History ------- 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\ [#]_. 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. Its replacement was programmed using CDL’s successor, CDL2 [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]_. .. [#] See [gmdspiegel85a]_, [liedtke93]_, [gmdbericht84]_, [ambros90b]_ and [praxis1]_ .. _transfer EUMEL to Japan: popularity_ Releases ^^^^^^^^ The following table lists release dates. It was reconstructed from multiple sources. .. csv-table:: :header: Version,Date, 0.7,May 1979, .. \_:person_dewitz 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]_ 1.6.5,1982-10-10, [eumelspiegel82c]_ 1.7, ≤mid 1984, [korrekturen84]_ 1.7.5, end of 1985, [gmdbericht85]_ 1.8.0, October 1986 1.8.7, ≤1990, [ambros90b]_ .. figure:: releases.svg L3 ^^ 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]_ Workshops ^^^^^^^^^ Yearly workshop were held at different locations, first at Bielefeld University and later at GMD Birlinghofen. .. csv-table:: :header: Date,Location,Attendance, 1981-05-15,,,[eumelspiegel81a]_ 1982-05,Bielefeld University,,[eumelspiegel82b]_ 1985-09-21,GMD Birlinghofen,300,[gmdspiegel85c]_ 1986-10-04,GMD Birlinghofen,350,[gmdbericht86b]_ 1987-09-19/21,GMD Sankt Augustin,200/100,[gmdspiegel87b]_ 1988-10-01,Realschule Niederpleis,200,[gmdspiegel88d]_