NSF supercomputer centers (1985)
In the mid-1980s, the National Science Foundation funded a network of university supercomputer centers, including sites at Cornell, Pittsburgh, and the University of Illinois. Academic researchers, locked out of machines owned by government and industry, gained access to Cray-class supercomputers.
Thousands of researchers across fields gained supercomputing access, launching computational science as a discipline.
The program built the academic computing ecosystem that later produced the internet and modern scientific computing.
Same dynamic as today: the federal government stepping in so universities can access frontier computing that private capital would otherwise control.
