[GreenKeys] UNIVAC Products 1947-1959 computers p-tapei/o and so much more!

[Chris Elmquist]

On Tuesday (10/06/2015 at 08:25PM -0700), couryhouse wrote:
> 
>     
> You are welcome Chris!    There are things in here I  did not know exist...  did he save anything on the NDTS. System ?Ed#

No. Dad didn't save any souvenirs from Univac.  He was still finishing
his degree then and once that was done, he took an offer at 3M and so
his Univac experience was short and not as significant to him.

All of the supercomputing that we used to have in this town is directly
descended from ERA, which were originally in a glider factory here
in St. Paul after the war.  The guys that started ERA were working on
Navy code-breaking systems during the war and when it ended, the Navy
didn't want them to "get away" and so helped start ERA in the glider
factory building.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_Research_Associates

>From ERA, we got Univac and CDC.  From CDC we got Cray and ETA, where
I worked from the beginning to the end (1983 to 1989).

Some of the original ERA guys were on the ETA team.  One of the ETA
founders and CEO helped develop the original drum memory that is mentioned
in the Wikipedia ERA article.

So, in the early 1950s they were messing around with drum memories that
were mostly mechanical systems and by the early 1980s, we were putting
300 chips on a 42-layer circuit board directly into liquid nitrogen :-)

Chris
-- 
Chris Elmquist