending on the case, on a high-speed printer, plotter ("coordinate drawing machine") or card punch. The users only dealt with the IT system via input and output rooms, where they could deliver their orders or collect the results. The system of the punched card as a data carrier also required a number of rooms with card punchers , card doublers , tabulating machines and punched card sorters , as well as associated staff to relieve the user of this kind of work. From 1965 it was also possible to input and output programs and data transmitted by teleprinter using punched tape.

At the end of 1966 / beginning of 1967 - but only for a short time - the IBM / 360-50 from the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster was the first computer system of the third generation . One could familiarize oneself with the innovation. In 1969 the new digital computer from AEG-Telefunken, the TR 440 , was installed in a second machine room next to the first one occupied by the IBM 7094. This was initially a provisional version with the double TR4 system and from December 1970 the final version with the BS3 system. A TR86S with six display units and ten teleprinters served as the associated peripheral system. The value of the plant was about 10 million DM.

The staff of the DRZ grew between 1962 and 1969 from around 20 to 60 scientific and technical employees. In addition, there were around half as many employees for technical services, such as operators, dispatchers, hole punches, employees in contract service, the program library and library.

Sigrid Peyerimhoff , a user of the DRZ, described the DRZ user operation in 1966 as follows:

“If you look back from today's perspective, where a workstation or a laptop PC offers more performance and storage capacity than the entire DRZ in 1966, you can hardly believe that method developments and real calculations could be carried out under the given circumstances. There were three ways to get to the DRZ: Either you traveled by train or car to Darmstadt with one or more boxes full of punched cards - provided you had a card punch at your university. That was probably the 'normal' way. You tried to translate the programs, correct mistakes and - if you were lucky - saved the programs somewhere on tape in binary code for further use in the DRZ. Such a procedure worked quite well as long as a friendly member of staff took care of the programs and was available for further instructions over the phone. […] The second way was to post cards to the DRZ, but debugging or running programs in this way was a very slow process. If you were very lucky, you could use the third type: a telex (which was the big exception at universities), with which you can send input data for programs that were already stored in binary somewhere in the DRZ and managed by DRZ staff could. The issue was always sent back with normal mail. "

organization

The German Computer Center was a foundation under private law of the Federal Republic , the State of Hesse and the German Research Foundation . The building was financed by the Federal Ministry of the Interior , while the State of Hesse provided ongoing maintenance of the institute and the German Research Foundation contributed the mainframe computer. The property belongs to the federal government.

The foundation bodies were

• the board of trustees, responsible for all administrative issues, made up of representatives from the Hessian ministries of culture and finance, the federal ministries for scientific research and finance, the DFG and the TH Darmstadt;
• the Scientific Council, which established the general scientific guidelines and advised the Foundation Board, made up of alternating representatives from science and research;
• the foundation board, responsible for drawing up and implementing the scientific work program (1961 to 1970 Ernst Glowatzki).

The foundation worked without the intention of making a profit and pursued exclusively charitable purposes.

aftermath

The German Computer Center acted as a kind of focal point for the growth of electronic data processing in Germany. With the establishment of a supraregional center, a place was created in the early days of IT where scientists from all over Germany - and abroad - met regularly and exchanged their experiences with the new technology. A common basic knowledge was gathered about

• the possible uses and variants of computers
• the organization of a data center operation and
• bridging greater distances between man and machine.

This basic knowledge later helped to set up numerous local data centers, their technical orientation, the equipment and connection to other centers for the purpose of computer networks.

As early as the 1960s, there was a transfer of know-how through employees of the DRZ who moved to other positions. Examples are: universities and technical colleges (e.g. Münster), data centers (e.g. Bremen, Würzburg), European institutes (e.g. EURATOM, ESOC), authorities (e.g. post office, Federal Press Office), DV -Industry (e.g. Software AG), business consulting institutes (e.g. DIVO) or business (e.g. Lufthansa).

The DRZ was dissolved at a time (by being part of another institution, the GMD), when remote data access and the networking of computers were already on its mind. The team had already familiarized itself with remote data processing and brought its know-how to the Society for Mathematics and Data Processing (GMD). In 2001 the GMD was integrated into the Fraunhofer Society , and since then the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT) has been located in the historic building at Rheinstrasse 75 in Darmstadt .

Interestingly
enough, the Frankfurter Rundschau already wrote in 1963: “In the long run, the importance of cybernetics (today one would say: computer science) will not lie in the existence of such large centers, but in the fact that many small calculators are used for a wide variety of purposes Are available. ”
And that's how - roughly - it turned out in the end.

literature

• German Computer Center: General Information June 1963, February 1965, November 1966, December 1967, July 1970 .
• German computer center: annual reports 1962 to 1972 .
• German data center: press review, press conference in the DRZ in Darmstadt on June 21, 1963 .
• German data center: Development of the German data center and plans for its expansion . Darmstadt, 1965.
• German Computer Center: Program information PI-1 to PI-48 . 1963 and 1972.
• German Computer Center: Series of publications by the German Computer Center. Booklets S-1 to S-27 . 1965 to 1972.
• State University Building Authority Darmstadt: German data center . In: Architecture and Housing . Issue 6. 1964, p. 326 ff.
• State Building Authority: German Computer Center Darmstadt . In: Building and Living . Issue 8. Munich 1964, p. 335 ff.
• Ernst Glowatzki: The German data center . In: Image of Science . Volume 2, Issue 5. 1965, pp. 387-395.
• Friedrich Gebhardt: Program exchange at the German Computer Center . In: A look around in science and technology . 19, 1968, p. 595.
• H. Koch: The German data center in Darmstadt . In: electronic data processing . 4, 1969, pp. 194-196.
• Ten years of the German data center . In: GMD-Spiegel . Issue 3. 1973, p. 38 ff.
• Josef Wiegand: Computer science and large-scale research. History of the Society for Mathematics and Data Processing . Studies on the history of major German research institutions. Volume 6. Frankfurt am Main, New York 1994, ISBN 3-593-35121-8 .
• Sigrid Peyerimhoff : The Development of Computational Chemistry in Germany . In: Reviews in Computational Chemistry . 18, 257, 2002.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wiegand, 1994, p. 48
2. ↑ ^{a b} DRZ, General Information, June 1963
3. ↑ Research Policy . Susa's Knowledge Transfer Network, May 22, 2002, archived from the original on January 21, 2005 ; Retrieved April 22, 2014 . 
4. ↑ ^{a b} A large data center is a service company. Susa's Knowledge Transfer Network, May 22, 2002, archived from the original on January 16, 2005 ; Retrieved April 22, 2014 . 
5. ↑ Wiegand, 1994, p. 48 ff
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e} DRZ, annual reports
7. ↑ ^{a b c} DRZ, annual report 1968
8. ^ DRZ, annual report 1970
9. ↑ ^{a b} DRZ, General Information, July 1970
10. ↑ Architecture and Housing, 6/1964
11. ↑ ^{a b} Darmstädter Echo, June 12, 1963 in: DRZ press review 1963
12. ↑ Memorial plaque on the building
13. ↑ Weser-Kurier, June 22, 1963 in: DRZ press review 1963
14. ↑ ^{a b} Computer generations. European Gymnasium Waldenburg, archived from the original on February 15, 2005 ; Retrieved April 22, 2014 . 
15. ↑ http://www.quantum-chemistry-history.com/Pey_ff_Dat/CompGerm/Pey_ff_CompGerm.htm#RechZentDarm
16. ↑ http://www.sit.fraunhofer.de/
17. ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau, June 19, 1963 in: DRZ Press Review 1963