• Syn_Attck@lemmy.today
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    5 months ago

    Who was that guy that discovered something very important in physics, and he said the elves told him about it? The elves that were in the massive holes/caves he would dig in his back property, as his outlet. I forget how large his friends said the tunnels were, but he clearly spent a lot of time digging tunnels.

    Edit: Seymour Cray, of the Cray supercomputer. AKA The Father of Supercomputing.

    John Rollwagen, a colleague for many years, tells the story of a French scientist who visited Cray’s home in Chippewa Falls. Asked what were the secrets of his success, Cray said “Well, we have elves here, and they help me”. Cray subsequently showed his visitor a tunnel he had built under his house, explaining that when he reached an impasse in his computer design, he would retire to the tunnel to dig. “While I’m digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem”, he said.

    Cray has been called solitary, uncommunicative, secretive, and difficult to get on with. Frank Sumner, Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Manchester, met Cray on several occasions and refutes suggestions that he was a prickly character: “He was a very friendly man, and perhaps the greatest all-round computer scientist ever”, says Sumner.