Seymour Cray

Seymour Cray was born in Chippewa Falls in 1925, and from a young age was recognized as being very bright. His boyhood interests included the Morse Code and chemistry and discovering the internal workings of such things as clocks and radios. 

He made is own crystal radio sets and in high school ablely taught the physics class in the absence of his teacher.
    
Seymour enlisted in the US Army during World War II at age eighteen, serving as a radio operator and then as a code breaker, first in the European, and after May 1945, in the Pacific Theatre of Operations.
    
Returning home, Cray married in 1947 and began a family. He attended the University of Minnesota, graduating in 1950 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering, followed by Masters Degree in Applied Mathematics in 1951.

That same year, Cray found a position with the firm Engineering Research Associates, working on early transistor switches as a replacement for vacuum tubes. This company was eventually purchased by Remington Rand Corporation.