Control Data Corporation (Cdc)
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was an important manufacturer of computers and computer-related products from the late 1950s until the early 1990s. Ex-employees of Sperry-Rand Corporation, most notably William Norris, who became CDC's president and principle strategist, founded CDC in 1957.
Starting in the mid-1950s and continuing through the 1960s and 1970s, International Business Machines (IBM) dominated the computer industry worldwide. During that era, IBM's sales and profits were so much larger than any of the other computer makers that some pundits referred derisively to "IBM and the seven dwarves." Besides CDC, the other "dwarves" were Sperry-Rand (maker of the UNIVAC), Burroughs, NCR, RCA, Honeywell, and General Electric. In spite of IBM's dominance, CDC was able to find a niche as a computer manufacturer. Indeed, of the many startup computer manufacturers in the 1950s, CDC was the only one to survive as an independent company and profitably produce large mainframe computers. Its only real competitors in the mainframe arena were IBM and Sperry-Rand.
From the start CDC specialized in building and selling mainframe computers for scientific, engineering, and military applications. CDC's emphasis for many years was on building mainframe computers more powerful than those of its competitors. Initial success in the late 1950s and early 1960s was due largely to sales of the model 1604 mainframe. The CDC 1604 and the IBM 7090 were the first fully transistorized computers; both were introduced in 1958 and are today considered "second-generation" computers. (The "first generation" consisted of the electromechanical and vacuum-tube computers of the 1940s and 1950s.) An interesting anecdote suggests how the CDC 1604 got its name: Some CDC personnel had previously worked for Sperry-Rand designing the UNIVAC 1103, and CDC's corporate headquarters had a street address of 501 Park Avenue: 1103 + 501 = 1604.
Seymour Cray (who, like CDC president William Norris, was an ex-employee of the UNIVAC division of Sperry-Rand) was the chief design engineer in 1964 when CDC introduced the CDC 6000, soon followed by the CDC 6600. For many years Cray would play an important role in the development of CDC's most powerful computers. Some computer historians claim that the model 6600 was the first commercially successful supercomputer. The 6600 used a parallel processing architecture with one 60-bit central processing unit and 10 peripheral processing units. The CDC 6600 could perform up to 9 million floating point operations per second, significantly more than any other computer of its time. At a cost of $6 million it was the most powerful computer available for some years.
CDC was also quite successful in the peripherals market (devices such as printers and bulk memory storage units). Not long after CDC was founded it purchased Cedar Engineering, a peripherals manufacturer, giving CDC instant access to this market. CDC also began providing data services (e.g., payroll and tax processing) to companies that could not afford to purchase and maintain their own mainframe computer.
In 1964 IBM introduced its System/360 family of computers, continuing its dominance of the computer industry. In 1968, IBM announced it would enlarge its System/360 family of computers with a powerful computer named the 360/80. Immediately, sales of the CDC 6600 plummeted. CDC's management suspected that IBM had announced the 360/80 model far in advance of its actual availability in order to weaken CDC's sales; CDC sued IBM for anticompetitive business practices and won a judgment of over $100 million. As part of its settlement with IBM, CDC took possession of the Service Bureau Company, a data services provider. This new subsidiary brought many new customers to CDC and doubled its data services business.
CDC branched out in the 1960s into computer-based education and training systems such as PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations). Developed by CDC for the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, PLATO was an important advance in the field of CAI (computer-aided instruction). Students could access information via a mainframe computer from any of PLATO's 1,000 terminals. The concept continued to grow and develop, until by 1985 over one hundred PLATO systems were in use in the United States alone. PLATO was a showcase for many forward-looking concepts, including a message system that foreshadowed e-mail.
In the late 1960s CDC introduced the CDC 7600 as a successor to the CDC 6600. The 7600 was a pipelined supercomputer (pipelined processing speeds up data processing in parallel-processor computers). Also in the late 1960s, CDC engineers researched the design elements needed to support sophisticated image processing. This led to the AFP and Cyberplus computer models, designed specifically for image processing.
Throughout the 1970s CDC continued to be an important computer and peripherals manufacturer. CDC produced a complete line of computers, from workstations to mainframes under the trade name Cyber. In 1971 CDC delivered a Cyberplus parallel radar-image processing system that achieved 250 times the performance of the previously installed CDC 6600. In 1972 Seymour Cray left CDC to create supercomputers at his own startup company, Cray Research. Cray's departure was a major blow to CDC's supercomputer efforts. Nevertheless, CDC continued to build powerful computers, including the STAR-100, which was the first commercial pipelined vector supercomputer. The first STAR-100 was delivered in 1974 to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for use in nuclear weapons research.
From the late 1970s into the early 1980s CDC continued supercomputer development, producing the Cyber 203 (1978) and the Cyber 205 (1981). In 1983 CDC spun off ETA Systems with the express purpose of developing a new generation of vector supercomputers.
The 1980s were a volatile period for the computer industry as a whole. The widespread acceptance of the personal computer for business and personal use provided enormous opportunities (and challenges) for the established computer makers. CDC's response to these new competitive challenges was inadequate, and its financial situation deteriorated. Eventually, CDC's management decided to narrow the focus of the company by selling some of its diverse businesses. In 1986 CDC spun off its Commercial Credit subsidiary, a finance company CDC had purchased in 1968. In 1989 CDC divested itself of both the PLATO educational system and Imprimis, a major supplier of data storage devices. Also in 1989, CDC dissolved its supercomputer subsidiary ETA Systems.
In 1992 CDC spun off much of its military and government business to an independent company called Ceridian Corporation, and in that same year the remnants of CDC became Control Data Systems (CDS), Inc. The new company ceased the manufacture and development of its own computers and became a service-oriented computer company. Its services consisted principally of providing maintenance for systems using old CDC computers and of supporting integration of hardware, software, and facilities management in new systems.
In 1997 CDS was purchased by an investment firm and transitioned from a publicly owned corporation to a privately held company. In 1999 CDS was purchased by British Telecommunications and became part of its Syntegra consulting and systems integration division.
This is the complete article, containing 1,130 words
(approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page).
