Merslau "Mers" Kutt CM (born 1933) is a Canadian inventor, businessman and educator. He is a former professor of mathematics at Queen's University. Through his company, Micro Computer Machines, he is the developer of the world's first keyboard-based portable microcomputer.

Early life

Kutt was born in

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749,6 ...

Manitoba Manitoba ( ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population o ...

. He graduated in 1956 from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

with a degree in mathematics and physics.

Career

After employment in industry at Phillips, IBM and Honeywell,"Judge dismisses Canadian IT pioneer’s Intel patent suit"
''IT Business'', Dave Webb, March 16th, 2005 Kutt worked as a professor of mathematics at Queen's University in

Kingston, Ontario Kingston is a city in Ontario, Canada. It is located on the north-eastern end of Lake Ontario, at the beginning of the St. Lawrence River and at the mouth of the Cataraqui River (south end of the Rideau Canal). The city is midway between Toro ...

during the 1960s. He served as president of the Canadian Information Processing Society,"Governor General to invest 33 recipients into the Order of Canada"
Government of Canada, 2006. and was director of the University's computing centre. In 1968, after observing the

punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...

-based input systems in use there at the time to program its mainframe, he partnered with Donald Pamenter to start a company, Consolidated Computer Inc., and produced "Key-Edit", a terminal with a one-line of display, which both streamlined and reduced the cost of the process. This product was the first of its kind,"Mers Kutt, President, All Computers Inc."
''Computer Dealer News'', Dave Webb, December 16th, 2004 and was sold and used in many countries during the next few years distributed by

International Computers Limited International Computers Limited (ICL) was a British computer hardware, computer software and computer services company that operated from 1968 until 2002. It was formed through a merger of International Computers and Tabulators (ICT), English Ele ...

and

Fujitsu is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...

. By 1971, Kutt been forced out of Consolidated's management, and he formed two more companies, Micro Computer Machines and Kutt Systems Inc. As president of these companies he directed the design and manufacture in 1973 of the

MCM/70 The MCM/70 was a pioneering microcomputer first built in 1973 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and released the next year. This makes it one of the first microcomputers in the world, the second to be shipped in completed form, and the first portable co ...

, the world's first complete microprocessor-based, portable personal computer. The device, based on the

Intel 8008 The Intel 8008 ("''eight-thousand-eight''" or "''eighty-oh-eight''") is an early byte-oriented microprocessor designed by Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC), implemented and manufactured by Intel, and introduced in April 1972. It is an 8-bit CP ...

processor, was used to edit and execute programs using the

APL programming language APL (named after the book ''A Programming Language'') is a programming language developed in the 1960s by Kenneth E. Iverson. Its central datatype is the multidimensional array. It uses a large range of special graphic symbols to represent mos ...

. The MCM/70 technical specifications were overtaken by products from companies with larger development and marketing budgets, and by 1982 the product was no longer in production. In 1976 Kutt started up another Toronto company, All Computers Inc., which developed improvements to several Intel processors. By 2004, Kutt was the company's only employee; that year he sued Intel, alleging that his patented circuitry had been included in Pentium processors."Computer pioneer launches patent suit against Intel"
''CRN'', May 24, 2004. The suit was dismissed in 2005. In 2006, Kutt was inducted into the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada (french: Ordre du Canada; abbreviated as OC) is a Canadian state order and the second-highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kutt, Mers 1933 births Living people 20th-century Canadian businesspeople 21st-century Canadian businesspeople Businesspeople from Winnipeg Canadian company founders Canadian inventors Canadian mathematicians