Quote:
Originally Posted by Shark Bait
Very true Gary. Great photo! That suit would have been the height of fashion way back when.
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Hi Stu,
Love the picture of the book from your younger days and it is amazing how the
humblest of books can inspire us when we are young.
The guy is the groovy suit is none other than the late, great Seymour Cray himself.
Tragically he died in 1996 after sustaining injuries from an accident where another
car collided with his, but he was the archetypal computer genius, a legend in his
own time and still a legendary figure in the history of computing today. During his
life, he designed and built the world's fastest computers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pvf...v7wjU0&index=1
There are many anecdotes about him, many true but some apocryphal.
However, he plays a pivotal role in US power during the Cold War. When the
nuclear test ban treaty is in place, the US is seen to have an enormous strategic
advantage over the Soviets because simulations run on supercomputers become
a substitute for weapons testing.
Cray was a very private individual and rarely spoke in public, but he had a wonderful
sense of wit and humor. In this video here which features Cray speaking at the
University of California Berkeley in 1976, he gives a wonderful short anecdote (starting at
0:02:05) about a delegation from Russian visiting the Cray facility in Wisconsin who invite him
to come to visit Moscow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtOA1vuoDgQ