Golem (computer)

Golem (גולם) was the name given to three computers built at the Weizmann Institute of Science and used for research at the institute and at other Israeli research centers. The project was led by Smil Ruhman, an American-Israeli computer scientist and electrical engineer who had earlier worked in the early American computer industry before joining the Weizmann Institute.

Background

The first computer built in Israel was WEIZAC, designed and built at Weizmann Institute of Science in 1955 under Chaim Leib Pekeris. It was based on the John von Neumann's computer built at Princeton.

Golem A

At the beginning of 1960, the Department of applied mathematics, headed by Pekeris, began planning a new computer to replace the WEIZAC, which had begun operating in 1955. The new computer was planned to be a hundred times faster than WEIZAC. The computer was first called WEIZAC2, but by advice of the Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem was renamed "Golem".

Pekeris invited Smil Ruhman to lead the construction of the new computer. Ruhman had studied electrical engineering at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the University of Pennsylvania, and had worked at the Moore School's digital computer laboratory, where he was among the developers of the MSAC and EDVAC computers. He later worked at Raytheon on magnetic circuits and became a co-founder and director of development at Packard Bell's computer division. His earlier work included military and aerospace computer projects and a small computer with about 250 transistors and 4,000 words of memory.