Oral history interview with Erwin Tomash

Abstract

Tomash discusses his career, including employment at Engineering Research Associates (ERA) and the founding of Dataproducts Corporation. He begins with his electrical engineering education at the University of Minnesota in the early 1940s and his subsequent entry into the Army Signal Corps as a radar specialist. He recounts his initial task at ERA, conducting research for High-Speed Computing Devices. He surveys ERA's work with the predecessors of the National Security Agency and other government offices, and the company's expansion and move to the forefront of computer technology in the early 1950s. He describes changes in the company and his own move into management when the company was sold to Remington Rand in 1953. Tomash recalls his departure in l956 from Remington Rand to Telemeter Magnetics, where he soon became president. This company manufactured core memory systems and one of the first successful transistor memory systems. Tomash explains how he used the organization he and others had assembled from Telemeter Magnetics to found Dataproducts Corporation in 1962.