Engineering Research Associates

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.

The ERA team started as a group of scientists and engineers working for the US Navy during WWII on code-breaking, a division known as the Communications Supplementary Activity - Washington (CSAW). After the war budgets were cut for most military projects, and the Navy was particularly woried that the CSAW team would spread to various companies and they would lose their ability to quickly design new machines. Navy brass started looking for companies that would take the team on "whole", and eventually found a Chase Aircraft glider subsidiary in St. Paul, Minnesota who was about to lose all their contracts. The owner was told nothing about the work the team would do, but after being visited by a series of increasingly high ranking naval officers, he knew "something" was up and decided to give it a try. William Norris headed up the new team, now known as ERA.

During the "early" years the company took on any engineering contracting that came their way, but they were soon awarded a new Navy contract. "Task 13", to develop what was 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 tubes and drum memory, a machine known as the Atlas II. Work began in 1950 and the completed Atlas II was delivered to the NSA in September 1953. 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 manuverings in Washington, in which the Navy was criticized for running ERA as if it were their own private company. The resulting 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 in 1950. For a time the two companies operated as independent units within Remington, with ERA focussing 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.

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.

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 Melpar division of its parent and the name once again disappeared.

References

Erwin Tomash and Arnold A. Cohen, "The Birth of an ERA: Engineering Research Associates, Inc. 1945-1955," Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 1, No. 2, Oct. 1979.

External links

• Thorough description of ERA's history (http://www.hagley.lib.de.us/2015.htm)