Ernie

Ernie (Jim Henson 1969-1989, Steve Whitmire 1989-) is a muppet from Sesame Street. He lives in a basement apartment of 1-2-3 Sesame with Bert, who is like a brother to Ernie. Ernie loves his rubber duckie and is always tricking Bert. Ernie and Bert were originally planned to be like parent/child but because Ernie (the child-like one) always tricked Bert they decided to just make them best friends.

He has a niece named Ernistine.

Ernie's birthday is January 28. To make him look more relaxed, Ernie's stripes are thick and run horizontally. His best friend is Bert and they live together in the basement of 123 Sesame.
In 1997 more then 1.2 Million sing 'n' snore Ernie's were sold.

ERNIE - Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment

'ERNIE' is the name of the computer used in the UK to generate the winning numbers in the monthly premium bonds lottery. ERNIE entered service on 2^nd June, 1957 when he randomly generated the 9-digit number sequence of the first winning premium bond.

ERNIE was used to ensure complete fairness in number selection. The underlying principal of random number generation used in the original ERNIE was the random frequency instability of a free-running oscillator. Another reason that ERNIE was used was to add an element of interest and technological sophistication, (remember, it was the fifties), to an otherwise fairly straightforward procedure. ERNIE got the British public interested in the premium bond scheme, (compare with the list of past and present presenters of the National Lottery TV show).

The original ERNIE took 10 days to complete the first list of winning numbers. ERNIE was upgraded in 1973 because his workload was increasing, (the size of the list of winning bond numbers increases in proportion to the number of premium bonds in circulation) . The current ERNIE, introduced in 1988, is the Mark 3 version. ERNIE (III) takes six hours to randomly generate a complete list of winning numbers.

ERNIE's impartiality continues to be verified monthly by GAD, (the Government Actuary's Department).