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History takes strange turns, sometimes bestowing remarkably good fortune on a country, state or region. In 1946, a group of highly skilled Navy codebreakers from World War II left a top-secret location in Washington, D.C., and reassembled at an empty factory in St. Paul. This site became a birthplace of the computer industry, and the effects are still with us as technology has come to rank as one of Minnesota's leading economic sectors. The ramifications of this small beginning are almost beyond measure.
The codebreakers' enterprise, known as Engineering Research Associates (ERA), spawned two major corporate lineages: Unisys (Univac Division) and Control Data Corp. In the 1980s, each had more than 20,000 well-paid employees in Minnesota, mostly in the Twin Cities area.
In 1972, a group of employees left Control Data and formed Cray Research, a company that became the unquestioned world leader in supercomputers. These major corporate successes led many individuals to form new companies and did much to turn the region into a cauldron of innovation and prosperity.
Today, elements of the computer industry remain, but the area is best known for its world leadership in medical technology. Much of this new success was inspired by and evolved from the prosperity and creative ferment of that earlier era. Probably just as important was the example of bold leadership from ERA's founders, and the trust of their spouses and children. It was a rare explosion of economic activity, seen in only a handful of other metro areas. It all began so improbably that some might even have called it a mystical gift from the gods.
At 3:30 p.m. on June 15, the Ramsey County Historical Society will celebrate the ERA saga by marking the company's original site (at 1902 W. Minnehaha Av. in St. Paul) with a commemorative plaque. The ERA story has been laid out before in the media, in books and in the archives at the Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota, but it seems particularly appropriate — in a time of such economic doubt and confusion — to remind Minnesotans once again of the impact this venture had on the economic history of the state.
The lessons of ERA suggest that adjusting to an ever-changing world economy never stops. The choices made now about capitalism and its effects — profits vs. wages, immigration, environmental protection, individual freedom vs. social needs, government regulation — will affect the lives of Minnesotans for decades to come. Recognizing the value of entrepreneurism needs to be included in the decisionmaking process.
