"[E]ach computer attends only to one equation or part of an equation. The work of each region is coordinated by an official of higher rank. Numerous little ’night signs’ display the instantaneous values so that neighbouring computers can read them.

[…] From the floor of the pit a tall pillar rises to half the height of the hall. It carries a large pulpit on its top. In this sits the man in charge of the whole theatre; he is surrounded by several assistants and messengers. One of his duties is to maintain a uniform speed of progress in all parts of the globe. In this respect he is like the conductor of an orchestra in which the instruments are slide-rules and calculating machines.

[…] Four senior clerks in the central pulpit are collecting the future weather as fast as it is being computed, and despatching it by pneumatic carrier to a quiet room. There it will be coded and telephoned to the radio transmitting station. Messengers carry piles of used computing forms down to a storehouse in the cellar.

[…] In another building are all the usual financial, correspondence and administrative offices. Outside are playing fields, houses, mountains and lakes, for it was thought that those who compute the weather should breathe of it freely." — Lewis Fry Richardson, Weather Prediction by Numerical Process (1922)

I first came across this quote here. Penned by the father of weather forecasting, and in big part of the idea of computer simulation, I find it a fascinating and somewhat poetic vision of what a supercomputer is, seen by a man for whom “computers” were people with a slide rule.