The foundation of Cray Research Incorporated (CRI) in 1972 brought about the era of high-performance computing, popularly known as supercomputing. CRI was highly reliant on women’s labor in both its factory in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin and its software programming department at Mendota, Minnesota. CRI’s utilization of women workers raises two questions: why did leadership at Cray Research feminize certain aspects of supercomputing production and not others? How did the feminization of certain aspects impact the workplace and corporate culture? Using oral history interviews of former Chippewa Falls CRI employees, archived internal company documents, patents granted to CRI, and CRI documents published for general consumption, I will argue that while women were valued employees at CRI, which offered career advancement to a few women, CRI still replicated existing gendered power dynamics in industrial and technical manufacturing.
