Which company, Honeywell or Multitech, created the Micro-Professor MPF-I, which was the world's longest selling computer and later became Acer?
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Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate company that produces a variety of commercial and consumer products, engineering services and aerospace systems for a wide variety of customers, from private consumers to major corporations and governments. The company operates four business units, known as Strategic Business Units – Honeywell Aerospace, Home and Building Technologies (HBT), Safety and Productivity Solutions (SPS), and Honeywell Performance Materials and Technologies.
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Micro-Professor MPF-I The Micro-Professor MPF-I, introduced in 1981 by Multitech (which, in 1987, changed its name to Acer), was the first branded computer product from Multitech and probably one of the world's longest selling computers. The MPF-I, specifically designed to teach the fundamentals of machine code and assembly language, is a simple and easy to use training system for the Zilog Z80 microprocessor.
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Virtual Museum of Computing The Virtual Museum of Computing (VMoC) is an eclectic collection of links and online resources concerning the history of computers and computer science. It includes links to other related museums, both real and virtual, around the world, as well as having its own virtual galleries of information. A particular feature is the early computing pioneer Alan Turing, among others.
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Microcosm (hypermedia system) Microcosm was a hypermedia system, originally developed in 1988 by the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, with a small team of researchers in the Computer Science group: Wendy Hall, Andrew Fountain, Hugh Davis and Ian Heath. The system pre-dates the web and builds on early hypermedia systems, such as Ted Nelson's work and that of Doug Engelbart.
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Multivox Multivox was an American-based synthesizer company since the mid-1970s until the 1980s. Originally it was founded in the mid-1940s as the guitar and amplifier manufacturing subsidiary of Peter Sorkin Music Company (Sorkin Music), a New York-based retailer/wholesaler. Then eventually it established separate corporate identity, and after the close of Sorkin Music in the mid-1970s, it continued in existence for fourteen years, according to the "Blue Book of Guitar Values". In addition to synthesizers, the company marketed several effects pedals. These included the Big Jam series guitar effects line.
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Multiprise 3000 As of late 2006, IBM's Multiprise 3000, product number 7060, is physically the smallest mainframe, introduced in 1999 and still in common use (HxWxD are 82 x 52 x 111 cm). Models H50 and H70 were withdrawn from marketing in 2002. It uses a similar case as the S/390 Integrated Server, which was introduced about one year earlier. The Multiprise 3000 is unusual because it contains internal disk storage. Withdrawal of service for all models occurred at the end of 2012.
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Automatic Computing Engine The Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) was an early electronic stored-program computer designed by Alan Turing. The project was managed by John R. Womersley, superintendent of the Mathematics Division of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). The use of the word "Engine" was in homage to Charles Babbage and his Difference Engine and Analytical Engine. Turing's technical design "Proposed Electronic Calculator" was the product of his theoretical work in 1936 "On Computable Numbers" and his wartime experience at Bletchley Park where the Colossus computers had been successful in breaking German military codes. In his 1936 paper, Turing described his idea as a "universal computing machine", but it is now known as the Universal Turing machine.
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Honeywell 316 The Honeywell 316 was a popular 16-bit minicomputer built by Honeywell starting in 1969. It is part of the Series 16, which includes the Models 116, 316, 416, 516 and 716. They were commonly used for data acquisition and control, remote message concentration, clinical laboratory systems, Remote Job Entry and time-sharing. The Series-16 computers are all based on the DDP-116 designed by Gardner Hendrie at Computer Control Company, Inc. (3C) in 1964.
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HPCx HPCx was a supercomputer (actually a cluster of IBM eServer p5 575 high-performance servers) located at the Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire, England. The supercomputer was maintained by the HPCx Consortium, UoE HPCX Ltd, which was led by the University of Edinburgh: EPCC, with the Science and Technology Facilities Council and IBM. The project was funded by EPSRC.
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HPTi High Performance Technologies, Inc. (HPTi) was an IT consulting firm based in Reston, Virginia. Founded in 1991, the company is notable for several high-profile solutions for the federal government. For instance, the company developed a Linux-based supercomputer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that ranked as the 8th fastest supercomputer in the world in 2002. HPTi also developed the Secure Payment System for the Department of the Treasury - a system that processes payments totaling $1.5 trillion annually. HPTi was recently in the news for winning the American Business Award for Best Executive (Computer Hardware or Services in 2007), Best Technical Professional (2008 and 2009), Best Support Staffer (2007) and Best Overall Company (2009). HPTi was wholly acquired by Dynamics Research Corporation in June, 2011.
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Honeywell 6000 series The Honeywell 6000 series computers were rebadged versions of General Electric's 600-series mainframes manufactured by Honeywell International, Inc. from 1970 to 1989. Honeywell acquired the line when it purchased GE's computer division in 1970 and continued to develop them under a variety of names for many years.
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Stan Shih Stan Shih (; born December 18, 1944), is the founder, president, and chairman of Acer Inc. In 1976, after receiving bachelor's and master's degrees in electronic engineering from National Chiao Tung University, Shih founded Multitech with his wife Carolyn Yeh and five partners. Shih chaired Multitech through to 1987, when the company was renamed Acer, continuing as Acer chairman until his retirement in late 2004, having seen the company grow from a tiny start-up to a billion-dollar worldwide brand. Shih remained active in charity work during his retirement, including serving as a special representative of President Chen Shui-bian to the APEC Australia 2007. In November 2013, Shih returned to Acer after being reinstated as president and chairman.
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Multiflow Multiflow Computer, Inc., founded in April, 1984 near New Haven, Connecticut, USA, was a manufacturer and seller of minisupercomputer hardware and software embodying the VLIW design style. Multiflow, incorporated in Delaware, ended operations in March, 1990, after selling about 125 VLIW minisupercomputers in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
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Gigatronics Gigatronics (1980-1992) was a Greek computer manufacturer. It produced the model "ΕΡΜΗΣ" (1984) based on the microprocessor 6502, and the personal computer "KAT" (1988) based on the microprocessors 8088 and 65C816. "ΕΡΜΗΣ" had its own operating system, database and the programming language "SUPER BASIC", while "KAT" was running in both IBM and Apple modes.
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Programmed Data Processor Programmed Data Processor (PDP), referred to by some customers, media and authors as "Programmable Data Processor, is a series of minicomputers made and marketed by the Digital Equipment Corporation from 1957 to 1990. The name "PDP" intentionally avoids the use of the term "computer" because, at the time of the first PDPs, computers had a reputation of being large, complicated, and expensive machines, and the venture capitalists behind Digital (especially Georges Doriot) would not support Digital's attempting to build a "computer"; the word "minicomputer" had not yet been coined. So instead, Digital used their existing line of logic modules to build a "Programmed Data Processor" and aimed it at a market that could not afford the larger computers.
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Cray S-MP The Cray S-MP was a multiprocessor server computer sold by Cray Research from 1992 to 1993. It was based on the Sun SPARC microprocessor architecture and could be configured with up to eight 66 MHz BIT B5000 processors. Optionally, a Cray APP matrix co-processor cluster could be added to an S-MP system.
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Manny Lehman (computer scientist) Meir "Manny" Lehman, FREng (24 January 1925 – 29 December 2010) was a professor in the School of Computing Science at Middlesex University. From 1972 to 2002 he was a Professor and Head of the Computing Department at Imperial College London. His research contributions include the early realization of the software evolution phenomenon and the eponymous Lehman's laws of software evolution.
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R2000 (microprocessor) The R2000 is a microprocessor chip set developed by MIPS Computer Systems that implemented the MIPS I instruction set architecture (ISA). Introduced in January 1986, it was the first commercial implementation of the MIPS architecture and the first merchant RISC processor available to all companies. The R2000 competed with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VAX minicomputers and with Motorola 68000 and Intel Corporation 80386 microprocessors. R2000 users included Ardent Computer, DEC, Silicon Graphics, Northern Telecom and MIPS's own Unix workstations.
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PC-1 (computer) The Parametron Computer 1 (PC-1) was a binary, single-address computer developed at Professor Hidetosi Takahasi's Laboratory at the Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, and was one of the first general purpose computers that used parametron components and dual frequency magnetic-core memory. Construction started in September 1957 and was completed on March 26, 1958. The PC-1 was used at Takahasi's Laboratory for research related both to hardware and software and the researchers in the Faculty of Science also used it for scientific computing. The PC-1 was retired in May 1964.
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Fujitsu VP The Fujitsu FACOM VP is a series of vector supercomputers designed, manufactured, and marketed by Fujitsu. Announced in July 1982, the FACOM VP were the first of the three initial Japanese commercial supercomputers, followed by the Hitachi HITAC S-810 in August 1982 and the NEC SX-2 in April 1983. The FACOM VP were sold until they were replaced by the VP2000 family in 1990. Developed with funding from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, the FACOM VP was part of an effort designed to wrest control of the supercomputer market from the collection of small US-based companies like Cray Research. The FACOM VP was marketed in Japan by Fujitsu, where the majority of installations were located. Amdahl marketed the systems in the US and Siemens in Europe. The ending of the cold war during this period made the market for supercomputers dry up almost overnight, and the Japanese firms decided that their mass-production capabilities were better spent elsewhere.
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IBM System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems that was announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover the complete range of applications, from small to large, both commercial and scientific. The design made a clear distinction between architecture and implementation, allowing IBM to release a suite of compatible designs at different prices. All but the incompatible model 44 and the most expensive systems used microcode to implement the instruction set, which featured 8-bit byte addressing and binary, decimal and (hexadecimal) floating-point calculations.
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EMIDEC 1100 The EMIDEC 1100 computer (became the ICT 1101 in 1962) was produced by the Computing Services Division of EMI Laboratories in the UK under the leadership of Professor Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield in 1959 after one year's development. It used magnetic core memory and transistor technologies and it is claimed to be the first large commercial transistorised machine in the UK.