Seymour Cray Credit: invent.org

In the 1950s, Seymour Cray worked for Sperry Rand. His work was instrumental in working toward the super computer. The UNIVAC was a first-generation computer. It had high processing speed, and eventually became the first computer available for commercial use.

Cray, decided to go on his own to go after his ideas. In his home, Cray drew designs for more powerful computers by increasing the processing speed. In 1972 he founded Cray Research, and built a series of supercomputers. The Cray-1 (his company's first) could perform 240,000,000 calculations per second. In 1985, he developed the Cray-2, which were even faster (1,200,000,000 calculations per second).

Thanks to these powerful machines, scientists and engineers can perform very complex mathematical procedures, which help them analyze huge amounts of data and make predictions what will happen in the future. The space race and medical advances would not be possible without the speed of the computers. It would take many years for complex math problems, but the speed of the computers saves time and money.