50 years of the Seminar for Applied Mathematics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich, November 18-20, 1998. The early years of the Institute: Acquisition and operation of the Z4, planning of the ERMETH (Q2703034)

This is a well-told account of the combination of forsesight and chance that introduced the electronic computer into research in Switzerland. The author was an assistant to the mathematician Eduard Stiefel when, in 1948, Stiefel made the fateful decision to turn from a first-rate career as a mathematician to take up what he saw as the way of the future and develop a computer research capability at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich. In that year the author visited Maurice Wilkes's group at Cambridge University and in the following year Howard Aiken at Harvard and von Neumann at Princeton. After absorbing whatever lessons could be obtained from these sources, Stiefel snatched up a Z4 machine from Konrad Zuse. The bulk of the article gives details of the modifications that turned it into a viable computer for mathematical research. The planning of the Swiss-made ERMETH computer is a footnote to this account: the ETH group developed it, with a delayed beginning in 1950, independently of the Z4 but building on their experience with the latter and borrowing some ideas from Aiken's Mark III as well.