The ARRA (for "Automatische Relais Rekenmachine Amsterdam", Automatic Relay Calculator Amsterdam) was the first Dutch computer, and was built from relays for the Dutch Mathematical Centre (Dutch: Mathematisch Centrum), which later became the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI).
It was designed and built by Carel Scholten and Bram Loopstra, and was finished in 1952. Because of reliability problems it was soon taken out of commission, and "updated" to the ARRA II, which actually was a completely new design. In December 1953, electronic [1] ARRA II performed its first programs and was completed in 1954. [2] [3] [4]
Other computers designed and built at the Mathematical Centre:
Other very early Dutch computers:
BARK was an early electromechanical computer. BARK was built using standard telephone relays, implementing a 32-bit binary machine. It could perform addition in 150 ms and multiplication in 250 ms. It had a memory with 50 registers and 100 constants. It was later expanded to double the memory. Howard Aiken stated in reference to BARK "This is the first computer I have seen outside Harvard that actually works."
The Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica is a research centre in the field of mathematics and theoretical computer science. It is part of the institutes organization of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and is located at the Amsterdam Science Park. This institute is famous as the creation site of the programming language Python. It was a founding member of the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM).
Adriaan "Aad" van Wijngaarden was a Dutch mathematician and computer scientist. Trained as a mechanical engineer, Van Wijngaarden emphasized and promote the mathematical aspects of computing, first in numerical analysis, then in programming languages and finally in design principles of such languages.
The APE(X)C, or All Purpose Electronic (X) Computer series was designed by Andrew Donald Booth at Birkbeck College, London in the early 1950s. His work on the APE(X)C series was sponsored by the British Rayon Research Association. Although the naming conventions are slightly unclear, it seems the first model belonged to the BRRA. According to Booth, the X stood for X-company.
Hendrik Willem Lenstra Jr. is a Dutch mathematician.
CALDIC was an electronic digital computer built with the assistance of the Office of Naval Research at the University of California, Berkeley between 1951 and 1955 to assist and enhance research being conducted at the university with a platform for high-speed computing.
Johannes Aldert "Jan" Bergstra is a Dutch computer scientist. His work has focussed on logic and the theoretical foundations of software engineering, especially on formal methods for system design. He is best known as an expert on algebraic methods for the specification of data and computational processes in general.
A mechanical computer is a computer built from mechanical components such as levers and gears rather than electronic components. The most common examples are adding machines and mechanical counters, which use the turning of gears to increment output displays. More complex examples could carry out multiplication and division—Friden used a moving head which paused at each column—and even differential analysis. One model, the Ascota 170 accounting machine sold in the 1960s calculated square roots.
Carel S. Scholten was a physicist and a pioneer of computing.
Paul Michael Béla Vitányi is a Dutch computer scientist, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Amsterdam and researcher at the Dutch Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica.
Jan Karel Lenstra is a Dutch mathematician and operations researcher, known for his work on scheduling algorithms, local search, and the travelling salesman problem.
Alexander (Lex) Schrijver is a Dutch mathematician and computer scientist, a professor of discrete mathematics and optimization at the University of Amsterdam and a fellow at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in Amsterdam. Since 1993 he has been co-editor in chief of the journal Combinatorica.
Bram Jan Loopstra was a Dutch computing pioneer who worked at the Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam and then at Electrologica with Adriaan van Wijngaarden, Carel S. Scholten and Gerrit Blaauw. From 1956 until at least 1963 he was technical director of Electrologica. At his death after a long illness on March 22, 1979, he was adjunct director of the Philips International Institute.
The Model V was among the early electromechanical general purpose computers, designed by George Stibitz and built by Bell Telephone Laboratories, operational in 1946.
Nicole Immorlica is a theoretical computer scientist at Microsoft Research, known for her work on algorithmic game theory and locality-sensitive hashing.
Jacobus Willem (Jaco) de Bakker was a Dutch theoretical computer scientist and professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Jacob Anton "Jaap" Zonneveld was a Dutch programmer who, with Edsger W. Dijkstra, wrote the first Algol 60 compiler.
Josephus C.M. Baeten is a Dutch computer scientist and mathematician, who has published on process calculus, concurrency theory, formal methods, model-based software engineering, model-based systems engineering and theory of computation.
Krzysztof R. Apt is a Polish computer scientist. He defended his PhD in mathematical logic in Warsaw, Poland in 1974. His research interests include program correctness and semantics, use of logic as a programming language, distributed computing, and game theory. Besides his own research, he has been heavily involved in service to the computing community, notably by promoting the use of logic in computer science and by advocating open access to scientific literature.