Jane Griffin and Martin Graham in front of R1 computer, Rice University Computer Project

Abstract

In 1956, three Rice University faculty members, Zevi Salsburg, John Kilpatrick, and Larry Biedenharn, brought supercomputing to the school for the first time in the form of the R1 computer. While it wasn’t the first computer at Rice, it was the university’s first large computational research computer. At the time, the researchers couldn’t simply go out and purchase a mammoth supercomputer; they literally had to design and build the R1 themselves. The R1 took up a large amount of space on the second floor of the Abercrombie Engineering Building.