In 1974 the research group Programmiersprachen und Compiler II at TU Berlin led by C.H.A Koster and Hochschulrechenzentrum (HRZ) Bielefeld developed different versions of SLAN, a programming language family suited for educational purposes. This language was later renamed to ELAN, an abbreviation for Elementary Language [hahn79]_ [klingen83]_ or Educational Language [hommel79]_.
Jochen Liedtke and Ulrich Bartling, both studying maths at Bielefeld University at that time, created a compiler for SLAN3B as part of their diploma thesis in 1976 [liedtke76]_[bartling76]_. It was written in CDL, a machine independent compiler description language, and generated code for Siemens’ BS 1000 and BS 2000 mainframe operating system running on a BS 4004/45 machine. It was later ported to the IBM 370 and TR 440 [hahn79]_.
But ELAN was supposed to be used in schools or at universities and most of them could not affort the cost of such a machine. Thus a compiler and runtime system for the smaller and less expensive microprocessors was needed [liedtke79]_. Development of this system began in 1977 or 1978[1]. It ran on the Zilog Z80 microprocessor with 64 kilobytes of RAM. This machine’s cost were approximately 20,000 DM (10,000 USD). The runtime system was called Extendable multi user microprocessor ELAN system, abbreviated EUMEL.
A year later, in 1979, details about EUMEL were published in GMD Spiegel [liedtke79]_, a quarterly publication published by GMD, and then presented at 9. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Informatik at University of Bonn [kloeckner79]_. Officially the cooperation between HRZ Bielefeld and GMD began in fall 1979 [gmdspiegel85d]_.
The original ELAN compiler written by Liedtke and Bartling was rewritten in 1982 as part of project MIKROS at GMD [eumelspiegel82d]_. Its replacement was programmed using CDL’s successor, CDL2 [cdl2-basismaschine82]_ [gmdbericht84]_. This work resulted in ports of EUMEL to different processor architectures, starting with Zilog 8001 used by the Olivetti M 20. This version was presented a year later at Hannover Messe 1983 [computerwoche83a]_ [rechenanlagen83]_.
For their efforts to `transfer EUMEL to Japan`_ a delegation consisting of Konrad Klöckner, Jochen Liedtke, Peter Heyderhoff, Dietmar Heinrichs and Uwe Beyer received the Technologie-Transfer-Preis worth 15.000 DM by Minister of Scientific Research Heinz Riesenhuber on 1985-12-09. [happycomputer86]_ [gmdspiegel85d]_ [generalanzeiger85]_
Another two years later, in October 1987, the spin-off company ERGOS (Ergonomic Office Software GmbH) finally started marketing EUMEL to customers. GMD was still responsible for development and maintenance of EUMEL and schulis until 1990 [gmdspiegel87c]_.
| [1] | See [gmdspiegel85a]_, [liedtke93]_, [gmdbericht84]_, [ambros90b]_ and [praxis1]_ |
The following table lists release dates. It was reconstructed from multiple sources.
| Version | Date | |
|---|---|---|
| 0.7 | May 1979 | |
| 1.5 | ≤1981 | |
| 1.5.5 | ≤1981-07 | [eumelspiegel81a]_ |
| 1.5.6 | 1981-10-12 | [eumelspiegel81b]_ |
| 1.6 | ≤fall 1982 | [alwr82]_ |
| 1.6.3 | 1982-05-07 | [eumelspiegel82b]_ |
| 1.6.4 | 1982-07-01 | [eumelspiegel82d]_ |
| 1.6.5 | 1982-10-10 | [eumelspiegel82c]_ |
| 1.7 | ≤mid 1984 | [korrekturen84]_ |
| 1.7.3 | ≤1985-09-21 | [eumelaktuell85]_ |
| 1.7.5 | 1986-10-01 | [eumelaktuell86]_ p. 9 |
| 1.8.0 | 1986-10-01 | [eumelaktuell87a]_ p. 56 |
| 1.8.7 | ≤1990 | [ambros90b]_ |
Ideas for EUMEL’s successor „version 2.0“ were first presented by Liedtke in 1985 [gmdspiegel85c]_. Since fall 1986 EUMEL „native code“ was in development [gmdbericht86a]_. This would later become the Level 3 Operating System (L3), which was presented in 1988. It dropped the EUMEL0 virtual machine in favor of native x86 code since Intel’s 386 processor provided all the features necessary [gmdspiegel88a]_. In the same year, on 1988-06-30, a workshop with 63 attendants was held at GMD Birlinghofen [gmdspiegel88c]_
Yearly workshop were held at different locations, first at Bielefeld University and later at GMD Birlinghofen.
| Date | Location | Attendance | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1981-05-15 | [eumelspiegel81a]_ | ||
| 1982-05-15 | Bielefeld University | [eumelspiegel82b]_ [eumelspiegel82d]_ | |
| 1983-05-07 | Bielefeld University | [einladung-workshop83]_ | |
| 1984-05-19 | Bielefeld University | (see picture below) [einladung-workshop84]_ | |
| 1985-09-21 | GMD Birlinghofen | 300 | [gmdspiegel85c]_ [eumelaktuell86]_ p. 31 |
| 1986-10-04 | GMD Birlinghofen | 350 | [gmdbericht86b]_ [eumelaktuell87a]_ p. 56 |
| 1987-09-19/21 | GMD Sankt Augustin | 200/100 | [gmdspiegel87b]_ |
| 1988-10-01 | Realschule Niederpleis | 200 | [gmdspiegel88d]_ |
5th EUMEL workshop at Bielefeld University. Picture taken 1984-05-19. Source: BITS