Comments on: Video: Mini-Doc on Seymour Cray

By: John Renwick

John Renwick — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 17:36:38 +0000

Thanks for that great memorial! I cut my digital teeth on the Navy’s Univac NTDS systems and CDC 1604-A and 160-A, all early Cray designs. Compared with some of the IBM peripherals I had to understand and maintain (design hodgepodges, really), studying the Cray logic was like appreciating a Leonardo painting or a Michelangelo sculpture — elegant organization, and spareness that always left me in awe. When I eventually found out who was responsible for this, I had to go to work for him, and that led to a career for which I will always be grateful to Seymour Cray. My life might have turned out very differently if I had not been so inspired by his beautiful logic.

By: Merdi Rafiei

Merdi Rafiei — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 23:08:05 +0000

Thank you for the video. They don’t make them like they used to anymore (both the man and the machine)!

Merdi Rafiei

By: John Champine

John Champine — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 16:32:15 +0000

I echo the thanks for posting the video. As others have said, it brings back lots of fond memories of Seymour & his amazing talents. There is one point that the video misses, and that is Seymour’s life before the start of CDC in 1957. Seymour’s career actually started in 1950 at ERA (Engineering Research Associates) in St. Paul. He was an engineer on the Univac 1 (aka the 1101) and a lead engineer on the Univac 1103 – largely credited with being the first commercially successful scientific computer. My older brother, George Champine, work on software development under Seymour, and said that he was the smartest engineering talent he had ever seen.

By: Janet

Janet — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 04:54:15 +0000

Hi Rich,

I worked with Seymour at CRI and CCC in the late 80s and 90s. It is hard to explain the significance of Seymour’s impact to the world and to those of us lucky enough to have spent time with him on a daily basis. This piece took me back to that time. The challenges, the milestones, the inspiration and the focus on the end goal. Thank you for posting this piece.

By: Stephen Perrenod

Stephen Perrenod — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:06:10 +0000

Thanks Rich, great to see this. One of my significant treasures is Seymour’s autograph on a Cray 2 photograph.

By: Mark Griffin

Mark Griffin — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 11:38:33 +0000

Thanks for putting up that fabulous video.

BTW, road rage may have had something to do with it, but the root cause was brainless road layout. The on-ramp came before the off-ramp, so fast moving traffic coming off the expressway had to cross through slow moving traffic (Seymour) coming on. The engineer who designed it should have been done for manslaughter.

By: Bob Feldman

Bob Feldman — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 22:28:58 +0000

Rich,

Thanks for posting this great piece. I really enjoyed it. I never worked with Seymour Cray, but his reputation among those who did has always impressed me. To be an innovator of historic proportions, an admired leader, and a well loved figure is a trifecta to be greatly admired.

Bob

By: Izadora

Izadora — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:06:14 +0000

Thank you Red Beetle! We need some inspiration!
Thank you Seymour! We all Crayve that good old innovation!
Icons and Iconic – the real SUPER in computing!
Happy Birthday!

LOVED THIS! (sigh)
See Newman .. if you’re right … not only do you lose … we all lose!

By: skip

skip — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 19:59:18 +0000

wow. Thanks for sharing this – along with the insight in your article.

By: Henry Newman

Henry Newman — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 18:10:04 +0000

Rich,

THANK YOU!

By: Marc Hamilton

Marc Hamilton — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 17:26:59 +0000

What an inspiring video, I hope everyone takes six minutes to watch it!