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Image research: CDC 7600 (1969-1983)

Compiled 2026-05-06. License rule: only CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC0, public domain (PD-USGov, PD-no-notice 1978-89, PD-old). Fair use, CC BY-NC, and CC BY-NC-SA are NOT acceptable.

For each candidate I verified the license on the file’s own description page on Wikimedia Commons (not on the article that uses it). Direct URLs are upload.wikimedia.org bytes (no thumbnail redirects).

1. CDC 7600 console / installation photo

The CDC 7600’s distinctive Y-shaped (three-cylinder) chassis is well-photographed under free licences. Wikimedia Commons Category:CDC_7600 has 12 entries, of which the strongest are below.

Best (PD-USGov / DOE, period photograph at LLNL)

  • Direct URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Photo_of_the_Week-_70s_Supercomputer_Style_%288971052970%29.jpg
  • File page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Photo_of_the_Week-_70s_Supercomputer_Style_(8971052970).jpg
  • Author: US Department of Energy (uploader: ENERGY.GOV via Flickr; transferred to Commons by Bomazi).
  • License: Public Domain (PD-USGov-DOE; work of US federal employee).
  • Date: Originally posted 6 June 2013; image documents an LLNL CDC 7600 installation from the early 1970s.
  • Dimensions / size: 1000x800, 471 KB.
  • Suggested caption: “A CDC 7600 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the early 1970s. By the mid-1970s LLNL’s Octopus time-sharing system aggregated four 7600s into the world’s most powerful research-computing facility. Photo: U.S. Department of Energy, public domain.”
  • Confidence: HIGH. This is the single best PD photograph of an actual 1970s 7600 installation, and it shows the Y-shaped chassis in its native machine-room context.

Backup A: 7600 at LLNL (cropped Berkeley Lab / NERSC photo)

  • Direct URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/1970s_CDC_7600_at_LLNL.jpg
  • File page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1970s_CDC_7600_at_LLNL.jpg
  • Author: Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences (Flickr / NERSC).
  • License: CC BY 2.0.
  • Date: Photo dated 7 February 2007 (it is a digitisation of an older 1970s photograph; NERSC’s archive copy is the source).
  • Dimensions / size: 1017x764, 418 KB.
  • Suggested caption: “Assembly view of a CDC 7600 at LLNL in the 1970s. Photo: Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.”
  • Confidence: HIGH (used as the lead image on en.wikipedia’s CDC 7600 article).

Backup B: CHM museum shot showing the Y-chassis (Couperus)

  • Direct URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/CDC_7600.jc.jpg
  • File page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CDC_7600.jc.jpg
  • Author: Jitze Couperus.
  • License: CC BY 2.0.
  • Date: 21 January 2010.
  • Dimensions / size: 2912x4158, 3.15 MB.
  • Suggested caption: “CDC 7600 serial number 1, on display at the Computer History Museum. The blue glass and wood exterior, like the cordwood-module construction inside, was Cray’s signature. The 7600 followed the 6600 in 1969 ‘similar in architecture and almost compatible, and using much higher density electronics.’ Photo by Jitze Couperus, CC BY 2.0.”
  • Confidence: HIGH. (Note: this is the same photographer who took the canonical CC BY 2.0 CDC 6600 image already in the repo as CDC_6600.jpg. Reusing a Couperus shot here gives stylistic consistency with the 6600 post.)

Backup C: CHM 7600 vertical museum shot (Wichary)

  • Direct URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/CHM_Artifacts_CDC_7600_%284062786473%29.jpg
  • File page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CHM_Artifacts_CDC_7600_(4062786473).jpg
  • Author: Marcin Wichary.
  • License: CC BY 2.0.
  • Date: 31 October 2009.
  • Dimensions / size: 3118x4684, 4.87 MB.
  • Confidence: HIGH. Vertical-orientation framing of the Y-chassis at CHM.

Backup D: CHM 7600 (Wichary 2008, horizontal)

  • Direct URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Control_Data_CDC_7600_%283014140238%29.jpg
  • File page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Control_Data_CDC_7600_(3014140238).jpg
  • Author: Marcin Wichary.
  • License: CC BY 2.0.
  • Date: 12 July 2008.
  • Dimensions / size: 2588x3888, 3.29 MB.
  • Confidence: HIGH.

Backup E: 7600 wires close-up (Wichary)

  • Direct URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/CDC_7600wires%284376990374%29.jpg
  • File page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CDC_7600wires(4376990374).jpg
  • Author: Marcin Wichary.
  • License: CC BY 2.0.
  • Date: 21 February 2010.
  • Dimensions / size: 3168x4752, 4.6 MB.
  • Suggested caption: “Internal wiring of a CDC 7600. The signal path between functional units was hand-routed; the wire-wrap density was a defining factor in the machine’s reliability problems and its 27 ns clock. Photo by Marcin Wichary, CC BY 2.0.”
  • Confidence: HIGH. Useful for an ‘engineering interior’ beat to set up the post’s reliability/MTBF discussion.

Diagrammatic alternatives (3D renderings)

  • CDC7600_main_overview.png: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/CDC7600_main_overview.png – FlyAkwa, CC BY-SA 4.0, 4000x2213, 5.34 MB. The same modeller’s 6600 rendering is in the previous post; consistency is a plus.
  • CDC7600_main_overview_above.png: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/CDC7600_main_overview_above.png – FlyAkwa, CC BY-SA 4.0, 3418x2213, 5.11 MB. Top-down view showing the Y-shape clearly.
  • CDC7600_scaling.png: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/CDC7600_scaling.png – FlyAkwa, CC BY-SA 4.0, 4000x2213, 2.35 MB. Two views with dimensional scaling.
  • Confidence: HIGH for all three. Useful if the post wants to show the three-cylinder layout schematically – a photograph from above is hard to find under any licence, but the rendering above does the job at no licensing risk.

2. Seymour Cray portrait

Already in repo, do not re-download.

  • Repo path: /home/michal/repos/michalbrennek.github.io/assets/images/Seymour_Cray.jpg (131x203, 9.6 KB)
  • Source on Commons: File:Seymour_R._Cray.JPG – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seymour_R._Cray.JPG
  • License: Public Domain (NSA Hall of Honor; US Federal Government work).
  • Already used in: Post 29 (CDC 1604) and Post 30 (Watson memo / 6600 era).
  • Recommendation: Reuse with a caption tying Cray to the 7600 era.

A larger 1600x1067 alternative is in the repo as Seymour_Cray_portrait.jpg (778 KB) – this is a 2013 photo of an unidentified subject mislabelled as Cray in early posts; use Seymour_Cray.jpg (NSA PD), not Seymour_Cray_portrait.jpg, when in doubt. (The NSA file is the canonical Wikipedia-infobox Cray.)

3. Les Davis portrait (1924-2023)

Result: NOT AVAILABLE under a clean license.

I checked:

  • Wikimedia Commons: searches for “Les Davis,” “Lester Davis Cray,” “Davis Cray Research” returned no portrait of the Cray Research engineer. The 600+ results are unrelated people, genealogical records, and military rosters.
  • Wikipedia: No English Wikipedia article exists for Les Davis as the lead Cray engineer; there is no infobox photo to inherit.
  • Cray-history.net obituary (https://cray-history.net/2021/08/11/les-davis/): hosts one black-and-white portrait at wp-content/uploads/2021/07/530_0036.jpg, but the page declares no licence and gives no source attribution. Cray-history.net is a personal-archive site by Andy Bechtolsheim and others, not a CC release.
  • Pederson-Volker funeral home obituary (https://www.pedersonvolker.com/obituaries/lester-davis): all-rights-reserved.
  • Chippewa Herald / La Crosse Tribune obituary photos: newspaper-archive copyright; not freely licensed.
  • Cray Inc / HPE archives: no public CC release of historic personnel photos.

Recommendation: prose-attribute Les Davis. Frame him as Cray’s chief engineer from the 1604 era through the Cray-1; the post can name him at multiple moments (7600 fault diagnosis, the move from CDC to Cray Research in 1972) without a photo. If a “Cray’s team” visual gesture is needed, the existing Seymour_Cray.jpg (NSA portrait) covers Cray; Davis stays in prose.

4. Bill Norris portrait

Already in repo, do not re-download.

  • Repo path: /home/michal/repos/michalbrennek.github.io/assets/images/William_Norris.jpg (1600x1067 grayscale downscale, 350 KB)
  • Source on Commons: File:16._Internationales_Management-Gespräch-William_C._Norris-HSGN_028-00628.jpg
  • Direct URL (full-res original): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/16._Internationales_Management-Gespr%C3%A4ch-William_C._Norris-HSGN_028-00628.jpg
  • Author: Regina Kühne, Universitätsarchiv St. Gallen.
  • License: CC BY-SA 4.0.
  • Date: 1986.
  • Already used in: Post 29, Post 30.
  • Recommendation: Reuse the existing repo grayscale 1600x1067 file; the established caption from posts 29-30 is “Photo: Universitätsarchiv St. Gallen / Regina Kühne, via Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 4.0.”

5. Jim Thornton portrait (1925-2005)

Result: NOT AVAILABLE under a clean license.

Confirmed already in the prior CDC 6600 research (IMAGES_CDC_6600.md rejected list). Re-checked for this post and the situation is unchanged:

  • Wikimedia Commons: no portrait. Searches return technical PDFs and unrelated James Thorntons (FBI documents, voice actors, etc.).
  • English Wikipedia article on James E. Thornton: has no infobox image.
  • IEEE Computer Society profile (https://www.computer.org/profiles/james-thornton): copyrighted IEEE editorial portrait, no CC release.
  • Computer History Museum: holds Thornton material under “Courtesy of CDC” attribution (all-rights-reserved). Not free.

Recommendation: prose-attribute Thornton. The 7600 post will name him in the 8600 / Cray-departure beat and probably the “Design of a Computer: The Control Data 6600” book reference (which is © 1970 CDC). Describe Thornton in words without a portrait, exactly as in the 6600 post.

6. CDC 8600 photo or sketch

Result: NOT AVAILABLE under a clean license.

The 8600 was cancelled mid-development in 1974; no photographs of a complete machine exist (the project never had production hardware to photograph beyond prototypes that were dismantled).

  • Wikimedia Commons: searches for “CDC 8600” return only unrelated numerics (NLM Rockville Pike address, CDC fax numbers, etc.). No images.
  • Mark Smotherman’s Clemson archive (https://people.computing.clemson.edu/~mark/cdc8600.html): the page contains architectural sketches and a single component photograph (a module). Smotherman’s site is a personal academic resource; he does not declare any of his hosted material under a CC licence. The component photographs and engineering sketches there are typically reproduced from CDC’s own internal documentation, which is © Control Data Corporation. Reproducing without a CC declaration is fair use only – not acceptable under our rule.
  • Charles Babbage Institute (U. Minnesota): holds CDC corporate records including 8600-era materials. Restrictive use terms; CC release not available.

Recommendation: describe the 8600 in prose. The post’s 8600 beat is inherently a story about a non-existent machine – the cancellation, the Cray-Norris split – so the absence of a photograph is rhetorically apt. If the post needs a visual gesture, reuse one of the CDC 7600 photographs (Wichary 7600 wires close-up, section 1 backup E) and caption it with a line like: “The 7600’s hand-wired interior was already at the edge of what one machine could be. Cray’s 8600 design pushed past that edge – and broke.”

7. NCAR Mesa Lab building

Already in repo

  • Repo path: /home/michal/repos/michalbrennek.github.io/assets/images/NCAR_Mesa_Lab.jpg (1600x1200, 710 KB)
  • Source on Commons: File:National_Center_for_Atmospheric_Research_(NCAR)_Mesa_Laboratory_in_Boulder,_Colorado,_USA_in_2014.jpg
  • Direct URL (full-res original): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/National_Center_for_Atmospheric_Research_%28NCAR%29_Mesa_Laboratory_in_Boulder%2C_Colorado%2C_USA_in_2014.jpg (3264x2448, 2.43 MB; the repo file is the same image downscaled.)
  • Author: Tim Farley (Wikimedia user Krelnik).
  • License: CC BY-SA 4.0.
  • Date: 23 June 2014.
  • Already used in: Post 2026-04-27 (“The machine that looked like furniture”) with caption “The NCAR Mesa Laboratory, designed by I.M. Pei in 1961-67 as the home of NCAR’s research program, sits below the Flatirons sandstone cliffs above Boulder, Colorado.”

Recommendation: REUSE the existing repo file with a fresh caption tying the building to the 7600. NCAR took serial number 12 of the CDC 7600 in May 1971 and ran it for nearly 12 years, until a second Cray-1A replaced it in spring 1983. The Mesa Lab basement is the right setting.

Backup A: Daderot 2005 photo (different angle, dual-licensed)

  • Direct URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/National_Center_for_Atmospheric_Research_-_Boulder%2C_Colorado.jpg
  • File page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:National_Center_for_Atmospheric_Research_-_Boulder,_Colorado.jpg
  • Author: Daderot.
  • License: CC BY-SA 3.0 / GFDL.
  • Date: September 2005.
  • Dimensions / size: 2406x1913, 5.01 MB.
  • Confidence: HIGH. Different angle from the existing file – a possible swap if a different framing is wanted.

Backup B: USGS aerial 2002 (PD)

  • Direct URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/USGS-UCAR-Aerial-2002.jpg
  • File page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USGS-UCAR-Aerial-2002.jpg
  • Author: US Geological Survey.
  • License: Public Domain (PD-USGov, USGS work).
  • Date: 22 April 2002.
  • Dimensions / size: 1448x1416, 2.17 MB.
  • Confidence: HIGH. Useful if the post wants an aerial / site context shot. Cleanest licence (PD).

8. Akira Kasahara portrait (1926-2022)

Result: NOT AVAILABLE as a standalone portrait, but he is identifiable in a free-licensed group photograph.

I checked extensively:

  • Wikimedia Commons individual portrait: none. Searches for “Akira Kasahara” return four results: a paper PDF, the GARP group photo (below), a NCAR GCM video, and unrelated entries.
  • English Wikipedia: no article exists for Akira Kasahara the atmospheric scientist (404 on Akira_Kasahara).
  • NOAA Voices (https://www.noaa.gov/digital-collections/noaa-voices/akira-kasahara): hosts portrait images, but the page returned 403 Forbidden when fetched; NOAA’s standard policy on its NOAA Voices oral-history collection is case-by-case rather than blanket PD. Not safe to use without verification.
  • OpenSky / UCAR archives (e.g. opensky.ucar.edu/islandora/object/imagegallery:1967, “Akira Kasahara with magnetic tapes, 1970”): UCAR’s terms-of-use restrict reuse to “non-commercial promotion of NSF NCAR and UCAR work” – per the CDC 6600 research (IMAGES_CDC_6600.md), this is more restrictive than CC BY-NC and is not acceptable under our licensing rule.

Best (free-licensed group photo with Kasahara)

  • Direct URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Leaders_of_the_Global_Atmospheric_Research_Program_%28GARP%29.jpg
  • File page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leaders_of_the_Global_Atmospheric_Research_Program_(GARP).jpg
  • Author: Bfinston (Wikimedia uploader).
  • License: CC BY-SA 4.0.
  • Dimensions / size: 1866x1466, 835 KB.
  • Description: Group photograph of 42 leaders of the Global Atmospheric Research Program. Akira Kasahara is identified as person #24. Other identifiable figures include Syukuro Manabe (#9), Joseph Smagorinsky, Edward Lorenz, Yale Mintz, Pierre Morel, Tiruvalam Krishnamurti, and many others – effectively the entire 1970s-early-1980s atmospheric-modelling community.
  • Caveat: the original photograph’s date and location are not specified on the file page (the upload date is 1 June 2024); GARP ran 1967-1982, and the cast list – with Manabe, Smagorinsky, and Eliassen all alive and several second-generation modellers like Williamson and Bourke present – suggests late 1970s or very early 1980s. Caption needs to acknowledge that the original photo’s date is uncertain; the cross-licensing claim (own work by Bfinston) is unusual for a presumed older institutional photograph and should be sanity-checked before publication.
  • Suggested caption: “Leaders of the Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP) in a group photograph, late 1970s. Akira Kasahara stands at #24; Syukuro Manabe is at #9. NCAR’s GCM team built around Kasahara and Warren Washington was one of two centres – the other was Manabe’s at GFDL – driving large-scale numerical climate modelling on the CDC machines of this era. Photo: Wikimedia user Bfinston, CC BY-SA 4.0.”
  • Confidence: MEDIUM-HIGH on the licence; LOW on the original-date provenance. Use only if the caption is honest about the date uncertainty.

Recommendation: the post should prose-attribute Kasahara as the default. If a visual is essential – e.g., for the “two-centre modelling community” beat – the GARP group photo can do double duty (it shows both Kasahara and Manabe) but the caption needs to be careful about date.

9. Warren Washington portrait

Best (CC BY-SA 2.0, Oregon State University)

  • Direct URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Warren_Washington_%28cropped%29.jpg
  • File page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Warren_Washington_(cropped).jpg
  • Author: Joshua Yospyn (photographer for Oregon State University).
  • License: CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic.
  • Date: 11 December 2018.
  • Dimensions / size: 2860x3834, 6.47 MB.
  • Source: Oregon State University Flickr stream (https://www.flickr.com/photos/oregonstateuniversity/46150231735/).
  • Suggested caption: “Warren Washington, the climatologist who – with Akira Kasahara – built NCAR’s first general circulation model on the CDC 6600 and continued it through the 7600 era. Photographed at Oregon State University, 2018. Photo: Joshua Yospyn / Oregon State University, CC BY-SA 2.0.”
  • Confidence: HIGH. This is the same image used as Warren_Washington’s English Wikipedia infobox photo.

Backup (uncropped original)

  • Direct URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Warren_Washington.jpg (uncropped; 7180x4792, 16.54 MB). Same author/date/license.
  • Confidence: HIGH but unnecessarily large. Use the cropped version above for the post.

Note on the 2010 Obama / National Medal of Science angle: Warren Washington received the National Medal of Science from President Obama in November 2010. A search of the Obama White House photo archive and the NSF press archive (November 17, 2010 ceremony) found no CC-licensed or PD-tagged ceremony photograph of Washington personally receiving the medal. The Obama White House archive’s Pete Souza photographs of the ceremony are PD-USGov in principle, but the published named-laureate close-ups don’t appear in the public Souza Flickr or NARA index. The Yospyn 2018 photo is the cleanest free-licensed Washington portrait available.

10. NCAR Community Climate Model output / visualisation

Result: NOT AVAILABLE for the 7600 era specifically.

The Community Climate Model lineage post-dates the 7600. CCM1 was released in 1987 (after the 7600’s 1983 decommissioning at NCAR), and the modern CESM visualisations on Wikimedia Commons (Category:Community_Earth_System_Model) are paleoclimate reconstructions running on twenty-first-century hardware – not appropriate as a CDC 7600-era illustration.

The 1964-1972 first-generation NCAR GCM by Kasahara and Washington produced output that was archived to magnetic tape (the famous “Kasahara with magnetic tapes, 1970” UCAR photograph); none of those tape-output visualisations are on Commons under a free licence.

Already in repo: a generic GCM-grid diagram

  • Repo path: /home/michal/repos/michalbrennek.github.io/assets/images/early_GCM.jpg (540x512, 79 KB)
  • Content: a generic Lat-Lon grid + 1D atmosphere/ocean physical-processes diagram. Unattributed/unsourced in the file metadata.
  • Caveat: the licence of this file is not documented in the repo. It is visually generic enough that it could plausibly come from a US-government educational source (NOAA, IPCC public materials), but I could not verify a clean licence chain for it. Treat with caution.

Best free-licensed alternative: the NCAR-archives video

  • Direct URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/NCAR_General_Circulation_Model.webm
  • File page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NCAR_General_Circulation_Model.webm
  • Author: NCAR Archives.
  • License: CC BY 3.0.
  • Date: 12 February 2018 (Commons upload), source video originally on YouTube (ID WyOsVnzkl3Y).
  • Dimensions / duration: 1920x1080, 12:57 minutes, 233 MB.
  • Confidence: HIGH for licence; LOW for blog-post fit (the file is a 13-minute video, not a still image).

Recommendation: if a still illustrating the GCM era is needed, reuse the existing early_GCM.jpg with a careful generic-diagram caption, or instead cross-link to the existing Bjerknes/Smagorinsky/Bryan series imagery already in the repo (e.g. Bryan_Manabe_Smagorinsky_1969.png, PD-NOAA – see section 11 of IMAGES_IBM_360_91.md). The cleanest move is to caption the 7600 hardware photo in a way that evokes the Kasahara-Washington model output without needing to show it – e.g. “The 7600 in NCAR’s Mesa Lab basement was the machine that ran the third generation of the Kasahara-Washington GCM, the direct ancestor of CESM.”

11. LLNL machine room photo from late 1960s / early 1970s

The PD-USGov / DOE photograph in section 1 (the “Photo of the Week: 70s Supercomputer Style” image) is exactly an LLNL machine-room photo from the early 1970s, and the 1970s_CDC_7600_at_LLNL.jpg backup in section 1 is also LLNL. So this subject is already covered.

Caveat on LLNL Flickr

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Flickr photostream (https://www.flickr.com/photos/llnl/) hosts many other CDC 7600 photographs (e.g. flickr.com/photos/llnl/3094299714, “CDC 7600 Computer”). I checked the licence: the LLNL Flickr stream is CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, which is not acceptable under our licensing rule. Only the DOE-Energy.gov-Flickr photographs (different photostream from LLNL’s own) are PD-USGov.

This is the same gap previously noted in the CDC 6600 research: LLNL’s own institutional images are NC-licensed; only when the same image was later re-uploaded by the DOE Energy.gov account or by Berkeley Lab (NERSC) under a free licence does it become usable.

Recommendation: the section-1 DOE photo + the section-1 Berkeley Lab photo are the only clean LLNL machine-room images. Both are already recommended above.

12. CERN computer center

Result: NOT AVAILABLE under a free licence.

CERN’s CDC 7600 was installed at the CERN computer centre in early 1972 (the machine was flown into Geneva airport in mid-February 1972 and remained CERN’s fastest computer for nine years). There are well-known photographs of:

  • The 7600 being unloaded from the airplane (CERN PhotoLab, 1972).
  • The 7600 in the CERN computer centre (CERN PhotoLab, 1972).
  • A Ferranti-Argus graphics display linked to the 7600 (CERN CDS record 917096, 1975).

I checked the licensing carefully on multiple paths:

  • CERN Document Server (cds.cern.ch, e.g. record 1544875 “Installation of the CDC 7600 supercomputer system in the computer centre in 1972”): Photographer William Nettz, dated 1972. The CDS page declares “Conditions of Use © 1972-2026 CERN” with no Creative Commons tag.
  • CERN home / copyright page (the canonical CERN Audiovisual Media Use Policy): “CERN retains copyright in the image. Download and use of the image does not amount to a transfer of intellectual property… free of charge for educational and informational use” with attribution required. This is not a Creative Commons licence; it is a revocable courtesy permission. Per our rule (CC BY/CC BY-SA/CC0/PD only), it is not acceptable.
  • CERN70 article (cern70.cern/cutting-edge-computing/): photos credited “(Image: CERN)” without CC tag.
  • Google Arts & Culture asset page (artsandculture.google.com/asset/0gHoIVFKMiU8hw, “Arrival of the CDC 7600 computer”): same © CERN provenance, no CC release.

This was already noted as a gap in the CDC 6600 research (IMAGES_CDC_6600.md, rejected list); the situation has not changed.

Recommendation: prose-attribute the CERN delivery (mid-February 1972, flown into Geneva) without a photograph. Cite the CERN Timeline page (https://timeline.web.cern.ch/cdc-7600-and-additional-cdc-6400-start-production) as a fact-check source in research notes but not as an image.

13. Header image candidate

Recommended header: the DOE / Energy.gov LLNL photo (section 1 best).

Reasoning:

  • The post is anchored on the 7600 (1969-1983) at major customer installations (LLNL, NCAR, CERN). The DOE-Energy.gov photo is a period 1970s LLNL photo showing the Y-shaped chassis in its native machine-room environment, and is unambiguously PD-USGov (cleanest possible licence).
  • 1000x800 native resolution. For a 1600x900 header, this needs upscaling – expect visible softening on retina screens, similar to the upscaling trade-off described for the Goddard NASA 360/91 photo in IMAGES_IBM_360_91.md.

Backup A: Couperus CHM 7600 (section 1 backup B), 2912x4158 CC BY 2.0. At that resolution any 1600x900 crop stays sharp. Trade-off: it is a museum shot, not an in-situ shot. Same trade-off as the CHM-Nardone 360/91 alternative discussed in IMAGES_IBM_360_91.md section 11. Use this if visual quality matters more than 1970s-era authenticity.

Backup B: Wichary CHM 7600 (section 1 backup C), 3118x4684 CC BY 2.0. Vertical-portrait orientation; would need significant cropping for a horizontal header.

Backup C: NCAR Mesa Lab existing repo file (section 7), 1600x1200 CC BY-SA 4.0. The Pei building under the Flatirons is a strong rhetorical header if the post leans heavily on the NCAR-7600 angle. But the post brief cites three installations (LLNL, NCAR, CERN) so an installation-agnostic header showing the machine itself is probably the right primary choice.

Stash convention: save the original full-resolution file as assets/images/CDC_7600_LLNL.jpg; if a header crop is needed, save it as assets/images/header-cdc7600.jpg. This matches the repo’s existing header-<topic>.jpg convention (e.g. header-cdc6600.jpg for the previous post).

14. Reuse from existing assets

Confirmed from /home/michal/repos/michalbrennek.github.io/assets/images/:

Existing file License Reuse for Already used in
Seymour_Cray.jpg (131x203 NSA portrait) PD-USGov Cray references throughout the 7600 post Posts 29, 30
William_Norris.jpg (1600x1067 grayscale) CC BY-SA 4.0 Norris references (split with Cray over the 8600) Posts 29, 30
NCAR_Mesa_Lab.jpg (1600x1200) CC BY-SA 4.0 NCAR/Mesa Lab section Post 2026-04-27
CDC_6600.jpg (Couperus CHM shot) CC BY 2.0 “the predecessor 6600” sideways reference if needed Post on CDC 6600
CDC_6600_chassis.jpg CC0 rivalry-with-the-6600 framing if needed Post on CDC 6600
Cray_prototype_1957.jpg (verified PD in post 29 / 1604 research) Cray’s 1604/Naval Tactical Data System era backstory Post 29
Cray_1_EPFL.jpg, Cray_1_museum.jpg, header-cray.jpg (CC BY 2.0/SA, verified) “what came after the 7600” closing beat Post on Cray-1
Watson_Jr_1937.jpg / Watson_Jr.jpg PD (1937 no-notice) Watson references if they appear (unlikely in 7600 post) Posts 29, 30, IBM 360/91
Manabe_portrait.jpg, Syukuro_Manabe.jpg CC BY 4.0 If the Kasahara-Washington vs. Manabe two-centre framing is wanted Posts 13, 21
Bryan_Manabe_Smagorinsky_1969.png PD-NOAA “the GFDL parallel” if the post wants to cross-reference Available for reuse
early_GCM.jpg (generic GCM-grid diagram) (license uncertain in repo) only if the schematic abstraction is wanted; treat with caution Earlier posts (unverified)
Mark_Cane.jpg (untracked in git status; verify before use) only if Cane/Zebiak or ENSO content surfaces Untracked

The 7600 post is unlikely to need Cane, Manabe, or Bryan, but they are noted above for completeness.

Summary table

Subject Status Asset / Source
1. CDC 7600 console / installation HIGH (PD DOE, period LLNL) Photo_of_the_Week_70s_Supercomputer_Style.jpg
2. Seymour Cray HIGH (in repo, PD NSA) reuse Seymour_Cray.jpg
3. Les Davis NOT AVAILABLE – prose only
4. Bill Norris HIGH (in repo, CC BY-SA 4.0) reuse William_Norris.jpg
5. Jim Thornton NOT AVAILABLE – prose only
6. CDC 8600 NOT AVAILABLE – prose only
7. NCAR Mesa Lab HIGH (in repo, CC BY-SA 4.0) reuse NCAR_Mesa_Lab.jpg
8. Akira Kasahara NOT AVAILABLE individually use GARP group photo (MEDIUM-HIGH) or prose
9. Warren Washington HIGH (CC BY-SA 2.0) Warren_Washington_(cropped).jpg
10. NCAR Community Climate Model output NOT AVAILABLE for the 7600 era reuse early_GCM.jpg with caveats, or prose
11. LLNL machine room covered by section 1 –
12. CERN computer center NOT AVAILABLE – prose only
13. Header image – DOE LLNL photo (preferred) or Couperus CHM
14. Reuse-from-existing covered above Seymour_Cray, William_Norris, NCAR_Mesa_Lab

Suggested wget commands

Run from /home/michal/repos/michalbrennek.github.io/assets/images/:

cd /home/michal/repos/michalbrennek.github.io/assets/images/

# Primary CDC 7600 LLNL photo (PD-USGov DOE) -- recommended header / lead image
wget -O CDC_7600_LLNL.jpg \
  "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Photo_of_the_Week-_70s_Supercomputer_Style_%288971052970%29.jpg"

# Backup: 1970s CDC 7600 at LLNL (Berkeley Lab CC BY 2.0)
wget -O CDC_7600_LLNL_NERSC.jpg \
  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/1970s_CDC_7600_at_LLNL.jpg

# CDC 7600 at the Computer History Museum (Couperus CC BY 2.0)
wget -O CDC_7600_CHM.jpg \
  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/CDC_7600.jc.jpg

# CDC 7600 wires close-up (Wichary CC BY 2.0) -- engineering interior beat
wget -O CDC_7600_wires.jpg \
  "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/CDC_7600_wires_%284376990374%29.jpg"

# 3D rendering top-down view (FlyAkwa CC BY-SA 4.0) -- shows Y-chassis schematically
wget -O CDC_7600_overview.png \
  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/CDC7600_main_overview_above.png

# Warren Washington portrait (Yospyn / OSU CC BY-SA 2.0)
wget -O Warren_Washington.jpg \
  "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Warren_Washington_%28cropped%29.jpg"

# GARP leaders group photo (Bfinston CC BY-SA 4.0) -- includes Kasahara at #24, Manabe at #9
# Use only if caption is honest about original-date uncertainty
wget -O GARP_leaders.jpg \
  "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Leaders_of_the_Global_Atmospheric_Research_Program_%28GARP%29.jpg"

# Optional: USGS aerial of NCAR Mesa Lab (PD)
wget -O NCAR_aerial.jpg \
  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/USGS-UCAR-Aerial-2002.jpg

(All Commons URLs verified against upload.wikimedia.org direct bytes 2026-05-06. No thumbnail redirects.)

Attribution block to keep at the bottom of the post

  • CDC 7600 at LLNL, early 1970s. Photo: U.S. Department of Energy, public domain. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Photo_of_the_Week-_70s_Supercomputer_Style_(8971052970).jpg
  • CDC 7600 assembly at LLNL. Photo: Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences, CC BY 2.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1970s_CDC_7600_at_LLNL.jpg
  • CDC 7600 at the Computer History Museum. Photo: Jitze Couperus, CC BY 2.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CDC_7600.jc.jpg
  • CDC 7600 internal wiring. Photo: Marcin Wichary, CC BY 2.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CDC_7600wires(4376990374).jpg
  • CDC 7600 3D rendering. Diagram by FlyAkwa, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CDC7600_main_overview_above.png
  • Seymour Cray. NSA Hall of Honor portrait, public domain. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seymour_R._Cray.JPG
  • William C. Norris, 1986. Photo: Universitätsarchiv St. Gallen / Regina Kühne, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:16._Internationales_Management-Gespr%C3%A4ch-William_C._Norris-HSGN_028-00628.jpg
  • NCAR Mesa Laboratory, Boulder Colorado. Photo: Tim Farley (Krelnik), CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:National_Center_for_Atmospheric_Research_(NCAR)_Mesa_Laboratory_in_Boulder,_Colorado,_USA_in_2014.jpg
  • Warren Washington, 2018. Photo: Joshua Yospyn / Oregon State University, CC BY-SA 2.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Warren_Washington_(cropped).jpg
  • Leaders of the Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP). Photo: Wikimedia user Bfinston, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leaders_of_the_Global_Atmospheric_Research_Program_(GARP).jpg

Documented gaps (for honesty in the post)

The following six subjects were unreachable under our licensing rule. The post should describe them in prose:

  1. Les Davis portrait. No CC release anywhere. Cray-history.net hosts a B&W headshot but with no licence declaration. Pederson-Volker funeral home photo is © the obituary site.
  2. Jim Thornton portrait. No CC release. IEEE Computer Society profile image is © IEEE; CHM Thornton material is “Courtesy of CDC.”
  3. CDC 8600 photograph or sketch. No production hardware exists; the Smotherman sketches are reproduced from CDC corporate documentation (© CDC). No free release.
  4. CERN CDC 7600 (1972 onward). © CERN via CDS, with a “free for educational use” courtesy that is not a Creative Commons licence.
  5. NCAR’s working 7600 in the Mesa Lab basement (1971-1983). UCAR archive and OpenSky terms restrict reuse beyond NCAR/UCAR promotional contexts.
  6. NCAR Community Climate Model output / visualisation specifically from the 7600 era. The 7600-era Kasahara-Washington GCM output exists only on archived magnetic tapes at NCAR; modern CESM visualisations on Commons are from twenty-first-century hardware and are not appropriate as 7600-era illustrations.

The post can be honest about these gaps – the absent CERN and NCAR-in-situ photographs are themselves evidence of how supercomputer-era institutional imagery has not been released under free licences, the way many of those machines’ older predecessors have been.