ZEBRA

The ZEBRA (Zeer Eenvoudige Binaire Reken Automaat translated Very Simple Binary Automatic Calculator) was one of the first computers to be designed in the Netherlands, (the first one was the "ARRA") and one of the first Dutch computers to be commercially available. It was designed by Willem van der Poel of the Netherlands Post, Telegraph and Telephone, and first delivered in 1958. The production run consisted of fifty-five machines, manufactured and marketed by the British company Standard Telephones and Cables, Ltd. The ZEBRA was a binary, two-address machine with a 33-bit word length. Storage was provided by a magnetic drum memory holding 8K words organised as 256 tracks of 32 instructions; accumulators were also implemented as recirculating drum tracks in a manner similar to that used in the Bendix G-15. Peripherals included paper tape reader and punch, and a teleprinter. In 1967, six Zebra computers were in use in UK universities and technical colleges. Programming Large parts of the code and operating systems for ZEBRA were written by deafblind mathematician Gerrit van der Mey.