Amin Girasol on Nostr: On 28 August 1963, Thomas J Watson Jr. issued a salty memo to #IBM engineering ...

On 28 August 1963, Thomas J Watson Jr. issued a salty memo to #IBM engineering management in the aftermath of the launch of the Control Data Corporation #CDC6600. The machine, designed by Seymour Cray, was soon regarded as the world's first commercially successful supercomputer.

I understand that in the laboratory developing this system there are only 34 people, “including the janitor.” Of these, 14 are engineers and 4 are programmers, and only one person has a Ph.D., a relatively junior programmer. To the outsider, the laboratory appeared to be cost conscious, hard working and highly motivated.

Contrasting this modest effort with our own vast development activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our industry leadership position by letting someone else offer the world’s most powerful computer. At Jenny Lake, I think top priority should be given to a discussion as to what we are doing wrong and how we should go about changing it immediately.