Page "CDC 6600" Paragraph 6

CDC's first products were based on the machines designed at ERA, which Seymour Cray had been asked to update after moving to CDC.

After an experimental machine known as the Little Character, they delivered the CDC 1604, one of the first commercial transistor-based computers, and one of the fastest machines on the market.

Management was delighted, and made plans for a new series of machines that were more tailored to business use ; they would include instructions for character handling and record keeping for instance.

Cray was not interested in such a project, and set himself the goal of producing a new machine that would be 50 times faster than the 1604.

When asked to complete a detailed report on plans at one and five years into the future, he wrote back that his five year goal was " to produce the largest computer in the world ", " largest " at that time being synonymous with " fastest ", and that his one year plan was " to be one-fifth of the way ".