Today we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Seymour Cray, regarded as the father of the supercomputer. One of the most original computer designers the world has ever seen his Cray 1 remains as an icon of computer design.

Seymour Roger Cray
September 28th 1925 - October 5th 1996

Seymour Cray was born on September 28th 1925 in Chippewa Falls, a small town in Wisconcin he was devoted to for his entire life. His father, a civil engineer, encouraged his early interest in all things electrical and as a kid, he was already an innovator, reportedly building a device from an Erector Set that converted punched paper tape into Morse code.

After high school, he served in the Unoted States Army during World War II, first as a radio operator in Europe and later working on Japanese naval code-breaking in the Pacific. After the war, he got degrees in engineering and applied mathematics and jumped into the nascent computer industry being one of the founders of Control Data Corporation (CDC), where he spearheaded the design of the CDC 6600 (1964), widely considered the first successful supercomputer. It was ridiculously fast for its time, blowing away the competition.

Cray was a quiet, introverted guy who hated corporate bureaucracy. Asked to write a five-year plan for CDC, his response was: "Five year goal: Build the biggest computer in the world. One-year goal: Achieve one-fifth of the above". When CDC got too big and managers started pulling him into meetings with customers, he had enough. In 1972, he left to found Cray Research Inc. with a singular goal: to build the fastest computer in the world. 

The first result was the Cray-1 which was not only groundbreakingly fast but also had a unique look, with its power supplies hidden in a ring of cabinets topped with padded benches, giving rise to its nickname, the loveseat. It was the first  of a string of record-breaking supercomputers that he designed always pushing the limits of speed and engineering, for details see Seymour Cray and 20th Century Super Computers.   

Cray's life was cut short in 1996 from fatal injuries sustained in a car accident, but he left an indelible mark on the world of technology. His insistence on simplicity and speed, and his "system-first" approach, still influence computer architecture today. The IEEE Computer Society's Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award, established in 1997, recognizes innovative contributions to high performance computing systems exemplifying Cray's creative spirit.

Last year the Cray-1 that was part of Paul Allen's collection housed in Seattle's Living Computer Museum exceeded all expactations by selling for over a million dollars, four times higher than its estimate and breaking the records for the most expensive computer to sell at auction. 

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