The John R. Ehrman collection contains material collected or created by Ehrman that documents his work at IBM and Stanford University, and his membership with SHARE. Records date from 1956 to 2005, with the bulk from 1966 to 1995. Most of the collection consists of manuals, reference guides, books, technical reports, specifications, and program listings. Much of the records’ focus is on programming, with an emphasis on FORTRAN and its related languages.
Nearly half of the collection is made up of material published by IBM, with some of it pre-dating Ehrman’s employment there. A significant portion of the IBM material is related to the IBM System/360 and IBM System/370 and their operating systems, the Basic Assembly Language (BAL) and its successors, and other programming languages.
Though containing less material, the records related to Stanford and SHARE provide a background in the development of FORTRAN and other languages and programs. The Stanford records highlight the ACME (Advanced Computer for Medical Research) time-sharing system, typesetting and typography programming, and the programming languages MORTRAN and FORTRAN. The SHARE material contains a large amount of records specific to the group’s involvement in the development of FORTRAN, in addition to records related to SHARE meetings and technical reports.
The final series in the collection contains manuals, specifications, technical reports, books, program listings, conference proceedings, catalogs, and newsletters from a variety of companies, associations, and universities not represented in the first three series. Topics vary, but much of the material is about FORTRAN and related languages, computer design, and programming.
Biographical/Historical Note
John R. Ehrman was born in Richmond, Virginia on July 5, 1935. He received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Oberlin College in 1956. Ehrman was first introduced to programming and computers during his time at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he managed the Academic Computer Center and taught introductory programming courses from 1963 to 1965. He also received his PhD from U of I in theoretical physics in 1963. After finishing at U of I, Ehrman moved on to Stanford University, where he provided computer support to physicists and engineers, worked in the Computation Center of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), and taught students in IBM Assembler Language programming. Ehrman worked and taught at Stanford from 1966 to 1983. In March of 1983, Ehrman began a 33-year career at IBM, ending as senior programmer in 2016. During his time at IBM, Ehrman created and led development of IBM's High Level Assembler (HLASM), gave presentations at many user group conferences, and visited customer sites to provide advice and assistance. Throughout his career, Ehrman has been an active member of the user group, SHARE. Ehrman first became a member of SHARE in 1964, and his membership activities include designing an early instance of the group’s logo, serving as project manager for various Assembler and FORTRAN-related initiatives, chairing the Fortran Standards Committee, serving on the SHARE Board of Directors, and cofounding the annual SHARE Academy: Assembler Bootcamp with Michael Stack. Ehrman retired from IBM and SHARE in 2016.
Basic utilities for prtable FORTRAN libraries
Part 1: A dynamic storage allocator for portable FORTRAN libraries
Part 2: A centralized error handling facility for portable FORTRAN libraries
Part 3: Machine constants for portabble FORTRAN libraries
Additional titles: 30 years of expert dialogue with IBM : a history of SHARE Europe (SEAS); National language architecture or twelve striving years : a synthetical review; SEAS top concerns
These folders contain material that provides background information on SHARE. Much of the material was collected for use during SHARE's 20th, 30th, and 50th anniversaries. Included are proceedings from the first three SHARE meetings in 1955; a brief history of SHARE and information about meetings; a packet for a first-time SHARE meeting attendee that explains what SHARE is and why one should attend a SHARE meeting; correspondence between Ehrman and Jim Babcock about Allen-Babcock's RUSH system; reminiscences of past SHARE meetings; and a transcript from the SHARE Meeting of Pioneers in 1972.
This folder contains the 1989 and 1999 SHARE songbooks, plus one that is undated, but likely from the early 1990s. The songbooks were used at the Esprit de Corps session, known as the SHARE or HASP singalong, at annual SHARE meetings. They include familiar songs with the lyrics rewritten so they are related to SHARE and HASP.
This folder includes presentation material and a talk given by Elliott Nohr of IBM that discusses the early days of FORTRAN, and SHARE and IBM's relationship during its development.
This folder includes a SHARE management report from 1980; a session report on a languages division meeting from SHARE 1974; a session report on IBM's view of the future from SHARE 1977; a SHARE Symbolic Mathematical Computation Project newsletter; a JCL project position paper; a Large Systems Requirements for Application Development (LSRAD) report; and a presentation on WATFOR frmo SHARE 1990.
Additional titles: The errata of computer programming; Notes on introductory combinatorics; Building in information processing; FETE : a FORTRAN execution time tester; Huffman's algorithm via algebra
ACME (Advanced Computer for Medical Research) was a time-sharing system developed by the Stanford Computation Center for the Stanford School of Medicine. This folder contains ACME manuals and copies of the periodical ACME Note, plus an ACME Note index.
These two reports present the questions and solutions from Stanford University's Computer Science Department comprehensive examinations (1972 to 1978) and qualifying examinations (1965 to 1978).
Additional titles: Floating-point number representations : base choice versus exponent range; Varying length floating point arithmetic : a necessary tool for the numerical analyst
