Few Good Men from A Few Good Men from Univac MIT Press Series in the History of Computing 1. Bernard Cohen, editor; William Aspray, associate editor Editorial Board: Bernard Galler, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan; J. A. N. Lee, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Virginia; Arthur Norberg, Charles Babbage Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Brian Randell, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne; Henry Tropp, Humboldt State College, Arcata, California; Heinz Zemanek, Vienna, Austria. Memories That Shaped an Industry, Emerson W. Pugh, 1984 The Computer Comes of Age, R. Moreau, 1984 Memories of a Computer Pioneer, Maurice V. Wilkes, 1985 A Few Good Men from Univac, David E. Lundstrom, 1987 A Few Good Men from Univac David E. Lundstrom The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 1987 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was printed and bound by Halliday Lithograph in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lundstrom, David E. A few good men from Univac. (MIT Press series in the history of computing) 1. Univac computer-History. 2. Computer industry­ History. I. Title. II. Series. QA76.8.U6L86 1987 621.39'09 87-4193 ISBN 0-262-12120-4 This book is dedicated to George Cogar. He was my first instructor in the electronic computer, the first authentic genius I have worked with, and the first of the heroes of this narrative to pass from this life. May he rest in peace. Contents Series Foreword IX Preface Xl 1 In the Beginning 1 2 The Philadelphia Story 9 3 On Technology and Geography 19 4 Progress Is Our Only Product 26 5 To Each His Own 36 6 Anchors Aweigh! 47 7 If Anything Can Go Wrong, It Will! 55 8 The First Team 64 9 Tomorrow the World 72 10 To See or Not to See 81 11 Project Spin 92 12 Whatever Became of George Cogar? 101 13 The Large Computer Business 109 14 How Hard Is Software? 121 15 Visits to Chippewa Falls 131 16 Up, Up, and Away! 139 17 We Shall Never Surrender 151 18 Reprise 159 19 A Terminal Situation 168 20 Oops, I Lost the Computer! 1 77 21 Oink, Oink, Oink 188 22 Microspin and Spin and Spin 197 23 East Wind, Rain 211 24 E Unum Pluribus? 217 Epilogue 225 Chronology of Significant Events 229 Series Foreword As much as is written about our technological society, few who have not worked in high technology industry understand the process by which ideas are turned into those products that drive our economy and enrich our lives. This book describes that process. It explains the dif­ ferences between the work of the scientist and the engineer; how eco­ nomic factors, personal idiosyncrasies, staff organization, plant loca­ tion, and company priorities playas important a role as technical ideas in the structure and success of commercial products; and why the fate of our technological companies does or should rest on brilliant individ­ ual engineers like Seymour Cray. These are the personal reminiscences of an engineer who spent thirty years, from 1955 to 1985, working on the design and develop­ ment of computer technology. The book chronicles major projects of his two employers, the Engineering Research Division of Sperry Rand Cor­ poration (now a part ofUnisys Corporation) and the Control Data Cor­ poration. Historians will find this work a welcome supplement to the abstract economic account of these companies by Franklin Fisher, James McKie, and Richard Mancke in IBM and the U.S. Data Process­ ing Industry, or the top management portrait by Katherine Davis Fish­ man in The Computer Establishment. But David Lundstrom does not intend to write objective history here. His purpose, like that of Tracy Kidder in Soul of a New Machine, is to depict everyday life in an en­ gineering organization. His heroes are the practicing engineers, his vil­ lains the corporate managers who underuse, misuse, and abuse the engineers. He uses this perspective to explain the past and present successes and failures of Control Data and Unisys, and to assess the Japanese challenge to the U.S. computer industry. This book is part of a series devoted to the history of computers and data processing. Other volumes have dealt with, or will deal with, var­ ious aspects of the development of systems, hardware, and software, encompassing both general works and specialized monographs. Some of these are of a biographical or autobiographical nature, or concen­ trate on the history of an industrial company. This book does both. It is certainly to be hoped that other pioneers will make their experi- x Series Foreword ences available to us and that we will be able to publish additional critical and biographical accounts of those who have made the modern computer. William Aspray, Associate Editor Preface The desire to write this book has been building over a number of years, fueled by what I perceive as three rather dramatic failures of under­ standing. First, the general public has almost no idea just what goes on in an engineering organization, the sort of people who work there and what they do. The subject has almost never been dealt with in books (exception: Tracy Kidder's excellent The Soul of a New Machine), and TV and movie representations are ridiculously distorted. A typical scriptwriter apparently has difficulty distinguishing the work of engi­ neers from the work of scientists. Science and engineering are as un­ alike as coal mining and piano tuning. Judging from the media por­ trayals, one would think that an engineering group consists of a number of men and women in white lab coats who run about shouting, "The experiment is failing!" In thirty years in the electronic computer industry I have never known one single engineer who wore a lab coat and few who shouted. The alternative media presentation of the engi­ neer is that of a dull fellow who spends his day bent over a drafting table. I have known a few of these, but they are comparatively rare and are mostly mechanism designers, a special breed. Second, and more startling to ,me, the majority of people working in my own electronic computer industry do not understand how a com­ puter gets designed, what really goes on in a development project, and why some developments are predictably losers from the very beginning and other projects almost sure to be winners. The dynamics of the in­ terpersonal relationships in an engineering development group are so obvious to many old-timers that they can almost sort out the winning from the losing projects by walking through the development area, looking around, and taking a deep breath. Third, and most important, it is not widely understood, by either the general public or by the people within the computer industry, just how important the single brilliant designer is to the outcome of a multi­ million dollar project. The difference between success and failure, be­ tween completion of a project within the budget or a vast overrun of budget and schedule, between an outstanding product that sets the standard for its type and a mediocre "me, too" product, is almost al- xii Preface ways a single mind that conceives and holds in focus the entire project. Failure to utilize such a talent fully represents a management over­ sight comparable to leaving a multimillion dollar piece of capital equip­ ment unused-and yet it happens all the time. The reader will meet a number of these brilliant and highly motivated designers in this nar­ rative; almost all of them have been underused or misused for a large portion of their careers. It is these individuals who provide the cutting edge to the development of a computer, a product line, or even an entire industry. At a time when the United States is in a race to maintain our technological leadership and the fruit of that technology, our standard of living, failure to make the fullest use of our best people is unforgive­ able. This book is a personal reminiscence. It attempts to capture the feel of an industry at a time of great change and excitement. It is not his­ tory, although all names. and dates used· have been verified against documents written at that time. Remembrances of gossip over coffee and examples of cartoons pinned up over individual desks are included in this narrative to establish the atmosphere in which people lived and worked. A Few Good Men from Univac 1 In The Beginning The sprawling, nondescript complex of white frame and concrete block buildings was surrounded by a chain link fence. In the asphalt parking lot stood a steel tower topped by a rotating radar antenna, a sight familiar to me. The name on the wooden sign, Engineering Research Associates Division of Sperry Rand Corporation, did not sound promising. I was a young electrical engineer, just released from active service in the Navy the month before, and on this gray day in November 1955 I was looking for ajob. Even at this early point in my career I knew that I was uninterested in the type of engineering that could be described as «research," which to me implied learning a great deal about a narrow specialty. I was always interested in the big picture-how the entire system fit together. But ERA was in St Paul next door to my hometown of Minneapolis, and they had advertised openings for electrical engineers.