50 years (and more) of German computer history

ABSTRACT

Those who sit in front of the computer nowadays are unlikely to be doing precisely that in front of a German computer – at least not in front of hardware with its origin in German mass production. This also applies to mobile devices which for the most part have the capability of telephoning: With a few minor exceptions, the majority of our little helpers usually come from China, Korea, Taiwan or North America.

All of those who have been exposed to German computer history at one point might have observed that none of the erstwhile big names of the German computer industry or the German computer pioneers embellish today’s hardware components – or do you own a Zuse notebook, a Nixdorf smartphone, let alone a tablet by Telefunken?

It appears to be quite different when you consider the software market and its companies: both big names and small manufacturers exist in a vast variety of all branches and forms of company, partly ones that just entered the market and partly those who have been in business for a long time.

But what exactly happened to the German manufacturers and why is current hardware labelled with the erstwhile big names associated with the German market nowhere to be found?

To identify corresponding reasons and expand my knowledge about the German computer industry, I initiated a search – a search that, besides the globally experienced crisis and mistakes that have been made, also unveiled several outstanding features as well as an astonishing variety in the German market.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Computer
• Germany
• accounting machine
• mini computer
• mittlere Datentechnik

Acknowledgement

Many thanks to my girlfriend Silvia, who saw me less often during the time of research and writing. Many thanks to Volker Hermann and Rüdiger Kurth for proofreading, many proposals, improvements and motivation. Many thanks to Stefan Höltgen for the concept. Many thanks to Chiara Rochlitz for the translation.

Notes

1 Of course, the existence of other manufacturers can be obtained from the computer literature – or rather the computer booklets – that were quite popular in the mid-eighties. Besides Sinclair and Texas Instruments, Schneider Computer was quite established. I cannot remember whether we knew that these computers came from England (Amstrad) or whether we only knew Schneider as a provider for cheap stereo, but either way, Schneider was not a computer company (to us).

2 Some lists, timelines, and databases (epocalc) of a myriad of manufacturers, archive sides by the former distribution company for office machines CC SELLER (http://www.cc-computerarchiv.de/) found on the internet helped me during my research (…). Furthermore, I obtained several editions of the office machines lexicon (Büromaschinen Lexikon) by the publisher Göller which is published yearly. A large portion of the history and models of the East German computer industry derived from the project http://www.robotrontechnik.de/ by Rüdiger Kurth. The former archivist Frank Lämmel employed at Triumph Adler helped me, as well as his book about the history of the latter. He also provided me with helpful contacts and the advice to launch a search for employees of the settlement and representations of erstwhile German manufacturers, that continues to provide additional information.

3 Real Estate or cadastral survey, respectively geodesy is a very CPU-intensive administrative task that required computers early on.

4 The temporary storage of digital data was one of the main factors, especially in the early days that, when determining the price and complexity of a computer. One would need at least two tubes or double triode system to safe 1 Bit with an electron tube which, amongst other things, was realised for the registers in the CPU. To be able to save more data every possible solution was considered: The Williams tube used the storage effect of the fluorescent layer of cathode ray tubes and was able to save up to 256 Bit but was very short-lived. Ultrasound delay lines are able to save Bits serially and enabled storage of up to 1024 Bit dependent on the length of the medium. These delay line memories were relatively affordable and reliable which is why they were mostly implemented in smaller computers until the seventies. They, unfortunately, were quite slow because of the bit-serial access. Magnetic drum memory can be considered the precursor of hard drives since the data was also written onto a rotating magnetic medium with the aid of a writing and reading head. However, this was done by fixed heads which is why the amount of data was rather small and the technological effort was relatively high. The most common medium of computers in the sixties and seventies was core memory. Here a little toroidal core saves a bit through the magnetisation of the ferrite material of the ring. A myriad of these rings can be combined to big matrices. Several of them can be read or written parallelly. The increasing miniaturisation allowed memory boards of 8 kB that of course could also be cascaded. The effort to save a bit electronically with the help of transistors was similar to the same process with tubes but considerably cheaper and smaller. Though, it was still more expensive than the usage of toroidal cores. Only through the integration of complete circuits on one chip, semiconductors got more economical and smaller so that the storage capacity of computers increased rapidly.

5 Although computerisation was tested in German banks from 1957 on, the large-scale introduction did not begin until 1968. In West Germany, mostly with the help of non-German computer manufacturers. (see also Martin Schmitt: ‘Vernetzte Bankenwelt – Computerisierung in der Kreditwirtschaft der Bundesrepublik und der DDR’ From: ‘Wege in die digitale Gesellschaft – Computernutzung in der Bundesrepublik 1955–1990’ – published by Frank Bösch).

6 A hard-wired programmed logic controller achieves a programme by wiring individual logic modules or gates, while programmable logic controllers have a CPU with storage for data and either runs the programmes directly from the permanent memory like perforated tapes or E-PROM modules or possesses a programme memory in which programmes have to be loaded. The loading to volatile memory as well as the writing of E-PROM components can, for example, be performed by a programming device.

7 The loading of programmes to the internal memory is relatively sophisticated compared to the provision of the software in a read-only memory: For one thing a drive and its control have to be provided, for another, an internal memory of this capacity has to be available in the first place. Therefore, a myriad of game consoles loaded their games via ROM-cartridges for financial reasons, although copy protection was a valid argument as well. On mechanical automats, the programmes were initially ‘written’ mechanically by differently shaped riders on rails on the carriage of the printing mechanism. The programme run and the programme counter was undertaken by the horizontal movement of the carriage. These programmes were read mechanically and even contingent branch instructions were realised which resulted in an impressive choreography of the machine. Along with the later electronic arithmetic units the core rope memories were also used as read-only memory. While doing so a Bit was placed on a matrix of ferrite cores or bars by the threading of thin wire (threaded through the core or around a bar) or not (past the core or bar). The advantage is that a myriad of layers of bit matrices could be placed on the core or bar matrices and then could be read separately. This facilitated the storage of a lot of information on a single board. Another form of the electronic read-only memory before E-PROMs or ROMs was the diode matrix. Here every line of a programme was replaced by diodes bit by bit (no diode = 0, soldered diode = 1) and could be called up electronically by a multiplexer. There were also pluggable variants for the creation of programmes.

8 Ilse Müller describes in great detail how the computer industry and especially the field of mid-range data functioned in her book ‘Glanz und Elend der deutschen Computerindustrie: Meine Erfahrungen als High-Tech-Unternehmerin’ (published in 1995 by Campus-Verlag, ISBN 3593352206, 9783593352206) and seems to have trodden on someone’s toes since the majority of the edition was bought up and disappeared.

9 Personal computer refers to the PC introduced by IBM and its widely spread compatible siblings as well as the size of the computer (desktops – computers with keyboard and display that fit on the desk) for the personal usage that thereby had been established.

10 Workstations are computers that share all the properties of PCs but also possessed additional subsystems that worked autonomously like numeric supplementary processors, better graphics chips or faster I/O interfaces. Operating systems with graphic user interfaces were employed and workstations were mostly network-compatible.

11 Officially, the home computers were called ‘Kleincomputer’ (∼ smallcomputer) in the GDR and served as an instrument for education.

12 There are no remaining German mass computers - the market is divided by Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple, Acer, Asus. Occasionally, German assemblers for server-, desktop, and notebook computers can be found in small quantities - i.e. bluechip, exone, medion, Schenker, TREKSTOR, TAROX, TUXEDO, terra by WORTMANN,….