Research Catalog

Title

The supermen : the story of Seymour Cray and the technical wizards behind the supercomputer / Charles J. Murray.

Author

Murray, Charles J., 1954-

Publication

New York : John Wiley, [1997], ©1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

vii, 232 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

• In 1951, a soft-spoken, skinny young man fresh from the University of Minnesota took a job in an old glider factory in St. Paul. Computer technology would never be the same, for the glider factory was the home of Engineering Research Associates and the recent college grad was Seymour R. Cray. During his extraordinary career, Cray would be alternately hailed as "the Albert Einstein," "the Thomas Edison," and "the Evel Knievel" of supercomputing.
• At various times, he was all three - a master craftsman, inventor, and visionary whose disdain for the rigors of corporate life became legendary, and whose achievements remain unsurpassed.
• The Supermen is award-winning writer Charles J. Murray's exhilarating account of how the brilliant - some would say eccentric - Cray and his gifted colleagues blazed the trail that led to the Information Age.
• This is a thrilling, real-life scientific adventure, deftly capturing the daring, seat-of-the-pants spirit of the early days of computer development, as well as an audacious, modern-day David and Goliath battle, in which a group of maverick engineers beat out IBM to become the runaway industry leaders. Ultimately, The Supermen is a story of genius, and how a unique set of circumstances - a small-team approach, corporate detachment, and a government-backed marketplace - enabled that genius to flourish.

Subjects

• Computer engineers > United States > Biography
• Cray computers > Design and construction > History
• Cray, Seymour

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-224) and index.

ISBN

0471048852 (cloth : alk. paper)

LCCN

96036448

OCLC

ocm35360639

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries