AMPERS
Minnesota's Community Radio Stations
Before railroads were built through southwestern Minnesota, settlers on the plains had to build their houses using the materials at hand. Often, that meant using sod clumps as building blocks. MN90 Producer Andi McDaniel gets a tour of a mocked-up “sod house” modeled after one by early settlers.
Seymour Cray (1925-1996) led the design of the world’s first commercial supercomputer in the late 1950s. By the 1970s, his company, Cray Research, based in Minneapolis and Chippewa Falls, Wisc., was the world’s leading maker of supercomputers. Cray’s machines were known for their elegance and simplicity, but most of all for their speed. MN90 producer Marisa Helms tells us Cray was known as a quirky genius whose innovations changed the world of supercomputing forever.
A landmark Supreme Court decision protecting freedom of the press has its origins in Minnesota. In the 1920s, a Minneapolis man named Jay Near began writing articles, many of them tinged with racism and anti-Semitism, about the influence organized crime had on Twin Cities’ government and law enforcement officials. Under Minnesota’s gag law, the state shut down Near’s proposed new paper, the Saturday Press, before it could be published. Near sued. His case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1931. The court sided with Near, overturning Minnesota’s gag law, and affirming censorship to be unconstitutional in most cases. MN90 producer Marisa Helms has the story.
Born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, Judy Garland was destined for show business from the ripe old age of 2. MN90 Producer Andi McDaniel takes a closer look at Garland’s career, and discovers what else one of our most famous Minnesotans is best remembered for.
