Cray Supercomputer

A supercomputer refers to the class of most powerful computer systems world-wide at the time of reference. The term supercomputer was first applied to the Cray-1 computer. Supercomputers can cost in the billions and have extremely vast capabilities. Seymour Cray Widely considered to be the founder of supercomputing, Seymour Cray was known for his passion for technological creativity and his…

Selling the Computer

There are many ways to study the history of a technological topic. One of the most neglected, though also the most revealing, is to look at the advertising materials companies have produced to promote their products. In a technical field such as computing, buying decisions, as expressed in such materials, are often based on a…

The Silicon Engine

Microelectronic silicon computer “chips” have grown in capability from a single transistor in the 1950s to hundreds of millions of transistors per chip on today’s microprocessor and memory devices. From the first documented semiconductor effect in 1833 to the transition from transistors to integrated circuits in the 1960s and 70s, this website explores key milestones in the…

The Babbage Engine

Charles Babbage (1791-1871), computer pioneer, designed the first automatic computing engines. He invented computers but failed to build them. The first complete Babbage Engine was completed in London in 2002, 153 years after it was designed. Difference Engine No. 2, built faithfully to the original drawings, consists of 8,000 parts, weighs five tons, and measures 11 feet long.

We invite…