ERMA was a computer technology that automated bank bookkeeping and check processing. Developed at the nonprofit research institution SRI International under contract from Bank of America, the project
The ERMA logo
The ERMA team from SRI International
An early check, demonstrating the features developed by SRI: account numbers and Magnetic Ink Character Recognition.
The wiring in an ERMA machine
Joseph Weizenbaum
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Joseph Weizenbaum was a German-American computer scientist and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the namesake of the Weizenbaum Award and the Weizenbaum Institute.
Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting
…expressed interest in building the production machines, and General Electric won the competition. Among GE's team members was AI pioneer and early critic Joseph Weizenbaum. The company took the basic design, but decided it was time to move the tube-based system to a transistor-based one using core memory. This won SRI yet…
Weizenbaum in 1982