Editing Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting (section)

===Final prototype===
The final ERM computer contained more than a million feet (304,800 metres) of wiring, 8,000 [[vacuum tube]]s, 34,000 [[diode]]s, 5 input consoles with MICR readers, 2 magnetic [[drum memory|memory drums]], the check sorter, a high-speed printer, a power control panel, a maintenance board, 24 racks holding 1,500 electrical packages and 500 relay packages, and 12 [[magnetic tape]] drives for 2,400-foot (731-metre) tape reels.

ERM weighed about 25 tons (22.7 tonnes), used more than 80&nbsp;kW of power and required cooling by an air conditioning system. By 1955, the system was still in development, but BoA was anxious to announce the project. At the time, computers (still known as "electronic brains") were all the rage; if BoA could announce that they were using them, it would convey a sense of futuristic infallibility. In September 1955, BoA froze the design.

By this point, no fewer than 24 companies had expressed interest in building the production machines, and [[General Electric]] won the competition.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.smecc.org/erma_proposal_icb-1100101.htm|title=ERMA Proposal ICB-1100101|publisher=Southwest Museum of Engineering, Communications and Computation|access-date=2012-07-15}}</ref> Among GE's team members was AI pioneer [[Joseph Weizenbaum]]. The company took the basic design, but decided it was time to move the [[Vacuum tube|tube]]-based system to a [[transistor]]-based one using [[core memory]].<ref>{{cite web| url=http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/ERMA.html |title= ERMA: Electronic Recording Method of Accounting |first= Ed | last= Thelen |work= Facts and stories about Antique (lonesome) Computers| access-date =2012-07-15}}</ref> This won SRI yet another contract, this time by GE, to study the commercial computer market and suggest how ERM machines could be sold into other markets. After the construction run, they also contracted them to dispose of the original machine.