August’s History Friday: Control Data

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]By Matt Goff, Kraus-Anderson Historian/Archivist

Through an unlikely series of historic twists and turns, St. Paul and Minneapolis became a major hub of the early computer age. In an effort to keep in-tact the concentrated expertise the US Navy compiled in its codebreaking efforts during WWII, a group of engineers formed a company called Engineering Research Associates and moved to the Twin Cities to work under the cover of the Northwestern Aeronautical Corporation, which made gliders for the US military during WWII. Instead of gliders, Northwestern Aeronautical Corporation now sold computer technology to the US Navy. When this secretive arrangement met with congressional disapproval, Engineering Research Associates was sold to the Remington Rand (soon to be Sperry Rand) corporation. Disliking their new working conditions, some of the top engineers at ERA, notably William Norris and Seymour Cray, left to form a new company: Control Data. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”30402″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Starting out manufacturing computer components, like magnetic memory drums, Control Data Corporation (CDC) soon began making and selling the world’s fastest computers. From the 1960s through the 1980s, CDC was one of the major players in the computer industry, employing nearly 30,000 people at its height. Such a fast-growing company naturally had extensive building needs, and those needs were mostly met by Kraus-Anderson. KA built offices, research labs, and data/distribution centers all over the region for Control Data.

One of the first major projects that KA completed for Control Data was also one of the largest: the CDC world headquarters building in Bloomington. Aside from being the headquarters of a Fortune 500 company, this project was notable for being a very early example of a slip-formed service core – an innovative way to construct a building for one of the most innovative companies in Minnesota’s history. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”30404″ img_size=”full” alignment=”right”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”30405″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”30406″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”30400″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Aside from all of the construction projects that Kraus-Anderson built for Control Data’s immediate business needs, KA built two Business and Technology CDC – one in St. Paul, and one in Minneapolis. Today these BTC centers would be called incubators. Control Data brought in fledgling businesses and supplied them with the hardware and services companies need to succeed: consulting, administrative services, and, of course, computers. Although designed for the same purpose, the Minneapolis and St. Paul BTC centers were two very different buildings. St. Paul’s was a renovated historic building in the downtown’s Lowertown neighborhood that is now a condominium called River Park Lofts. The Minneapolis BTC was a futuristic earth-sheltered building that was heated solely by the massive computers within it.

Another earth-sheltered project that KA completed for CDC was the Terratech building. Located in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood, and directly facing I94 on Concordia Avenue, Terratech was a ten thousand square foot office building composed of two earth-sheltered wings that were connected by a glass atrium that served as a greenhouse. This fascinating structure was demolished and replaced with a somewhat drab (even if more serviceable) brick office building that now houses the Minnesota Safety Council. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]