The US Mint has launched a one-dollar coin featuring the Cray-1 supercomputer.
Launched in 2018, the American Innovation $1 Coin Program features innovations associated with different US states, with four coins released every year.
This year, Iowa's coin features Dr. Norman Borlaug and his pioneering work in agronomy, California's coin has a young Steve Jobs of Apple fame sitting in a northern California landscape, and Minnesota has a 1940s-era truck equipped with an early front-mounted refrigeration unit.
Wisconsin's $1 Coin has a stylized top-down view of the Cray-1 supercomputer. "The image emphasizes the Cray-1 not only through its shape, but by also suggesting the shape of a 'C' for Cray-1 and 'computer,'" the Mint said.
The Cray-1 was built in a C shape, surrounded by a ring of benches that covered the power supplies and the cooling system.
The first Cray-1 system was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976, with eighty Cray-1s sold until 1982.
The coin's obverse (heads) design features the Statue of Liberty in profile with the inscription “In God We Trust.”