CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis. (WEAU) – A community celebration for what some call, a technology legend.
Sunday would have been Seymour Cray’s 100th birthday, continuing to honor his work in supercomputer engineering.
Some of Seymour Cray’s former employees like Skip August and David Kieser had great things to say about the time they spent in his workplace.
“Basically, the guy was a genius. He was involved in everything, it wasn’t just the design of the computer,” August said.
The Chippewa Falls born supercomputer engineer and architect pioneered his company, Cray Research. Building someone of the world’s fastest computers in the 1970’s.
August said working for Cray Research was “a wonderful experience that can never be duplicated again, it was just great. Cray was a team of people, a small team of people.”
Kiefer said “Cray was an extremely good place to work as an engineer. So we developed a lot of innovative technology, and we had an architecture for the system that was second to none in that time frame.”
Cray passed away in 1996 at the age of 71. Both August and Kiefer, and other former employees honored Cray’s hard work and dedication to his craft as his work is still being used today.
“Fastest computer in the world, still building the fastest computers in the world right here in Chippewa Falls,” Kiefer said.
August said “Biggest eye opener, if you look at Cray machines, they take up the whole room.” While waving his smartphone, he said “here it is. It doesn’t do the same things, but it’s got more memory.”
Some said Cray was a go-getter, despite any doubts he faced along the way.
“One thing people should take away is they shouldn’t be afraid to start something and go to something new, you know an example is Cray. You know there were a lot of people that didn’t think that Cray was going to make it, you know small town,” Kiefer said.
That ‘small town’ now remembering the ‘father of supercomputing’ legacy.