Engineering Research Associates, commonly known as ERA, was a pioneering computer firm from the 1950s. ERA became famous for their numerical computers, but as the market expanded they became better known for their
drum memory
Drum memory was a magnetic data storage device invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria. Drums were widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s as computer memory.
For many early computers, drum memory formed the main working memory of ...
systems. They were eventually purchased by
Remington Rand and merged into their
UNIVAC
UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was a line of electronic digital stored-program computers starting with the products of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. Later the name was applied to a division of the Remington Rand company an ...
department. Many of the company founders later left to form
Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer firm. CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, Burroughs Corporation, DEC, NCR, General Electric, Honeywe ...
.
Wartime origins of ERA
The ERA team started as a group of scientists and engineers working for the
US Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
during
WWII
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
on
code-breaking, a division known as the Communications Supplementary Activity - Washington (CSAW). After the war budgets were cut for most military projects, including CSAW.
Joseph Wenger of the Navy's cryptoanalytic group was particularly worried that the CSAW team would spread to various companies and the Navy would lose their ability to quickly design new machines.
Post-war organization
Wenger and two members of the CSAW team,
William Norris and
Howard Engstrom
Howard T. Engstrom (1902 – 1962) was a Yale University mathematics professor and headed research operations at the United States Navy's Communication Supplementary Activities CSAW during World War II. Along with William Norris and others he f ...
, started looking for investors interested in supporting the development of a new computer company. Their only real lead, at
Kuhn, Loeb & Co., eventually fell through.
They then met John Parker, an investment banker who had run Northwest Aeronautical Corporation (NAC), a
glider
Glider may refer to:
Aircraft and transport Aircraft
* Glider (aircraft), heavier-than-air aircraft primarily intended for unpowered flight
** Glider (sailplane), a rigid-winged glider aircraft with an undercarriage, used in the sport of gliding
...
subsidiary of
Chase Aircraft, in
St. Paul, Minnesota
Saint Paul (abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. Situated on high bluffs overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River, Saint Paul is a regional business hub and the center o ...
. NAC was in the process of shutting down as the war ended most contracts, and Parker was looking for new projects to keep the factory running. He was told nothing about the work the team would do, but after being visited by a series of increasingly high-ranking naval officers culminating with
James Forrestal, he knew "something" was up and decided to give it a try. Norris, Engstrom, and their group incorporated ERA in January, 1946, hired forty of their codebreaking colleagues, and moved to the NAC factory.
During the early years, the company took on any engineering work that came their way, but were generally kept in business developing new code-breaking machines for the Navy. Most of the machines were custom-built to crack a specific code, and increasingly used magnetic
drum memory
Drum memory was a magnetic data storage device invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria. Drums were widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s as computer memory.
For many early computers, drum memory formed the main working memory of ...
to process and analyze the coded texts. To ensure secrecy, the factory was declared to be a
Navy Reserve base, and armed guards were posted at the entrance. ERA's numerous military and intelligence projects contributed to Minnesota's becoming "the Land of 10,000 Top-Secret Computer Projects."
Goldberg and Demon codebreakers
Their first machine, Goldberg, completed in 1947, used a crude drum made by gluing
magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnet ...
to the surface of a large metal cylinder that could be spun at 50 RPM for reading (and much slower for writing). Over the next few years, the drum memory systems increased in capacity and speed, along with the
paper tape
Five- and eight-hole punched paper tape
Paper tape reader on the Harwell computer with a small piece of five-hole tape connected in a circle – creating a physical program loop
Punched tape or perforated paper tape is a form of data storage ...
readers needed to feed the data onto the drums. They later ended up in a major patent fight with Technitrol Engineering, who introduced a drum memory of their own in 1952.
One of the follow-on machines, Demon, was built to crack a specific Soviet code. In 1949 the code was changed, rendering the machine useless. James Pendergrass, a Navy officer attached to the codebreaking unit, had attended a series of lectures at the
Moore School of Engineering at the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...
in 1946, and became convinced the only lasting solution to the code breaking problem was a computer that could be quickly re-programmed to work on different tasks. In 1947 the Navy awarded ERA a contract, "Task 13", to develop what was destined to be the first
stored program computer in the U.S. The machine, known as the
Atlas
An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth.
Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geogra ...
, used
drum memory
Drum memory was a magnetic data storage device invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria. Drums were widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s as computer memory.
For many early computers, drum memory formed the main working memory of ...
and was delivered in 1950. ERA then started to sell it commercially as the
ERA 1101, 1101 being binary for 13. Even before delivery of the Atlas, the Navy asked for a more powerful machine using both
Williams tubes and drum memory, a machine known as the
Atlas II. Work began in 1950 and the completed Atlas II was delivered to the still-secret
NSA
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collec ...
in September 1953.
''High-speed Computing Devices''
In 1950, ERA published ''High-speed Computing Devices,''
a 450-page textbook that summarized the state of computer technology at that time. It describes the basic components of digital logic, the devices and circuits used to build these components, and the principles of computer design and programming. This book was a revision of a report submitted to the
Office of Naval Research
The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is an organization within the United States Department of the Navy responsible for the science and technology programs of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Established by Congress in 1946, its mission is to pl ...
, omitting references to cryptography;
Mina Rees, then director of the ONR mathematical section, suggested that it should be published.
One of the book's most successful predictions concerned the
transistor
upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink).
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch ...
, which had recently been invented at
Bell Laboratories
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...
: "It will probably be competitive with the electron tube in total cost per stage." (page 423)
Legal troubles and the Remington Rand acquisition
ERA looked to selling similar machines to a number of customers, but at about this time they became embroiled in a lengthy series of political maneuvering in Washington.
Drew Pearson's ''
Washington Merry-Go-Round'' claimed that the founding of ERA was a conflict of interest for Norris and Engstrom because they had used their war-time government connections to set up a company for their own profit. The resulting legal fight left the company drained, both financially and emotionally. In 1952 they were purchased by Remington Rand, largely as a result of these problems.
Remington Rand already had a computing division however, after they had purchased the
Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1950. For a time the two companies operated as independent units within Remington, with ERA focusing on scientific and military customers, while Eckert–Mauchly's
UNIVAC
UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was a line of electronic digital stored-program computers starting with the products of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. Later the name was applied to a division of the Remington Rand company an ...
s were sold to business customers. However, in 1955 Remington merged with
Sperry Corporation to become
Sperry Rand. Both ERA and Eckert–Mauchly were folded into a single division as Sperry-UNIVAC. Much of ERA's work was dropped, while their drum technology was used in newer UNIVAC machines. A number of employees were not happy with this move and decamped to form
Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer firm. CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, Burroughs Corporation, DEC, NCR, General Electric, Honeywe ...
under the leadership of Norris. Among them was
Seymour Cray, who went on to design
supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructio ...
s and create
Cray Computers.
But the core of the ERA team lived on. Eventually they were moved to a new research division where they had considerably more freedom. They worked primarily on computing systems for military use, and they pioneered a number of early command and control and guidance systems for
ICBM
An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapons ...
s and satellites. There they were known as the Military Division, which was later renamed the Aerospace Division.
The new ERA
In the late 1970s, a number of Rand employees purchased the ERA name and started a small government contracting firm. In 1989, the new ERA became a
wholly owned subsidiary of
E-Systems. In 1995, it was merged into the
Melpar
Melpar was an American government contractor in the 20th century Cold War period.
At a time when most employment in Washington, DC was directly by the US federal government, Melpar became an early private sector contracting company training a hig ...
division of its parent and the name once again disappeared.
References
General references
*
*Erwin Tomash and Arnold A. Cohen, "The Birth of an ERA: Engineering Research Associates, Inc. 1945-1955," ''Annals of the History of Computing'', Vol. 1, No. 2, Oct. 1979.
*''High Speed Computing Devices'' by the Staff of Engineering Research Associates; (1950); New introduction by Arnold A. Cohen; 6"x9"; 493 pp.; illus; biblio; bios; index; (available through
Charles Babbage Institute)
*Arthur L. Norberg, ''Computers and Commerce: A Study of Technology and Management at Eckert–Mauchly Computer Company, Engineering Research Associates, and Remington Rand, 1946-1957'' (MIT Press, 2005).
*David Lundstrom, ''A Few Good Men from Univac'', MIT Press, 1987.
Engineering Research Associates and the Atlas Computer
External links
Oral history interview with Erwin Tomashat the
Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.
Oral history interview with William Norrisat the
Charles Babbage Institute focuses on his ERA years and formation of CDC
Oral history interview with Willis K. Drakeat the
Charles Babbage InstituteOral history interview with Arnold A. Cohenat the
Charles Babbage InstituteOral history interview with John E. Parkerat the
Charles Babbage InstituteOral history interview with Hugh Duncanat the
Charles Babbage InstituteOral history interview with Frank C. Mullaneyat the
Charles Babbage Institute - discusses Engineering Research Associates (ERA), especially the Atlas (ERA 1101) computer, and successors; John L. Hill; the acquisition of ERA by Remington Rand, J. Presper Eckert, and the formation of
Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer firm. CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, Burroughs Corporation, DEC, NCR, General Electric, Honeywe ...
Oral history interview with James E. Thorntonat the
Charles Babbage InstituteOral history interview with John Lindsay Hillat the
Charles Babbage InstituteOral history interview with Walter Leonard Andersonat the
Charles Babbage InstituteOral history interview with Edward C. Svendsenat the
Charles Babbage InstituteOral history interview with Arnold J. Rydenat the
Charles Babbage InstituteSperry Corporation, UNIVAC Division Photograph Collectionat
Hagley Museum and Library
The Hagley Museum and Library is a nonprofit educational institution in unincorporated New Castle County, Delaware, near Wilmington. Covering more than along the banks of the Brandywine Creek, the museum and grounds include the first du Po ...
Sperry Rand Corporation, Engineering Research Associates (ERA) Division recordsat
Hagley Museum and Library
The Hagley Museum and Library is a nonprofit educational institution in unincorporated New Castle County, Delaware, near Wilmington. Covering more than along the banks of the Brandywine Creek, the museum and grounds include the first du Po ...
Sperry Rand Corporation, Univac Division recordsat
Hagley Museum and Library
The Hagley Museum and Library is a nonprofit educational institution in unincorporated New Castle County, Delaware, near Wilmington. Covering more than along the banks of the Brandywine Creek, the museum and grounds include the first du Po ...
Sperry-UNIVAC recordsat
Hagley Museum and Library
The Hagley Museum and Library is a nonprofit educational institution in unincorporated New Castle County, Delaware, near Wilmington. Covering more than along the banks of the Brandywine Creek, the museum and grounds include the first du Po ...
Records of ERA-Remington Rand-Sperry Randat the
Charles Babbage InstituteWilliam C. Norris Papers, 1946-1998at the
Charles Babbage InstituteControl Data Corporation Records, 1946-1991at the
Charles Babbage InstituteTechnitrol, Inc., Lawsuit recordsat
Hagley Museum and Library
The Hagley Museum and Library is a nonprofit educational institution in unincorporated New Castle County, Delaware, near Wilmington. Covering more than along the banks of the Brandywine Creek, the museum and grounds include the first du Po ...
. The collection includes copies of trial records from the suit of Technitrol v. Sperry Rand.
YouTube Video: Engineering Research Associates Computer History Archives
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American companies established in 1946
American companies disestablished in 1952
Companies based in Saint Paul, Minnesota
Computer companies established in 1946
Computer companies disestablished in 1952
Control Data Corporation
Defunct companies based in Minnesota
Defunct computer companies of the United States