The History of SuperComputers

Christian Liendo wrote: If the CDC 6600 was "actually fairly small ? about the size of four filing cabinets", then the author has apparently seen *MUCH* larger filing cabinets than I ever have. I think the overall volume is closer to that of about 15 normal-sized four-drawer filing cabinets. Personally, I'm skeptical about there being any reasonable definition of "supercomputer" by which the IBM 7030 ("Stretch", 1961) and NORC (1954) didn't qualify. In fact, although the Wikipedia article on supercomputers doesn't mention NORC, the article on NORC quotes Frank da Cruz of Columbia University as stating that NORC was the first supercomputer. Giving credit where credit is due, Seymour Cray probably did more to advance the state of the art of supercomputers than any other individual, but claims of the 6600 being the first supercomputer strike me as being revisionist history.