ERMA
1959 · Magnetic Ink Sorter Reader · Work 743 of 1,871
A paper-slip sorting machine of 1959 in the data centre of a bank in California, a low train of three sheet-steel cabinets on small castors, together four metres long and one metre high, painted warm beige, along the top a band of brushed stainless steel with an open channel and a row of pockets divided by terracotta-red plastic blocks, each pocket filled with narrow slips of paper standing on edge, six small red lamps glowing, at the right end a taller feed unit with rubber belts, a woman seen from behind in a pale smock laying a stack of slips on the feed, grey tiled floor, even light from fluorescent tubes overhead.
- What it was used for
- ERMA — Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting — was the computer system that kept Bank of America's checking accounts. The bank commissioned the feasibility study from Stanford Research Institute in 1950; SRI gives 15,000 dollars for the first two project phases and 875,000 dollars for the third. The machine read the account number off the cheque, posted it and printed the statement. SRI gives the throughput as 33,000 accounts per hour and 792,000 accounts in 24 hours; the same source says an experienced bookkeeper could post 245 accounts an hour, about 2,000 in an eight-hour day. By 1966, 12 regional ERMA centres served all but 21 of the bank's 900 branches. SMECC gives reliable cheque sorting at 600 per minute.
- What was new
- SRI counts the typeface as the project's second major innovation, after the computer. SRI says Ken Eldredge designed a magnetic-ink character shape readable by both people and machines, and that the account number moved to the front of the cheque; the invention was assigned to General Electric under US Patent Number 3,000,000. SMECC dates the demonstration of magnetic character reading to July 1956 before the American Bankers Association's Bank Management Committee, whose recommendation made MICR a standard for member banks. According to SRI, the bank engaged General Electric to build 40 machines; the first was installed in 1959.
What the sources leave open: The sources date the deliveries differently: according to SRI, the first GE-built ERMA was installed in 1959 and 32 more over the following two years; SMECC writes that GE delivered “the first 32 ERMA computing systems” in 1959. SRI mentions an order for 40 machines.