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Stay alert — a nice surprise could be just around the corner!
Thank you, Stéphane Dalbera, for your post of this day on LinkedIn about the pioneer Heinz Ruthishauser.
It reminded me of key milestones in the history of computing in Switzerland, and also that the unexpected often carries the flavor of the marvelous! Even when mice are involved...
In January 1948, the Institute of Applied Mathematics was established at ETH Zurich, driven by the vision of Eduard Stiefel (1909-1978). After WWII, recognising the development of computers and algorithms abroad, particularly in the United States, Eduard Stiefel understood the scientific and economic importance of this field of research for a highly industrialised country like Switzerland. His aim was to introduce scientific computing on programmable machines to Switzerland.
Heinz Rutishauser (1918–1970) was a research assistant to Eduard Stiefel.
Prof. Stiefel and his team built the ERMETH (Elektronische RechenMaschine an der ETH). This computer was operational at ETHZ from 1956 to 1963.
"The ERMETH worked with 16-digit decimal words, each of which contained two instructions, one 14-digit fixed point number, or one floating-point number with 11 digit mantissa. A floating-point addition took 4 ms, a multiplication 18 ms. The magnetic drum could store 10’000 words. Hence, for the time the machine was not very fast, but it had a remarkably large memory. The machine contained some 1900 electron tubes and some 7000 germanium diodes", reads the captivating article:
✏️ "The pioneer days of scientific computing in Switzerland" (Martin H. Gutknecht, ETHZ).
The ERMETH is currently on display at the Museum of Communication in Bern, Switzerland.
Life is full of surprises!
A few years ago, as I was admiring the ERMETH and pondering the ingenuity of its inventors, a mediator from the Museum of Communication came to me. We had a chat. One thing leading to another, she brought out of their storage – not the original one, which is safely kept – but a copy of the Xerox mouse that was brought back from the United States by Niklaus Wirth on his return from a sabbatical in the 1970s. A gift of a yellow rectangular mouse packed in a coloured cardboard box. He needed more mice for his Lilith workstation, so in 1979 he approached Prof. Nicoud at EPFL. The only person in Switzerland interested in mice. This order of 30 mice was a decisive element in the development and history of the peripheral, which is a standard today but was still in the very prototype stage at the time. A computer without a mouse, hard to imagine, isn’t it?
This unexpected encounter in front of the imposing ERMETH sparked the writing of an illustrated article available on the "Mémoires vives" page of the Musée Bolo:
✏️ "Une souris venue d'Amérique" (in French)
I wish you all a lovely day!
And enjoy your reading!
Anne-Sylvie
