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Jim Melvin (politician)
James Walter Melvin is an American entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist who founded and served as the CEO of several notable software companies in the foodservice and hospitality industries. His software products have been installed at more than 125,000 stores worldwide for companies such as McDonald's, YUM! Brands, Burger King, Wendy's, Disney, Darden Restaurants, K-Mart, Costco, FedEx, Walmart, Foot Locker and many others. Early life Melvin was an early fan of Dungeons & Dragons. At 15 years old, Melvin met Gary Gygax at a fan convention, where the two discussed an idea for automating the role of the Dungeon Master. At the urging of Gygax, Melvin created GameAssist using Z80 assembly on TRS-80 computers. GameAssist was a tool to assist Dungeon Masters in the Dungeons & Dragons game with tracking player statistics and inventory and in managing and generating creature encounters. Melvin sold the Intellectual property behind GameAssist in 1980 to a gaming supplies store af ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tulane University
Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private university, private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into a comprehensive public university as the University of Louisiana by the state legislature in 1847. The institution became private under the endowments of Paul Tulane and Josephine Louise Newcomb in 1884 and 1887. Tulane is the 9th oldest private university in the Association of American Universities. The Tulane University Law School and Tulane University Medical School are, respectively, the 12th oldest law school and 15th oldest medical school in the United States. Tulane has been a member of the Association of American Universities since 1958 and is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". Tulane has an overall acceptance rate of 8.4%. Alumni include twelve List of governors of Louisiana, governors o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
FedEx
FedEx Corporation, formerly Federal Express Corporation and later FDX Corporation, is an American multinational conglomerate holding company focused on transportation, e-commerce and business services based in Memphis, Tennessee. The name "FedEx" is a syllabic abbreviation of the name of the company's original air division, Federal Express, which was used from 1973 until 2000. FedEx today is best known for its air delivery service, FedEx Express, which was one of the first major shipping companies to offer overnight delivery as a flagship service. Since then, FedEx also started FedEx Ground, FedEx Office (originally known as Kinko's), FedEx Supply Chain, FedEx Freight, and various other services across multiple subsidiaries, often meant to respond to its main competitor, UPS. FedEx is also one of the top contractors of the US government and assists in the transport of some United States Postal Service packages through their Air Cargo Network contract. FedEx's prominence in b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IBM 4694
The IBM 4694 was one of IBM's PC based point of sale (POS) systems, a successor to the IBM 4683 and IBM 4693. Introduced in 1991, the 4694 became a flagship model for the company's SurePOS system. The system consists of a PC-based controller, and PC-based POS Terminals—typically an IBM keyboard and monitor, or touch screen. The system requires the IBM 4694 computer which is used as a "Controller", or also more or less, as a server on the network. The controller can be set up to boot from a floppy disk, or from a main server on a network. The 4694 was a best-selling POS System, widely used in most large chain stores such as supermarkets, department stores and restaurants. The 4694 could still be seen in the wild at US Foot Locker locations until 2020. This system was replaced with the IBM 4695. See also *Digital Research *FlexOS *IBM 4680 OS FlexOS is a discontinued modular real-time multiuser multitasking operating system (RTOS) designed for computer-integrated manufact ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dave Thomas (businessman)
Rex David Thomas (July 2, 1932 – January 8, 2002) was an American businessman, philanthropist, and fast-food tycoon. Thomas was the founder and chief executive officer of Wendy's, a fast-food restaurant chain specializing in hamburgers. In this role, Thomas appeared in more than 800 commercial advertisements for the chain from 1989 to 2002, more than any other company founder in television history. Early life Rex David Thomas was born July 2, 1932 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. His biological father's name was Sam and his biological mother's name was Molly. Thomas was adopted between six weeks and six months later by Rex and Auleva Thomas, and as an adult became a well-known advocate for adoption, founding the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. After his adoptive mother's death when he was five, his father moved around the country seeking work. Thomas spent some of his early childhood near Kalamazoo, Michigan, with his grandmother, Minnie Sinclair, whom he credited with te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quick Service Restaurant
A fast-food restaurant, also known as a quick-service restaurant (QSR) within the industry, is a specific type of restaurant that serves fast-food cuisine and has minimal table service. The food served in fast-food restaurants is typically part of a " meat-sweet diet", offered from a limited menu, cooked in bulk in advance and kept hot, finished and packaged to order, and usually available for take away, though seating may be provided. Fast-food restaurants are typically part of a restaurant chain or franchise operation that provides standardized ingredients and/or partially prepared foods and supplies to each restaurant through controlled supply channels. The term "fast food" was recognized in a dictionary by Merriam–Webster in 1951. Arguably, the first fast-food restaurants originated in the United States with White Castle in 1921. Today, American-founded fast-food chains such as McDonald's (est. 1940) and KFC (est. 1952) are multinational corporations with outlets ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Point Of Sale
The point of sale (POS) or point of purchase (POP) is the time and place at which a retail transaction is completed. At the point of sale, the merchant calculates the amount owed by the customer, indicates that amount, may prepare an invoice for the customer (which may be a cash register printout), and indicates the options for the customer to make payment. It is also the point at which a customer makes a payment to the merchant in exchange for goods or after provision of a service. After receiving payment, the merchant may issue a receipt for the transaction, which is usually printed but can also be dispensed with or sent electronically. To calculate the amount owed by a customer, the merchant may use various devices such as weighing scales, barcode scanners, and cash registers (or the more advanced "POS cash registers", which are sometimes also called "POS systems"). To make a payment, payment terminals, touch screens, and other hardware and software options are available. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intellectual Property
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. The modern concept of intellectual property developed in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. The term "intellectual property" began to be used in the 19th century, though it was not until the late 20th century that intellectual property became commonplace in the majority of the world's legal systems."property as a common descriptor of the field probably traces to the foundation of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) by the United Nations." in Mark A. Lemley''Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding'', Texas Law Review, 2005, Vol. 83:1031, page 1033, footnote 4. The main purpose of intellectual property law is to encourage the creation of a wide variety of intellectual goo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TRS-80
The TRS-80 Micro Computer System (TRS-80, later renamed the Model I to distinguish it from successors) is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of ''Tandy Radio Shack, Z80 icroprocessor'. It is one of the earliest mass-produced and mass-marketed retail home computers. The TRS-80 has a full-stroke QWERTY keyboard, the Zilog Z80 processor, 4 KB dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) standard memory, small size and desk area, floating-point Level I BASIC language interpreter in read-only memory (ROM), 64-character per line video monitor, and a starting price of US$600 (equivalent to US$ in ). A cassette tape drive for program storage was included in the original package. While the software environment was stable, the cassette load/save process combined with keyboard bounce issues and a troublesome Expansion Interface contributed to the Model I's reputation as not well-suited to serious ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zilog Z80
The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples were delivered in March 1976, and it was officially introduced on the market in July 1976. With the revenue from the Z80, the company built its own chip factories and grew to over a thousand employees over the following two years. The Zilog Z80 is a software-compatible extension and enhancement of the Intel 8080 and, like it, was mainly aimed at embedded systems. Although used in that role, the Z80 also became one of the most widely used CPUs in desktop computers and home computers from the 1970s to the mid-1980s. It was also common in military applications, musical equipment such as synthesizers (like the Roland Jupiter-8), and coin-operated arcade games of the late 1970s and early 1980s, including '' Pac-Man''. Zilog licensed the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gary Gygax
Ernest Gary Gygax ( ; July 27, 1938 – March 4, 2008) was an American game designer and author best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (''D&D'') with Dave Arneson. In the 1960s, Gygax created an organization of wargaming clubs and founded the Gen Con gaming convention. In 1971, he helped develop ''Chainmail'', a miniatures wargame based on medieval warfare. He co-founded the company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR, Inc.) with childhood friend Don Kaye in 1973. The following year, he and Arneson created ''D&D'', which expanded on Gygax's ''Chainmail'' and included elements of the fantasy stories he loved as a child. In the same year, he founded '' The Dragon'', a magazine based around the new game. In 1977, Gygax began work on a more comprehensive version of the game, called ''Advanced Dungeons & Dragons''. Gygax designed numerous manuals for the game system, as well as several pre-packaged adventures called "modules" that gave a pers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
