The Story of WEIZAC, Israel’s First Computer

In the 1950s, the pioneers at the Weizmann Institute of Science built WEIZAC, a groundbreaking computer that launched Israel’s high-tech industry. Learn about Dr. Chaim Pekeris who had to convince Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer of the idea, the immigrant-run bicycle repair shop that supplied the material, and how Shimon Peres found a way to have the computer run seven days a week without breaking Shabbat. Plus, Israel’s second computer, the Golem, the powerful, silent machine that revolutionized the field. Hear from engineers Gerald and Thelma Estrin, Prof. Aviezri Fraenkel and how the writer Gershom Scholem poetically compared the dawn of computers to the Kabbalists of yore.

WEIZAC computer being built in Rehovot.

WEIZAC, Israel’s first computer on display. Credit: Yuval Madar, Wiki Commons

WEIZmann Automatic Computer. Credit: Ba'Asor Le'Israel. Masada Publishing, Jerusalem, 1958

The Golem computer unveiled in the early 1960s at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. “The old Kabbalists would have been proud,” Gershom Scholem said. Credit: Yuval Madar, Wiki Commons

The Sentinel, April 22, 1965.

Engineering group and leaders of the WEIZAC project at the Institute for Advanced Study. Left to right: Gordon Kent, Ephraim Frei, Gerald Estrin, Lewis Strauss, Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Melville, Julian Bigelow, Norman Emslie, James Pomerene, Hewitt Crane, John von Neumann. Credit: Weizmann Institute

The bicycle repair shop owned by two Jewish-Bulgarian immigrants who manufactured parts for the WEIZAC computer. Credit: Weizmann Institute

Dr. Chaim Leib Pekeris, initiator of the WEIZAC computer.

NOTES:

• Video interview with Prof. Aviezri Fraenkel by Asher Tlalim

• Biography of Chaim Leib Perekis - National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

• WEIZAC and GOLEM: The Start-Up Nation’s Earliest Computers

• The Weizac Days - Weizmann Institute

• Fifty Years Later, the Builder of First Israeli Computer Reminisces - Gerald Estrin interview

• Israel's first computer to be celebrated in Rehovot - Jerusalem Post

• WEIZAC: An Israeli pioneering adventure in electronic computing (1945-1963)

• The first Hebrew computer - Weizmann Institute (Hebrew)

• The WEIZAC - Early photos

• The Maharal’s Robot: The High-Tech Golem of Rehovot - National Library of Israel

• The Golem of Prague & The Golem of Rehovoth by Gershom Scholem, 1966

• The Computer Pioneers, Weizmann Institute, interviews with Chaim Pekeris, Thelma & Gerald Estrin, Aviezri Fraenkel