Act 1 Scene 3
We Stole Horses Together
for Dr. Loganathan Sankaran, Ph.D
A Work in Progress
83
With enemies encamped all around us
We held out in our outpost in the Bellevue hills
Sankaran proved excellent at benchmarking
We won enough business our office paid its bills
We sold an all-cache memory computer
In the time of Thinking Machines and Intel’s Paragon
Among other competing parallel computer designs
We could claim ease of programming which is why
Because they were developing a key research code
Donal’s most competitive sale beating IBM’s SP-2
With a best and final that Peter Appleton Jones approved
Ed Lazowska and Hank Levy at UW bought one
Oliver McBryan at UC Boulder did too
Bill Busbee at NCAR wanted one but changed his mind
There were others who bought one, sometimes two
DARPA stymied other potential deals
Steve Squires dictated policy and would only fund
Intel or Thinking Machines so it was easy for Intel
To overturn our biggest win getting Lockheed to unfund
Our hard-won deal after Sankaran won the benchmark
And our system was installed on Lockheed’s floor
On the same day in Seattle when Hank bought an upgrade
For a price Donal called HQ to complain was far too low
But Kendall Square Research wanted revenue
It had raised money from investors by cooking the books
And while Donal and Sankaran were kept in the dark
KSR sent a truck to Lockheed's parking lot
While an exec signed a side letter beside the contract
Giving Lockheed the right of return at any time
Meaning the revenue wasn’t legally bookable
And somebody sent a fax of it to Donal who sent it to HQ
Not much later Bill Koch took over the company
And the Bellevue office was shut down
But not before Bill Koch flew into Pasco with his cushion
Because he had a bad back and gave Thom’s team
An out if they didn’t want to proceed
But they did proceed and now we have NWCHEM
Sankaran’s benchmarking made that win happen
Bill Koch’s courtesy has not been forgotten
Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
2025
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