Engineering Research Associates
Encyclopedia
Engineering Research Associates, commonly known as ERA, was a pioneering computer firm from the 1950s. They became famous for their numerical computers, but as the market expanded they became better known for their drum memory
systems. They were eventually purchased by Remington Rand
and merged into their UNIVAC
department. Many of the company founders later left to form Control Data Corporation
.
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.
and Howard Engstrom, 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 a Chase Aircraft
glider
subsidiary, Northwest Aeronautical Corporation (NAC), in St. Paul, Minnesota. NAC was in the process of shutting down as the war ended most contracts, and he was looking for new projects to keep the factory running. Parker 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 headed up the new team, now known as ERA, moving to the NAC factory in 1946.
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 drum memory
in order to store the intercepted messages to be studied. To ensure secrecy, the factory was declared to be a Navy Reserve
base, and armed guards were posted at the entrance.
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 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
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. The machine, known as the Atlas, used drum memory
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 tube
s 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
in September 1953.
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 UNIVACs 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
under the leadership of Norris. Also among the staff of young engineers at ERA was Seymour Cray
, who went on to design supercomputer
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 ICBMs and satellites. There they were known as the Military Division, which was later renamed the Aerospace Division.
division of its parent and the name once again disappeared.
Drum memory
Drum memory is a magnetic data storage device and was an early form of computer memory widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s, invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria....
systems. They were eventually purchased by Remington Rand
Remington Rand
Remington Rand was an early American business machines manufacturer, best known originally as a typewriter manufacturer and in a later incarnation as the manufacturer of the UNIVAC line of mainframe computers but with antecedents in Remington Arms in the early nineteenth century. For a time, the...
and merged into their UNIVAC
UNIVAC
UNIVAC is the name of a business unit and division of the Remington Rand company formed by the 1950 purchase of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, founded four years earlier by ENIAC inventors J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, and the associated line of computers which continues to this day...
department. Many of the company founders later left to form Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation was a supercomputer firm. For most of the 1960s, it built the fastest computers in the world by far, only losing that crown in the 1970s after Seymour Cray left the company to found Cray Research, Inc....
.
Wartime Origins of ERA
The ERA team started as a group of scientists and engineers working for the US Navy during WWIIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
on code-breaking
Cryptography
Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...
, a division known as the Communications Supplementary Activity - Washington (CSAW). After the war budgets were cut for most military projects, including CSAW. Joseph Wenger
Joseph Wenger
Joseph Wenger was a Rear-Admiral of the United States Navy who served as the first Deputy Director of the Armed Forces Security Agency , and later as the first Vice Director of the National Security Agency, from December 1952 to November 1953, after the separate divisions of the AFSA merged into...
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 NorrisWilliam Norris
William Charles Norris was the pioneering CEO of Control Data Corporation, at one time one of the most powerful and respected computer companies in the world...
and Howard Engstrom, started looking for investors interested in supporting the development of a new computer company. Their only real lead, at Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
Kuhn, Loeb & Co. was a bulge bracket, investment bank founded in 1867 by Abraham Kuhn and Solomon Loeb. Under the leadership of Jacob H. Schiff, it grew to be one of the most influential investment banks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, financing America's expanding railways and growth...
, eventually fell through.
They then met John Parker, an investment banker who had run a Chase Aircraft
Chase Aircraft
The Chase Aircraft Company, founded in 1943, was an aircraft manufacturer of the United States of America, primarily constructing gliders and military transport aircraft. Lacking space for expansion, the company was purchased by Henry J. Kaiser in 1951. Plans to produce the C-123 transport for the...
glider
Military glider
Military gliders have been used by the military of various countries for carrying troops and heavy equipment to a combat zone, mainly during the Second World War. These engineless aircraft were towed into the air and most of the way to their target by military transport planes, e.g...
subsidiary, Northwest Aeronautical Corporation (NAC), in St. Paul, Minnesota. NAC was in the process of shutting down as the war ended most contracts, and he was looking for new projects to keep the factory running. Parker 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
James Forrestal
James Vincent Forrestal was the last Cabinet-level United States Secretary of the Navy and the first United States Secretary of Defense....
, he knew "something" was up and decided to give it a try. Norris headed up the new team, now known as ERA, moving to the NAC factory in 1946.
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 drum memory
Drum memory
Drum memory is a magnetic data storage device and was an early form of computer memory widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s, invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria....
in order to store the intercepted messages to be studied. To ensure secrecy, the factory was declared to be a Navy Reserve
United States Navy Reserve
The United States Navy Reserve, until 2005 known as the United States Naval Reserve, is the Reserve Component of the United States Navy...
base, and armed guards were posted at the entrance.
Goldberg and Demon Codebreakers
Their first machine, Goldberg, completed in 1947, used a crude drum made by gluing magnetic tapeMagnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders...
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 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
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
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. The machine, known as the Atlas, used drum memory
Drum memory
Drum memory is a magnetic data storage device and was an early form of computer memory widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s, invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria....
and was delivered in 1950. ERA then started to sell it commercially as the ERA 1101
UNIVAC 1101
The UNIVAC 1101, or ERA 1101, was a computer system designed by Engineering Research Associates and built by the Remington Rand corporation in the 1950s. It was the first stored program computer in the U.S. that was moved from its site of manufacture and successfully installed at a distant site...
, 1101 being binary for 13. Even before delivery of the Atlas, the Navy asked for a more powerful machine using both Williams tube
Williams tube
The Williams tube or the Williams-Kilburn tube , developed in about 1946 or 1947, was a cathode ray tube used to electronically store binary data....
s 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
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
in September 1953.
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
Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation
The Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation was founded by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, and was incorporated on December 22, 1947. After building the ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania, Eckert and Mauchly formed EMCC to build new computer designs for commercial and military applications...
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 UNIVACs were sold to business customers. However, in 1955 Remington merged with Sperry Corporation
Sperry Corporation
Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the twentieth century...
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
Control Data Corporation was a supercomputer firm. For most of the 1960s, it built the fastest computers in the world by far, only losing that crown in the 1970s after Seymour Cray left the company to found Cray Research, Inc....
under the leadership of Norris. Also among the staff of young engineers at ERA was Seymour Cray
Seymour Cray
Seymour Roger Cray was an American electrical engineer and supercomputer architect who designed a series of computers that were the fastest in the world for decades, and founded Cray Research which would build many of these machines. Called "the father of supercomputing," Cray has been credited...
, who went on to design supercomputer
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
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 ICBMs 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 MelparMelpar
The story of how Washington’s technology business unfolded during the 20th century would be incomplete without a discussion of Melpar. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s Melpar Inc was the preeminent technological company in Washington–not only was it the largest private employer in the capital...
division of its parent and the name once again disappeared.
External links
- Oral history interview with Erwin Tomash at the Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota. - Oral history interview with William Norris at the Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
focuses on his ERA years and formation of CDC - Oral history interview with Willis K. Drake at the Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
- Oral history interview with Arnold A. Cohen at the Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
- Oral history interview with John E. Parker at the Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
- Oral history interview with Hugh Duncan at the Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
- Oral history interview with Frank C. Mullaney at the Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
- 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 CorporationControl Data CorporationControl Data Corporation was a supercomputer firm. For most of the 1960s, it built the fastest computers in the world by far, only losing that crown in the 1970s after Seymour Cray left the company to found Cray Research, Inc.... - Oral history interview with James E. Thornton at the Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
- Oral history interview with John Lindsay Hill at the Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
- Oral history interview with Walter Leonard Anderson at the Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
- Oral history interview with Edward C. Svendsen at the Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
- Oral history interview with Arnold J. Ryden at the Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
- Records of the company at the Hagley Museum and LibraryHagley Museum and LibraryThe Hagley Museum and Library is a nonprofit educational institution located in Wilmington, Delaware. Hagley Museum and Library collects, preserves and interprets the history of American enterprise.- Hagley Library :...
- Records of ERA-Remington Rand-Sperry Rand at the Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
- William C. Norris Papers, 1946-1998 at the Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
- Control Data Corporation Records, 1946-1991 at the Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....