In 1957, Seymour Cray and William Norris form the Control Data Corp (CDC), to design and build supercomputers. Intended to be used for scientific calculation, many considered it a risky endeavor. Originally working for Sperry Rand designing the successors to the UNIVAC, Cray’s desire to push the limits of computing conflicted with the company and he decided to form his own.
CDC began designing high volume, high speed, accurate machines geared toward select customers who would need such number- crunching power. The first, the 1604 is created in 1958. Following it up was the CDC 6600, the fastest, most powerful of it’s time, turning CDC into an industry giant. In 1972, Cray formed Cray Research, Inc. which produces the Cray-1 in 1976. It is far more powerful than any of it’s slower cousins, it performs 240 million calculations per second.
