How Seymour Cray's Innovation Changed Computing Forever

Before Silicon Valley, there was Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin—the birthplace of the Cray-1 supercomputer. 🐄

Seymour Cray, the mastermind behind this revolutionary machine, had his own way of doing things—some call it "The Cray Way."

Learn more about Cray in our exhibition, Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing.

📸 Imagery credits:
Control Data Corporation, Charles Babbage Institute, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Chippewa Falls Museum of INdustry and Technology, Cray Research, Inc., Engineering Research Associates, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lee Friedlander, March Richars Minnesota Historical Society, Modern Mechanix Magazine, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NY Times

#CraySupercomputer #SeymourCray #ComputingHistory #WisconsinPride

[brianhiles]

Granted, there is only so much one can say about Cray and his company´s first computer, but instead of the false anecdote of tunnels (and you didn´t even remark upon his Viking-style burning of a ship at “sea“), it would have been fun to exclaim some trivia of this computer, such as it was fast (for its time) because it was implemented with ECL (Emitter-Coupled Logic) which is very thirsty for electricity. Those “park benches“ are actually the power supplies for each individual “pie slice“. I understand that a fully populated system could consume a megawatt of electricity at full load. _A megawatt!_

[Frisenette]

He did not dig a tunnel. One of John Rollwagens genius stories to heighten the vibe around something as obscure and unsexy as computers, known as Rollwagianisms.

[isaiahtowers]

Just digging a tunnel in my basement, nothing to see here!

[Sheila-yoor]

THIS IS WHERE IM FROM IM THE MAN IN THE BOX