ERMETH
The ERMETH (ETH Electronic Calculator) was one of the first computers in Europe and was developed and built by Eduard Stiefel and his Institute for Applied Mathematics at ETH Zurich between 1948 and 1956. It was then in use until 1963.
role models
Eduard Stiefel and his two senior assistants Heinz Rutishauser and Ambros Speiser based the development of ERMETH on models in the USA and Great Britain. In 1949 Rutishauser and Speiser made study trips to Howard Aiken ( Harvard University ), John von Neumann ( Princeton University ) and the University of Cambridge , which operated the EDSAC . In 1950, for five years, Stiefel rented the only digital computer in continental Europe that existed in continental Europe, the Zuse Z4 , completed in 1945 by Konrad Zuse , in order to be able to gain experience with an automatic calculator while ERMETH was being built.
Technical concept
In contrast to the Z4, the ERMETH had a classic Von Neumann architecture , i.e. it was an automatic computer in which the program and processed data are stored in the same working memory; This made it possible to process both numbers and parts of the program automatically. The ERMETH was designed for numerical calculations and worked in real decimal (not dual or hexadecimal) and had commands for all four basic calculation types with floating point and fixed point numbers, but not for processing letters. At the start of operations (1956) it consisted of devices ( hardware ) and stored user programs ( software ), but had no operating system , so that every user first read in his program, which had already been prepared on punched cards in machine language, and then started it by setting the program counter to the first command had to. Program-controlled user data were then read in (from punch cards) and parameter values were requested from the user (via the keyboard).
As early as 1952, Heinz Rutishauser presented the concept of the compiler for the use of machine-independent computer languages in his habilitation thesis on "automatic calculation plan production" . Thanks to the development of the high-level programming language Algol (Algol 58 and Algol 60), machine-independent programming later became possible; For entering letters, the ERMETH 1958 had to be supplemented with a punched tape reader.
ERMETH had an arithmetic unit with 1,500 electron tubes . A 1.5 ton magnetic drum with space for 10,000 words with 16 decimal places (14 digits, sign, check digit), which rotated at 100 revolutions per second, served as the main memory . This also determined the speed at which ERMETH would work per command step, because the average access time to the commands and numbers stored on the drum was 5 milliseconds; the much higher operating speed of the electron tubes did not change this. The use of the 10'000 words of the main memory was very flexible. Per word (with 16 decimal places) you could choose between a floating point number (11 valid places, 3-digit exponent, sign and check digit), a fixed point number (14 places, sign, check digit) or two commands (2 places for command type, 1 place for index register, 4 digits for memory address). An example: the compiler for Algol 60 programs developed by Hans Rudolf Schwarz occupied 4,000 memory cells with double commands, so that 6,000 cells remained available for a user program and its user data. If that wasn't enough, all 10,000 cells could also be used, but only after overwriting the compiler. In this case, the compiler had to be reloaded from punch cards before the next Algol program, which alone took almost an hour.
Punched cards of the Remington-Rand type with 90 columns were used for numerical data input, and later 5-channel punched strips were also used for the Algol program input . The data output was performed either on punched cards or on a IBM - typewriter , but also just spent digits. Using punch cards, it was also possible to temporarily store larger amounts of data in the sense of a secondary memory.
The electrical power consumption of the ERMETH was 30 kW . It was sensitive to fluctuations in the network voltage, for example when the tram started operating in the morning.
The ERMETH was built as a one-off production from 1955 onwards, with various technical, financial and personal setbacks, and was gradually put into operation from 1956; it did its job until October 1963, when it was dismantled and packaged. A planned license building for ERMETH by a private company did not materialize. After room renovations, a CDC 1604A from Control Data Corporation took over in April 1964 . The computing power available at ETH increased by a factor of 100 with the transition from the electromechanical Z4 to the ERMETH, but by a factor of 400 with the transition from the ERMETH with its time-critical magnetic drum memory to the fully electronic CDC 1604A.
commitment
The ERMETH was used in research and development for very different tasks. The employees of the Institute for Applied Mathematics used them for their own scientific topics for the development of numerical algorithms and of working aids in the sense of the first operating system components. But you were also active as a consultant and helper in the arithmetic work of other ERMETH users. These came from the ETH and other universities as well as from industry and from civil and military federal agencies.
ERMETH was also used in teaching. There were optional programming lectures from the 1950s, exercises on the computer system (in groups) as well. If students had written a program and transferred it to punch cards, they could hand in their punch card package and, depending on the quality of the program, received the expected or incorrect result or even a program termination printed out the next day.
ERMETH today
After its dismantling in 1963, the ERMETH was initially stored as an important exhibit for the planned Technorama in Winterthur and then exhibited there from 1982–2004. Since the end of 2006 it has been on permanent loan from ETH Zurich in the Museum for Communication in Bern .
Web links
- ERMETH - ETH electronic calculating machine.
- ETH Zurich. Cultural goods catalog: ERMETH.
- Zehnder, Carl August. ERMETH and Lilith in the MTW.
- Abrahams, Katya. 150 interested people marvel at the ERMETH calculating machine. November 30, 2006.
literature
- Heinz Rutishauser. Automatic calculation plan production with program-controlled calculating machines , messages from the Institute for Applied Mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich; Birkhäuser, Basel 1952.
- Ambros P. Speiser. ERMETH: Project of an electronic calculating machine at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and previous development results . Publishing house NZZ, Zurich 1954.
- Heinz Waldburger. Instructions for use for the ERMETH (ETH electronic calculating machine) . Institute for Applied Mathematics at ETH Zurich, 1960.
- Trueb, Lucien F. Ermeth - the self-made computer at ETH Zurich. NZZ on Sunday, 22./23. December 2007, p. E17.
- NZZ format. When will the artificial brain come? Swiss Made: Ermeth, the giant ETH computer from the 1950s, could do less than today's cheapest pocket calculator. ( Memento from June 17, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) (transcript)
- Tobler, Beatrice. Z4 and ERMETH: Machines in the service of scientific computing. Interview with Ambros Speiser and Carl August Zehnder. In: Kommunikation, Museum für (ed.): Loading History - Computergeschichte (n) aus der Schweiz. Bern 2001, pp. 12–21.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bruderer, Herbert: Milestones in computing technology. On the history of mathematics and computer science . De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-037547-3 , pp. 484-506 .