The labs were happy that I was brave enough to attempt to program it and the $5 million computer was left entirely to my use. I was their human guinea pig.

His thesis was not accepted by a committee of internal and external examiners and thus he was not awarded the degree. During this time he worked as a civil engineer at the Bureau of Land Reclamation in Wyoming. He won in the "price/performance" category with a performance figure of 400 Mflops/$1M corresponding to an absolute performance of 3.