One of SRI's most notable achievements is the Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting (ERMA).

The ERMA project, sponsored by Bank of America from 1950 until about 1955, resulted in a remarkable engineering achievement that made the automation of checking accounts practical and reliable. It revolutionized the world banking system and ushered in the age of data processing machines for businesses.

*AN ERMA OPERATOR

The first ERMA, which was developed between 1950 and 1955, was a tour de force of engineering skill and ingenuity. The machine was reliable and accurate, even though the technologies needed were in a state of flux and no existing system had the required functionality. ERMA used magnetic drums and tapes for storage, and vacuum tubes, silicon diodes, and relays for logic. Unlike other batch-mode machines of the period, ERMA made account data available online to validate input and respond to inquiries about account status. Moreover, because a single machine served multiple users simultaneously, it was one of the first timesharing computers.

The final ERMA computer contained more than a million feet of wiring, 8,000 vacuum tubes, 34,000 diodes, five input consoles with electronic reading devices, two magnetic memory drums, a check sorter, a high-speed printer, a power control panel, a maintenance board, 24 racks holding 1,500 electrical packages and 500 relay packages, 12 magnetic tape drives for 2,400-foot tape reels, and a refrigeration system. ERMA weighed about 25 tons, used more than 80 kW of power, and required an air conditioning system. Working around the clock, ERMA processed 33,000 accounts per hour, 792,000 accounts in 24 hours, and 5.5 million accounts in one week. Morrin defined the new era clearly: "ERMA was the absolute beginning of the mechanization of business."

The acronym MICR stands for Magnetic Ink Character Recognition. This technology uses magnetically chargeable ink or toner to print the numbers and special characters on the bottom of checks or other financial transaction documents. The numbers usually include the account number from which the money will be drawn,the identification number and the routing and transit of the check for the bank where the account resides. MICR technology is used in the banking industry in many countries because it allows for fast and reliable document processing.

*CANADIAN CHEQUE WITH MICR FONT E-13B

In the 1950s, the demand for data processing created a need for a mechanized method of check processing. United States banks, bankers, machine manufacturers, and check processors formed committees to create a solution. The ultimate result of these committees was the adoption of the E-13B Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) in 1958 by the American Bankers Association (ABA). The E-13B system uses specially shaped characters, which are printed on the bottom of bank documents. Much of the E-13B information was accepted by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and incorporated into several specifications for MICR printing. Today these specifications are made available by ANSI, which defines, in detail, the formation of the E-13B characters, MICR line placements and components of the line, as well as other components of a bank check. For more information, please refer to the ANSI web site. Some countries have adopted the CMC-7 font providing MICR readability to their banking systems.

*This is how micr works

FORTRAN or formula translation was the first high level programming language (software) invented by John Backus for IBM in 1954, and released commercially in 1957. Fortran is still used today for programming scientific and mathematical applications. Fortran began as a digital code interpreter for the IBM 701 and was originally named Speedcoding. John Backus wanted a programming language that was closer in appearance to human language, which is the definition of a high level language, other high language programs include Ada, Algol, BASIC, COBOL, C, C++, LISP, Pascal, and Prolog.

John backus

John Backus headed the IBM team of researchers, at the Watson Scientific Laboratory, that invented Fortran. On the IBM team were the notable names of scientists like; Sheldon F. Best, Harlan Herrick (Harlan Herrick ran the first successful fortran program), Peter Sheridan, Roy Nutt, Robert Nelson, Irving Ziller, Richard Goldberg, Lois Haibt and David Sayre.The IBM team didn't invent HLL or the idea of compiling programming language into machine code, but Fortran was the first successful HLL and the Fortran I compiler holds the record for translating code for over 20 years. The first computer to run the first compiler was the IBM 704, which John Backus helped design.