Tuscany is renowned as the birthplace of the cultural Renaissance . Less widely known is its role in another revolution, as the spiritual home of Italian computing.University of Pisa received a large grant from local authorities to put towards a scientific project. Eventually, with the endorsement of famed physicist Enrico Fermi , they decided to use it to build a computer. In mid-1955, the funding was formally passed to the university’s new Center for Studies on Electronic Computers (CSCE) and work could begin.CSCE’s design team was made up of physicists and engineers. In the early stages, there were even a few engineers seconded from commercial firm Olivetti, who set up their own laboratory in Pisa and provided some extra funding for the CSCE project.formal announcement the smaller machine was complete.instruction manual prepared by Dr Elisabetta Abate (one of Italy’s very first female programmers) was published on 1st March 1958—55 years ago today.Photos courtesy of the Archive of the University of Pisa, made available via the HMR project Top: The Macchina Ridotta installed in the Institute of Physics Bottom: Front view of the original control panel, alongside one of the simulators developed by the HMR project of the Department of Computer Science of the University of Pisa calculations for other departments -- everything from helping study crystalline structures for the Institute of Mineralogy, to determining eigenfunctions of atomic systems for the National Institute of Nuclear Physics.Until recently , the Macchina Ridotta’s importance was overlooked. It was not the earliest computer in Italy; that honour goes to two imported machines -- the CRC 102A at Milan Polytechnic, followed by the Ferranti Mark 1 at the INAC in Rome. Nor did it seek to be the first Italian commercially available computer; that honour goes to Olivetti’s ELEA 9003 .Posted by Lynette Webb, Senior Manager, External Relations For further information: Rediscovering the Very First Italian Digital Computer (PDF) by Giovanni Cignoni and Fabio Gadducci, 2012 Hacking the Reduced Machine contains links to original papers and tells the story of the machine’s rediscovery A Brief History of CEP (PDF in Italian) by Piero Maestrini, 2011
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