Museum of Computing Machinery

Before you is the Calcolatrice Elettronica Pisana(Pisan Electronic Computer), also known as CEP, a mainframe computer built by the University of Pisa between 1954 and 1961. Its prototype, the Smaller Machine(MR), completed in 1957, was the first computer designed and built entirely in Italy. The funds for its construction, 150 million lire, were originally intended for a particle accelerator. This was built in Frascati instead, and the funds were diverted to the CEP. This is partially due to the opinion of Enrico Fermi, who wrote a letter to Rector Avanzi to support the project. On November 13, 1961, Il Paese wrote: "Gronchi inaugurates Europe's most powerful electronic computer in Pisa. It can measure the trajectory of a satellite - Six years of work - Three thousand vacuum tubes". The CEP was in operation from then until 1969, allowing thousands of hours of scientific calculations to be carried out.