Joseph Weizenbaum was a German American computer scientist and a professor at MIT. The Weizenbaum Award and Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society – The German Internet Institute are named after him.

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 began in 1950 and was publicly revealed in September 1955.