Books

Ветеран Cray Research (Крей Рисёрч) рассказывает, как первопроходцы справлялись с подавляющей сложностью: распознавание закономерностей, предвосхитившее Мидуэй, системное мышление, изобретшее память на магнитных сердечниках. Опыт из одной области, применённый по-новому, сформировал суперкомпьютерную отрасль.

In 1945, Admiral Chester Nimitz asked an investment banker to shelter a mysterious team of Navy code breakers. "They may be more important in peacetime than it is in wartime," Nimitz explained. Parker could only respond "Aye-aye, sir." That team quietly invented the first production stored-program computer in a drafty Minnesota glider factory. But the NSA kept it secret for three decades. "Top Secret Ultra" traces the hidden history from World War II cryptography to the birth of supercomputing. Follow Bill Norris and Seymour Cray from Engineering Research Associates through corporate upheavals to the founding of Control Data Corporation. Watch as Cray, working with just 34 engineers in his hometown of Chippewa Falls, created the CDC 6600, the world's first supercomputer. When IBM's CEO demanded to know how his vast organization had been bested by such a small team, Cray's response became legend: "It seems like Mr. Watson has answered his own question."

For thirty-five years, St. Paul welcomed America's most wanted criminals. John Dillinger, Ma Barker, Babyface Nelson, all found sanctuary under the O'Connor Layover Agreement. Commit no crimes in the city, pay your bribes, and police looked the other way. This volume explores protected spaces across centuries. "First Rate" traces the phrase to HMS Victory and the Age of Sail. "Safe Havens Then and Now" draws an uncomfortable parallel between gangster-era protection rackets and modern tech platforms—Google's reCAPTCHA crowdsourcing labor, Twitter's bot ecosystem, Carnegie Mellon finding half of COVID tweets came from bots. "Where Computers Come From" reveals why computing's origins stayed classified: the machines were built for cryptology. A secret company in St. Paul constructed America's first stored-program computers. Seymour Cray learned his craft there. Three essays. Three protected spaces. One question: who benefits from the shelter?

Big Tech often frames itself as unprecedented and unstoppable. History suggests otherwise. This volume collects three historical essays examining moments when large technology and infrastructure systems failed, consolidated, or triggered institutional response. From the 1988 Morris Worm and the early internet’s first shutdown, to railroad monopolies that shaped modern antitrust law, these essays trace recurring patterns in how systems scale, break, and attract regulation. Written as historical nonfiction, the book avoids prediction and policy advocacy, instead inviting readers to view modern platforms through the lens of earlier infrastructure systems, and to become students of history.

What does it really mean to work among “wizards”?At Cray Research, the machines were legendary, but the culture behind them mattered just as much. Living Amongst the Wizards of Cray Research offers an insider’s view of a place where problems resisted clean explanations, debugging was a way of life, and expertise emerged from sustained exposure to failure, uncertainty, and responsibility.Rather than celebrating genius or heroics, the book focuses on method: how engineers learned to reason about complex systems, argue ideas into existence, use humor as pressure relief, and recognize patterns long before tools could make them obvious. The stories are grounded, sometimes uncomfortable, and often quietly funny.This is not a nostalgia piece or a technical manual. It is a reflection on how rare expertise is formed, how demanding cultures endure, and what it actually feels like to live inside work that cannot be simplified.

Where did modern computing really come from?   Not from garages in California, but from bootleggers, codebreakers, and Cold War air‑defense engineers. This book reveals a lineage that almost no computing history traces:   Prohibition‑era encrypted radio → Elizebeth & William Friedman → OP‑20‑G → MIT Whirlwind → SAGE → Engineering Research Associates → Control Data → Seymour Cray. From Capone’s smugglers to Cray’s supercomputers, the story of U.S. large‑scale computing is a straight line, just one that has been forgotten. Combining deep historical research with firsthand experience from the CRAY‑1 era, this book shows how cryptology, radar, and national‑security urgency created the machines that defined modern computing. If you think you know the origins of the computer revolution, this book will change your mind.

"In a world torn between shadow and light, a winged warrior with the face of a lion rises from storm-swept mountains to challenge fate. Born of prophecy, haunted by fire, he must cross cities of angels, forests of thunder, and the silence of forgotten gods to reclaim a destiny written in emerald and blood."

A Cray Research veteran narrates how pioneers handled overwhelming complexity: pattern recognition anticipating Midway, systems thinking inventing magnetic core memory. Experience from one domain, applied in a new way, shaped supercomputing.

This book is targeted primarily to technologists and policy makers who wish to better serve a demographic of Wisconsin landline Internet (HFC) consumers. (Rural residents in particular)

This book is targeted primarily to technologists and policy makers who wish to better serve a demographic of Wisconsin landline Internet (HFC) consumers. (Rural residents in particular)

From the foundations of computing to the construction of electronic devices, this book attempts to build an easy-to-cross bridge between theory and practice, model and reality, thought and object.

Canada’s payroll project disaster. The Phoenix system was supposed to rise from the ashes! Instead, $4.2 billion have gone up in flames. Some have lost their life savings, their home, their marriage, their dignity. It’s a catastrophe with no end in sight.

An exploration of one of the most fundamental concepts in computer science: the NULL value. Learn how NULL can be used and how its misuse can lead to serious errors and vulnerabilities. Whether you're a seasoned programmer or just curious about the history & inner workings of computing, this is a must-read that'll deepen your understanding of NULL!