Editing Control Data Corporation (section)

== Background: World War II – 1957 ==
[[File:Control Data 160-A.jpg|thumb|right|The 12-bit CDC 160 and 160-A architecture were the basis of the peripheral processors (PPs) in the CDC 6000 series.]]
[[File:Control Data Corporation (CDC) Data Collector (2103084782).jpg|thumb|right| ]]
[[File:CDC 6500.jpg|thumb|right|CDC 6500 with open panels. On display at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle, Washington.]]

During [[World War II]] the [[United States Navy|U.S. Navy]] had built up a classified<ref name=Squish1103 /> team of engineers to build [[Bombe#US Navy Bombe|codebreaking machinery]]<ref>{{cite web |url=https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_cdc%3Fand%255B%255D%3Dsubject%253A%2522cable%2522%26sort%3D%26page%3D2 |title=The BITSAVERS.ORG Documents Library: Control Data Corporation}}</ref> for both [[Japanese naval codes|Japanese]] and [[Enigma machine|German]] electro-mechanical [[cipher]]s. A number of these were produced by a team dedicated to the task working in the [[Washington, D.C.]], area. With the post-war wind-down of military spending, the Navy grew increasingly worried that this team would break up and scatter into various companies, and it started looking for ways to keep the code-breaking team together.<ref>Thomas J. Misa, ''Digital State: The Story of Minnesota's Computing Industry'' (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) </ref>

Eventually they found their solution: John Parker, the owner of a [[Chase Aircraft]] affiliate named Northwestern Aeronautical Corporation<ref name=Squish1103>{{cite web |url=http://findingaids.hagley.org/xtf/view?docId=ead/2015.xml |title=Hagley Museum and Library Manuscripts and Archives}}</ref> located in [[St. Paul, Minnesota]], was about to lose all his contracts due to the ending of the war. The Navy never told Parker exactly what the team did, since it would have taken too long to get top secret [[Security clearance|clearance]]. Instead they simply said the team was important, and they would be very happy if he hired them all. Parker was obviously wary, but after several meetings with increasingly high-ranking Naval officers it became apparent that whatever it was, they were serious, and he eventually agreed to give this team a home in his [[military glider]] factory.<ref name=ML1103>{{cite web |url=http://vipclubmn.org/Articles/CreativityToObscurity.pdf |title=CREATIVITY – SUCCESS – OBSCURITY}}</ref>

The result was [[Engineering Research Associates]] (ERA). Formed in 1946,<ref name=Squish1103 /> this contract engineering company worked on a number of seemingly unrelated projects in the early 1950s.<ref name=ML1103 /> Among these was the '''ERA Atlas''', an early military [[stored program]] computer, the basis of the [[Univac 1101]], which was followed by the 1102, and then the 36-[[bit]] [[ERA 1103]] ([[UNIVAC 1103]]).  The '''Atlas''' was built for the Navy, which intended to use it in their non-secret code-breaking centers. In the early 1950s a minor political debate broke out in [[United States Congress|Congress]] about the Navy essentially "owning" ERA, and the ensuing debates and legal wrangling left the company drained of both capital and spirit. In 1952, Parker sold ERA to [[Remington Rand]].

Although Rand kept the ERA team together and developing new products, it was most interested in ERA's magnetic [[drum memory]] systems. Rand soon merged with [[Sperry Corporation]] to become [[Sperry Rand]].<ref name="RR1.ChadG">{{cite book | last=Norberg | first=Arthur L. | title=Computers and Commerce: A Study of Technology and Management at Eckert–Mauchly Computer Company, Engineering Research Associates, and Remington Rand, 1946–1957 |url=https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computers-and-commerce| publisher=The MIT Press | date=2005-06-01 | isbn=978-0-262-14090-4}}</ref> In the process of merging the companies, the ERA division was folded into Sperry's UNIVAC division. At first this did not cause too many changes at ERA, since the company was used primarily to provide engineering talent to support a variety of projects. However, one major project was moved from UNIVAC to ERA, the [[UNIVAC II]] project, which led to lengthy delays and upsets to nearly everyone involved.

Since the Sperry "big company" mentality encroached on the decision-making powers of the ERA employees, a number{{efn|Robert Perkins, William R. Keye, Howard Shekels, Robert Kisch and Seymour Cray}} left Sperry to form the Control Data Corp. in September 1957,<ref name=HistLine>Control Data Corporation was incorporated in Minnesota, July 8, 1957—see {{Cite web |url=http://www.cbi.umn.edu/collections/cdc/histtimeline.html |title=CDC Historical Timeline}}</ref> setting up shop in an old warehouse across the river from Sperry's St. Paul laboratory, in [[Minneapolis]] at 501 Park Avenue. Of the members forming CDC, [[William Norris (CEO)|William Norris]] was the unanimous choice to become the [[chief executive officer]] of the new company. [[Seymour Cray]] soon became the chief designer, though at the time of CDC's formation he was still in the process of completing a prototype for the [[Naval Tactical Data System]] (NTDS), and he did not leave Sperry to join CDC until it was complete. The [[AN/USQ-17|M-460]] was Seymour's first transistor computer, though the power supply rectifiers were still tubes.<ref>{{cite book |author1=J. E. Thornton |author2=M. Macaulay |author3=D. H. Toth |title=Proceedings of the May 6-8, 1958, western joint computer conference: Contrasts in computers on XX – IRE-ACM-AIEE '58 (Western) |chapter=The Univac® M-460 computer |date=1958 |pages=70–74 |doi=10.1145/1457769.1457791 |chapter-url=http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/UNIVAC-M-640.html |access-date=24 May 2019 |publisher=Association for Computing Machinery|s2cid=10278494 }}</ref>