Editing Control Data Corporation (section)

== Early designs and Cray's big plan ==
CDC started business by selling subsystems, mostly drum memory systems, to other companies.<ref>{{cite web |title=William Norris (CEO) |url=http://www10.dict.cc/wp_examples.php?lp_id=1&lang=en&s=control%20data |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171002115902/http://www10.dict.cc/wp_examples.php?lp_id=1&lang=en&s=control%20data |archive-date=2 Oct 2017}}</ref> Cray joined the next year, and he immediately built a small [[transistor]]-based 6-bit machine known as the "CDC Little Character" to test his ideas on large-system design and transistor-based machines.<ref>{{cite web|title=Control Data Corporation, "Little Character" Prototype|url=http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/supercomputers/10/22/18|website=Computer History Museum|access-date=21 April 2016|ref=chm-little-character}}</ref> "Little Character" was a great success.

In 1959, CDC released a 48-bit transistorized version of their re-design of the 1103 re-design <ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.computer.org/portal/web/awards/seymourbio |title=Tribute to Seymour Cray |publisher=IEEE Computer Society (webcitation.org/5pOwR2VJX) |access-date=2017-10-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100824155753/http://www.computer.org/portal/web/awards/seymourbio |archive-date=2010-08-24 |url-status=dead }}</ref> under the name [[CDC 1604]];  the first machine was delivered to the U.S. Navy in 1960<ref>{{citation |url=http://www.minnesotainventors.org/inductees/seymour-cray.html
|title=Minnesota Inventors Hall of Fame}}</ref> at the [[Naval Postgraduate School]] in [[Monterey, California]]. Legend has it that the 1604 designation was chosen by adding CDC's first street address (501 Park Avenue) to Cray's former project, the ERA-Univac 1103.<ref>Curiously, a very detailed 1975 [http://purl.umn.edu/104327 oral history] with CDC's computer engineers does '''not''' confirm this legend: when the "1604" question was asked, the insiders laughed and responded: "It was quite popular at the time that this was the origin." Page 21 of the oral history provides the official CDC explanation for 1604.</ref>

A 12-bit cut-down version was also released as the [[CDC 160A]] in 1960, often considered among the first [[minicomputer]]s. The 160A was particularly notable as it was built as a standard office desk, which was unusual packaging for that era. New versions of the basic 1604 architecture were rebuilt into the [[CDC 3000]] series, which sold through the early and mid-1960s.

Cray immediately turned to the design of a machine that would be the fastest (or in the terminology of the day, largest) machine in the world, setting the goal at 50 times the speed of the 1604. This required radical changes in design, and as the project "dragged on"&nbsp;— it had gone on for about four years by then&nbsp;— the management got increasingly upset and it demanded greater oversight. Cray in turn demanded (in 1962) to have his own remote lab, saying that otherwise, he would quit. Norris agreed, and Cray and his team moved to Cray's home town, [[Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin]]. Not even Bill Norris, the founder and president of CDC, could visit Cray's laboratory without an invitation.<ref>See story of a salesman's uninvited visit to Chippewa Falls [http://www.travel-tidbits.com/tidbits/003654.shtml here] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051115050846/http://www.travel-tidbits.com/tidbits/003654.shtml |date=2005-11-15 }}.</ref>