Cray 1 – 1976
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It looked like no other computer before, or for that matter, since. The Cray 1 was the world's first "supercomputer," a machine that leapfrogged existing technology when it was introduced in 1971.
And back then, you couldn't just order up fast processors from Intel. "There weren't any microprocessors," says Gwen Bell of The Computer Museum History Center. "These individual integrated circuits that are on the board performed different functions."
Each Cray 1, like this one at The Computer Museum History Center, took months to build. The hundreds of boards and thousands of wires had to fit just right. "It was really a hand-crafted machine," adds Bell. "You think of all these wires as a kind of mess, but each one has a precise length."
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