Seymour Cray co-founded Control Data Corp., CDC, in 1957. There he built the first computer with transistors instead of vacuum tubes.
The ambition of S.Cray has always been to build the fastest computer in the world and indeed he made several computers which were the fastest computing machines at the time. In the 60s designed the CDC 6600 series and worked on the 7600 series as well.
In 1972 Seymour Cray started Cray Research Inc.. The Cray-1 and Cray-2 computers developed there did have a great impact in industry research as well as defense.
In 1989 Seymour Cray leaves Cray Research to start Cray Computer Corp. With this company Cray designed the Cray 3 machine. Unfortunately the new machines did not have the foreseen success and the company closed for bankruptcy in 1995.
A few months later, on August 1995, Cray founded the SRC Computers Inc.
S.Cray died on October 5, 1996 in a car accident.
The first Cray 1 was delivered to the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratories in 1976. At the time Cray 1 was either the fastest vector computer and the fastest scalar computer in the world.
Edited by: Maurizio Cremonesi
Last modified: May 8, 2002