Ramstad: Remembering Minnesota’s tech titans in their heyday

One of the most consequential departures in the history of Minnesota began with a two-page typed memo with the subject line, “Emotional Problems.”

Seymour Cray, the legendary designer of powerful computers at Control Data Corp., wrote the missive on Valentine’s Day 1972 to his boss, Bill Norris, the company’s founder and a legend of equal stature in the annals of American tech.

“Because of the recent developments in Control Data technical direction I believe it is important and urgent that I present as clearly as possible my emotional attitude toward the company and the implications it has on our continuing relationship,” Cray wrote.

The implication? Cray was itching to start his own firm.

This past week, about two dozen people who worked at Control Data met for their annual reunion lunch and paid special tribute to Cray, who would have turned 100 years old last Sunday. His company, Cray Research, built the world’s first supercomputer and, with its initial public offering in 1975, helped revive the stock market from its doldrums that decade.

“I had tremendous respect for the man and everything’s he done,” said Sam Slais, an engineer who troubleshot Cray’s designs.

Once, after Slais found one of Cray’s mistakes, a nervous manager told Slais he’d have to take it up with Cray directly. Before Slais finished describing the problem, Cray told him, “Say no more. You’re right.”

As I listened to their stories of those heady days from the 1960s to the 1990s — when they and other Minnesotans played such a central role in the development of cutting-edge computers — I imagined that 50 or so years from now, the twentysomethings at Google, Tesla and OpenAI will gather in restaurants around San Jose and San Francisco recalling these days when they are swimming in deep pools of money and possibility.

The names Control Data and Cray have disappeared from the sides of buildings and from public consciousness in Minnesota, but they haven’t really gone away.

Just six weeks ago, the biggest transaction Minnesota has seen in four years involved one of the descendant companies of Control Data: Bloomington-based Dayforce, known for many years as Ceridian, was purchased for $12 billion by a private equity firm.

And as they left the reunion lunch, the Control Data veterans could look across the highway in Bloomington and see the Seagate Technology plant, originally built to make hard drives for Control Data computers. The parking lot at the plant is full and Seagate is flourishing these days, its stock at record highs amid perceptions that artificial intelligence will need astounding amounts of data storage.

For the guests at the Control Data reunion, Roger Norris, son of Bill Norris, brought copies of Cray’s memo to his father and another dated March 6, 1972, that crystallized Cray’s departure.

Norris’s father had himself quit an earlier pioneer in computing, Sperry Univac, to form Control Data. Remarkably, Norris had Control Data invest $250,000 in Cray Research after Cray bolted to form it.

In 1992, Norris, then 80 years old, recalled that moment in a Minnesota Star Tribune interview:

“Seymour wanted to take a different course, and I thought he should,” Norris said. “Besides, we made a good return on that investment.”

Also joining the Control Data reunion this year was John Rollwagen, who joined Cray Research for about a year as finance vice president and became CEO as the company grew into one of the hottest stocks of the 1970s.

Rollwagen recounted his fateful first encounter with Cray, a story he also told in Don Hall’s terrific 2014 corporate biography “Generation of Wealth: The Rise of Control Data.” He also described Cray’s unrelenting focus on the future by describing a time when Cray burned a small boat he had built rather than sell it to someone else.