LOSE YOURSELF IN 1976

SAY ‘HEY’ TO THE CRAY!

This year saw the launch of the first commercially-developed supercomputer. The Cray-1, designed by Seymour Cray of Cray Research, took four years to design and had a processor speed of 80MHz – the norm in a modern household PC is about 3500MHz. The cost to the first official customer, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, was US$8.86m… $1m of which was for the software disks alone. Then you had to factor in the electricity bill; its required 115kW was enough to run ten homes. Eventually, over 100 Cray-1s were sold.

Part of what made the Cray-1 stand out was its funky sci-fi design. The C-shaped chassis actually helped its speed, meaning that no wire was longer than three foot, although there was over 60 miles of wiring in total. The ring of padded benches outside covered the power supply.

It remained the world’s fastest computer until 1982, before being superceded by the Cray X-MP.

THE AMITYVILLE HORROR

The events that caused the Lutz family to flee their house in 1976 were made into The Amityville Horror film.

On 14 January, a family in Long Island, New York, USA fled their suburban home, claiming it was haunted. The Lutz family had moved into the house on 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, on 19 December, 1975, 13 months after six members of a family had been murdered there. Initially all was fine, but then the family claimed strange occurrences. There were plagues of flies, cold spots, odours, random noises and damage, visions, nightmares, slime oozing from walls and locks, and five-year old Kathy Lutz developed an imaginary friend called Jodie, a pig-like demon with glowing red eyes. When the family took flight for good, 28 days after first moving in, they blamed events ‘too frightening’ to tell in full.

Their account was turned into a best-selling book, followed by a series of hit movies.