William Norris (CEO)
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William Charles Norris | |
---|---|
Born | near Sperry Rand | July 14, 1911
Known for | Chief Executive Officer of Control Data Corporation |
Spouse | Jane Malley Norris |
Children | William, George, Daniel, Brian, Roger, David, Constance Van Hoven and Mary Keck |
Awards | IEEE Founders Medal (1985) |
William Charles Norris (July 14, 1911, near Red Cloud, Nebraska – August 21, 2006) was an American business executive. He was the CEO of Control Data Corporation, at one time one of the most powerful and respected computer companies in the world. He is famous for taking on IBM in a head-on fight and winning, as well as being a social activist who used Control Data's expansion in the late 1960s to bring jobs and training to inner cities and disadvantaged communities.
Early life
Norris was born and raised on a
Military career
Norris served in the
Professional career
Before entering military service, Norris sold X-Ray equipment for the Westinghouse Corporation in Chicago, then worked for the Bureau of Ordnance as a civil servant engineer until signing with the Naval Reserve.[1]
Norris entered the computer business just after
Control Data started by selling magnetic drum memory systems to other computer manufacturers, but introduced their own mainframe, the CDC 1604, in 1958. Designed primarily by Seymour Cray, the company soon followed the 1604 with a series of increasingly powerful machines. In 1965 they introduced the CDC 6600, the first supercomputer, and CDC was suddenly in the leadership position with a machine ten times faster than anything on the market.
This was a significant threat to
In 1967 Norris attended a seminar for CEOs where Whitney Young, head of the National Urban League, spoke about the social and economic injustices in the lives of young black Americans. This speech, along with a summer of violence in Norris's hometown of Minneapolis, greatly disturbed him. He became a champion of moving factories into the inner-cities, providing stable incomes and "high-tech" training to thousands of people who would otherwise have little chance at either.
Another CDC project that Norris championed was the
Norris continually purchased new companies to fold into CDC, and eventually returned to the peripheral market in the 1970s. This move proved particularly wise. During the early 1970s, Seymour Cray left to form his own company, which quickly drove CDC out of its leadership position in the supercomputer market. This left CDC in second place in a market for a small number of machines. Soon large Japanese companies were gobbling up what Cray didn't. CDC tried to regain its footing in the supercomputer market by spinning off ETA Systems, in order to allow the developers to escape an increasingly ossified management structure inside CDC. However this effort failed and CDC gave up on the market entirely.
In the 1980s CDC was left primarily as a
William Norris died on August 21, 2006, in a nursing home in Bloomington, Minnesota, after a long battle with Parkinson's disease. He was survived by his wife Jane Malley Norris, eight children, sons William, George, Daniel, Brian, Roger and David, and daughters Constance Van Hoven and Mary Keck, 21 grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.[3]
See also
- Charles Babbage Institute
References
- ^ a b c d e f Murray 1997, Chapter 1.
- ^ a b Lundstrom 1987, p. 7.
- ^ Peterson, Susan E. (2006-08-21). "Control Data founder William Norris dies". Star Tribune. Retrieved 2011-12-13.
Bibliography
- Lundstrom, David (1987). A Few Good Men From Univac. MIT Press. ISBN 0262121204.
- Murray, Charles (1997). The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards behind the Supercomputer. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-04885-2.
External links
- William Norris: Computer Pioneer, Maverick Social Activist
- A Brief Biography of William C. Norris
- CNET obituary at archive.today (archived 2013-01-02) accessed August 23, 2006
- Oral history interview with William C. Norris. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
- William C. Norris Papers, 1946-1988. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
- Control Data Corporation Records, William C. Norris Executive Papers, 1946-1995. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.