Left: The WEIZAC, the first Institute-built computer. Right: Prof Chaim' Pekeris, the man behind the WEIZAC. Below: Prof Amir Pnueli.
ONE WAY to get by, or so goes the
popular song, is "with a little help
from your friends."
In the case of one of Israel's lead-
ing computer-design firms, Scitex
Ltd., a little help from the Weiz-
mann Institute, especially during the
company's formative years, meant a
great deal. The firm has flourished to
such an extent that today, in addition
to its own major complex in the small
town of Herzliya, Scitex maintains
offices in Europe and North Amer-
ica, as well as a niche on the Tel Aviv
and New York Stock Exchanges.
Weizmann Institute mathemati-
cian Prof. Amir Pnueli recalls having
entered Scitex "from the ground
floor" when that was really all there
was to it. In an attempt to assist
science-based and - high-tech" in-
dustries in Israel, the Institute, in the
early Seventies, offered office and
lab facilities on campus. Scitex, says
Prof. Pnueli, was afforded a half-
floor in the Wolfson Institute of
Experimental Biology.
Experimental biology, however,
hardly concerned the founders of
Scitex, or, as it was called then,
"Scientific Technologies." Rather,
the company devoted itself initially
to the field of electro-optics; in the
main, designing instrumentation for
Israel's Defence Ministry.
"Then, one day," Pnueli relates,
"a U.S. textile firm asked the com-
pany to work on a computer-design
project for textile manufacturing.
Scientific Technologies agreed to
undertake the project strictly as a
one-shot affair, and it hired me and
two Institute computer program-
mers as consultants.
"In fact, Scitex had knocked on
the right door, perhaps on the only
door at the time. After all, the
Weizmann Institute of Science had,
during the mid- Fifties, designed and
constructed the first computer in
Israel. Moreover, that computer was
then among the very few of its size
and power anywhere in the world."
The WEIZAC computer, as it was
called, had first been proposed in
1946 by Institute mathematician
Prof. Chaim Pekeris and evoked
favourable reactions from the Insti-
tute's Advisory Committee. Indeed,
the only notable objection was made
by Albert Einstein, who asked:
"Why should a country like Pales-
tine build an electronic computer
when there is hardly one in opera-
tion on the European continent?"
Fortunately, Einstein did not enjoy
the last word.
John von Neumann, the principal
architect of modern computing, who
e computer connection
was also a member of the Committee.
persuaded the great physicist that
the collective talent of the Institute's
fledgling staff would surely justify
the investment.
The building of WEIZAC was
begun in the early Fifties by a pre-
dominantly Israeli team, led and
trained by Gerald Estrin - one of
von Neumann's computer engineers
- who is now at UCLA and an active
member of the Institute's Board of
Governors. Although WEIZAC was
constructed with imported compo-
nents and technology, its basic de-
sign was supplemented by Israeli
innovations.
The early Sixties, however, saw
the need for a newer, more powerful;
replacement. Again, a U.S. design
was used as a model, but this time
the Institute computer specialists
were prepared to go further.
Prof. Smil Ruhman, then in Re-
hovot on a Fulbright Fellowship,
decided to use printed circuits based
on a novel type of switching transis-
tor, thereby increasing the volume
and power of the prototype by , a
factor of ten.
This bold step was so marked a
departure from the past that a new
name seemed called for. The world-
renowned scholar of Jewish mystic-
ism, Prof. Gershom Scholem, sug-
gested the name Golem, after the
magical clay creature created in the
15th century as a servant and protec-
tor of Rabbi Judah Loew Ben Be-
zalel of Prague.
Golem Aleph, the first Golem,
was later superseded by Golem Bet.
a twin computer equipped with va-
rious peripherals. When combined
with its predecessor, Golem Bet vir-
tually doubled the Institute's com-
puting power. But, impressive as
these machines were at the time,
they were also portents of a far more
important process that lay ahead.
Via their construction and use,
generations of Israeli scientists
achieved the kind of training that
was to prove invaluable, both to the
Institute and to Israel in general.
Many scientists and technicians,
among them Pnueli, were able - by
virtue of the considerable experi-
ence gleaned at the Institute - to
provide the basis for numerous
Israeli "high-tech" industries, them-
selves sources of much-needed fore-
ign capital for a growing economy.
In the case of Scitex, the textile
computer system programmed by
Pnueli and his colleagues at the start
of the Seventies proved so successful
that Scitex decided to continue de-
signing such systems for competing
companies.
"From that first knitting
machine," claims Pnueli, "the
momentum just grew by itself, with
more and more applications along
the lines of computer-aided design
systems, first for textiles, later for
printing. For instance, one system
specialized in the processing and
printing of geographical maps,
another (Scitex's most successful
system to date) dealt With the
editing of high-quality colour pic-
tures for magazines."
When Scitex outgrew the space
available at the Weizmann Institute„
the company moved to Herzliya. The
computer technicians who had work-
ed as Institute consultants with
Pnueli subsequently set up their own
firm which continued to supply
Scitex with first-rate programmes.
And, to this day, important positions
at Scitex are occupied by former
Institute staff members who moved
there after the Institute's large-scale
computer construction programme
ceased. Other Institute staffers con-
sult with Scitex and similar corn-
panies.
Indeed, Pnueli is but one of a '-
growing group of Institute mathe-
maticians who have found them- '-
selves at the forefront of computer
science and the vanguard of the
computer industry.
Prof. Adi Shamir, for instance,
followed his faitious recent cracking
of the supposedly unbreakable Stan-
ford computer code by- developing,,
among other things, new types of
computer "chips" and a novel sys-
tem to combat software piracy.
Meanwhile, 28-year-old Dr. Ehud
Shapiro achieved distinction for his
work on the new logic-based compu-
ter language Prolog. This led to
research contra c ts with the giant
U.S. computer companies IBM and
DEC as well as cooperative work
with the Japanese on their "Fifth
Generation" computer project.
Prof. David Harel is helping out
with computer-aided design for the
new Israel Lavie fighter aircraft, and
a group headed by Prof. Shimon
Ullman is studying the operation of
human vision, with the goal of trans-
lating the knowledge gained into
computerized machines - robots -
with improved decision-taking capa-
bilities. All • these activities show
the benefits of the Institute's
policy of combining profound scien-
tific research with an "ear to the
ground" for demands of technology.
S.T.
Prof Pekeris holds the Herman P.
Taubman Chair of Applied
Mathematics and Prof Ruhman the
Norman D. Cohen Chair of Computer
Sciences.