William C. Norris

(1911- ) born near Red Cloud, Webster County, lived in Lincoln. Electrical engineer, manufacturer, co-founder of Control Data Corporation in 1957, and its CEO for more than 40 years, which became one of the leaders in the computer industry by its design and manufacture of powerful high-speed computers, mainly for engineering, scientific, and military applications; his company by 1973 ranked as the largest supplier of computer input-output equipment, and one of the largest suppliers of data-processing services to business, industry, government and education worldwide; recipient of more than 25 awards and honors, elected to National Academy of Engineering in 1988; graduated from University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1932. Consult Sunday /Omaha/World Herald Magazine, December 22, 1963, pp. 5-6 and Robert Slater, Portraits in Silicon (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1987) 112-125 and Contemporary American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary (Greenwood Press, 1990) 463-472.

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