Creating a Top-Rated Scientific Institution in Rehovot at the Dawn of the Digital Age

The story of WEIZAC is the unlikely story of how an electronic automatic computing machine was built and became operational during the early years of the State of Israel. This chapter describes two prarallel historical threads which are the heart of the story: (1) the early years of electronic computing, in the period between 1945 and 1960; (2) the establishment and early years of a leading scientific institution in Rehovot as part of the Zionist project for building a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Attention is also devoted to introducing the key protagonists of the WEIZAC project.