Datapoint Corporation, originally known as Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC), was a computer company based in
San Antonio
("Cradle of Freedom")
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, Texas, United States. Founded in July 1968 by Phil Ray and Gus Roche, its first products were, as the company's initial name suggests,
computer terminal
A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. The teletype was an example of an early-day hard-copy terminal and ...
s intended to replace
Teletype
A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Initia ...
machines connected to
time sharing
In computing, time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users at the same time by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking.DEC Timesharing (1965), by Peter Clark, The DEC Professional, Volume 1, Number 1
Its emergence a ...
systems.
[
]
Background
From the mid-1960s, engineers (John) Phil Ray and Austin O. "Gus" Roche were working for General Dynamics
General Dynamics Corporation (GD) is an American publicly traded, aerospace and defense corporation headquartered in Reston, Virginia. As of 2020, it was the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world by arms sales, and 5th largest in the Uni ...
Dynatronic Division in Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
, as part of a computing contract team for NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
to enable President John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
's vision of putting a man on the moon
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...
. At the time, mainframe computers were large room-filling pieces of equipment, for which data was input using dumb and noisy Teletype
A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Initia ...
terminals. On the advice of one of his tutors from the University of Texas
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
, Ray and Roche decided to develop a quieter and smaller input device based on using a television set
A television set or television receiver, more commonly called the television, TV, TV set, telly, tele, or tube, is a device that combines a tuner, display, and loudspeakers, for the purpose of viewing and hearing television broadcasts, or using ...
screen.[
]
Early history
After finding San Antonio, Texas
("Cradle of Freedom")
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, map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = United States
, subdivision_type1= State
, subdivision_name1 = Texas
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based backers, the pair incorporated Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) there in July 1968. Based on a newly developed Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globall ...
chip, with a casing designed by an industrial designer
Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advance of the manufactur ...
in New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, the company had developed three prototype Datapoint 3300
The DataPoint 3300 was the first computer terminal manufactured by Computer Terminal Corporation, later renamed Datapoint, announced in 1967 and shipping in 1969. Since this terminal was intended to replace a teleprinter such as those made by Telet ...
(deriving the name from the existing competitor Teletype Model 33
The Teletype Model 33 is an electromechanical teleprinter designed for light-duty office use. It is less rugged and cost less than earlier Teletype machines. The Teletype Corporation introduced the Model 33 as a commercial product in 1963 after ...
), it was an immediate hit at that year's computer show.
However, the resultant orders left the company with several major problems: they had no production capacity, and no money with which to build a factory. Furthermore, the TI chips within the 3300 were so unreliable, they needed replacing every 30 minutes. In October 1969, the company raised US$4 million through an initial public offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
(IPO). This enabled them to outsource production short term to a series of local manufacturers, including a motorcycle helmet
A motorcycle helmet is a type of helmet used by motorcycle riders. Motorcycle helmets contribute to motorcycle safety by protecting the rider's head in the event of an impact. They reduce the risk of head injury by 69% and the risk of death by 42%. ...
manufacturer, before constructing their own manufacturing premises. Once in production, they began sourcing chips from both TI and Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
, running up large debts from both.
The Datapoint 3300 sold very successfully for a number of years. It was later rebadged as the DEC VT06 and the HP 2600A.
Datapoint 2200 and the Intel 8008
Having raised $4 million in an IPO in August 1969, selling over the counter for $8, by August 1970 the shares were selling at $45.
Ray and Roche wanted to develop a new, more intelligent terminal, and employed a trio of engineers who knew each other from their interests in Amateur Radio
Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency communic ...
: Victor Poor
Victor "Vic" Poor (July 12, 1933 – August 17, 2012) was an American engineer and computer pioneer. At Computer Terminal Corporation (later renamed Datapoint Corporation), he co-created the architecture that was ultimately implemented in th ...
, Harry Pyle and undergraduate Jonathan Schmidt. The company began development on the Datapoint 2200
The Datapoint 2200 was a mass-produced programmable computer terminal usable as a computer, designed by Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) founders Phil Ray and Gus Roche and announced by CTC in June 1970 (with units shipping in 1971). It was i ...
, its most popular product and credited by some historians as the invention of the personal computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...
.[ While working his notice from ]Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...
-based Frederick Electronics during the 1969 Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden and ...
holiday, Poor and Pyle developed the underlying instruction set architecture
In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ' ...
of the processor on a living room floor. This enabled Phil Ray and Gus Roche to design and develop the mass-produced programmable 2200, which could load various emulations stored on cassette tape
The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens ...
s. Some users of the terminals chose to use them as simple programmable computers instead.
The original 2200 processor board had discrete components, a 74181
The 74181 is a 4-bit slice arithmetic logic unit (ALU), implemented as a 7400 series TTL integrated circuit. The first complete ALU on a single chip, it was used as the arithmetic/logic core in the CPUs of many historically significant minicom ...
ALU, 2703 ROMs and 2114 static RAM. This ran an instruction set
In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ' ...
indistinguishable from that of later Intel 8-bit
In computer architecture, 8-bit Integer (computer science), integers or other Data (computing), data units are those that are 8 bits wide (1 octet (computing), octet). Also, 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) arc ...
processors, with the only omissions in the Intel version being the Click and the Bell instruction, which were physical components on the motherboard. One other thing missing from the Intel chip was the integrated DEBUG in all Datapoint processors, invoked by a three key sequence. This idles any processing so a technician could run tests or examine flags, variables and registers in the processor at that time.
In December 1969 Poor joined CTC as Technical Director, employing Pyle within his team and sponsoring Schmidt through his degree.
CTC did not believe it could meet its design goals for the CPU built from discrete TTL
TTL may refer to:
Photography
* Through-the-lens metering, a camera feature
* Zenit TTL, an SLR film camera named for its TTL metering capability
Technology
* Time to live, a computer data lifespan-limiting mechanism
* Transistor–transistor lo ...
chip Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is a type of immunoprecipitation experimental technique used to investigate the interaction between proteins and DNA in the cell. It aims to determine whether specific proteins are associated with specific genom ...
s. Ray and Roche asked how much of their design could fit onto a computer chip. Poor and Pyle developed a project that would cost $100,000 to place their architecture onto silicon and into production. Ray and Roche arranged dinner with Bob Noyce, the President of Intel, along with the President of Texas Instruments. Having pre-drawn the schematic for the microprocessor on two postcard
A postcard or post card is a piece of thick paper or thin cardboard, typically rectangular, intended for writing and mailing without an envelope. Non-rectangular shapes may also be used but are rare. There are novelty exceptions, such as wood ...
s, Ray gave one to each of his guests, and then made a bet: that the first company to build a computer on a chip (microprocessor) would forgive Datapoint their outstanding invoice.[ In part this was fiscally driven, as both supplier debts were large, and the annulment of either would mean that CTC could avoid a follow-on offering. Noyce initially questioned the approach, suggesting that development of the microprocessor would reduce Intel's sales of their dumb shift registers, but eventually agreed to the deal.][ The result was the development of 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 C ...
microprocessor by Ted Hoff
Marcian Edward "Ted" Hoff Jr. (born October 28, 1937 in Rochester, New York) is one of the inventors of the microprocessor.
Education and work history
Hoff received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst ...
and Stan Mazor
Stanley Mazor is an American microelectronics engineer who was born on 22 October 1941 in Chicago, Illinois. He is one of the co-inventors of the world's first microprocessor architecture, the Intel 4004, together with Ted Hoff, Masatoshi Shim ...
of Intel with IBM's Chief Scientist Larry Potter. This design was rejected by Datapoint management, when the demonstration version was not performant and Intel could not meet Datapoint's product launch date. Consequently, the 2200 was released using the conventional SSI/MSI chip technology of the time. Datapoint continued to produce processors that went into the Datapoint 6600 around 1982 and later series.
Thus, today's overwhelmingly dominant instruction set architecture
In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ' ...
, used in Intel's x86
x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was introd ...
family of processors as well as all compatible CPUs from AMD
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...
and others, traces its ancestry directly back to CTC. The 2200 had an optional disk drive using Shugart 8" floppies, single-sided, single-density, and was the first commercial computer to include them.
The Datapoint 2200 became so popular that CTC later changed its name to Datapoint Corp.
At this time the 2200 processor also had access to an ARCNET
Attached Resource Computer NETwork (ARCNET or ARCnet) is a communications protocol for local area networks. ARCNET was the first widely available networking system for microcomputers; it became popular in the 1980s for office automation tasks. It ...
card, contributed to by Victor Poor, now working for Datapoint. This was the first commercial Local Area Networking card with over ten thousand ARCNET LAN installations were in use around the world. The ARCNET card in each 2200 allowed 2200's running a program to access CSMA/CD Token Ring LAN connected 2200's with attached storage (disk) or printers. This was the first true Distributed Processing over LAN (Local Area Network), as used in Australian Cotton (AusCot Syd), Commodities Trading Sydney, KPMG Sydney and many other small to medium-sized businesses. The LAN was later duplicated by IBM, Banyan, Novell and others using variants of media or methodology. In response Datapoint offered the Token Ring
Token Ring network
IBM hermaphroditic connector with locking clip. Screen contacts are prominently visible, gold-plated signal contacts less so.
Token Ring is a computer networking technology used to build local area networks. It was introduc ...
LAN capability to Tandy for their 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 '' ...
, but ARCNET never really gained any foothold again.
They then asked Schmidt to write the accompanying communications software.
In later years, after the death of John Phil Ray, his widow and fellow dinner guest Brenda Ray Coffee was deposed by Baker Botts
Baker Botts L.L.P. is an American law firm of around 725 lawyers. Headquartered in One Shell Plaza in Downtown Houston, Texas, the firm has energy and technology related clients. It is referred to as the second-oldest law firm west of the Missi ...
, the attorneys for Texas Instruments, when TI and Intel were involved in their lawsuit as to which one "invented" the microprocessor.
Boom period: 1973-1980
Despite the success of the 2200, the company lacked the finances and skills to manage its own production, and was hence quickly running out of cash. After Ray and Roche investigated and then dismissed selling the company, they agreed to a deal to gain an investment from TRW. However, after realising that his company would be competing with major customer IBM, the President of TRW pulled out of the deal, and renegotiated it as the purchase of overseas manufacturing rights. Combined with other institutional share sales, this raised the required $7M to finance the development of a new product.
However, on investigative audit the new investors found that Datapoint's corporate accounts hid various holes and challenges. After forcing the resignation of the company's first chairman, San Antonio insurance salesman Gerald Mazur, they appointed Harold O'Kelley, who had an engineering background and had been a vice-president of the electronics firm Harris Corporation
Harris Corporation was an American technology company, defense contractor, and information technology services provider that produced wireless equipment, tactical radios, electronic systems, night vision equipment and both terrestrial and spaceb ...
, and formally renamed the firm Datapoint.
O'Kelley immediately realised that the TRW deal was fatally flawed. Effectively, it allowed TRW to manufacture outside North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
, but then import the product and sell directly against Datapoint in North America. After renegotiations, O'Kelley and TRW agreed a new contract which allowed TRW to market the product outside North America, but not to manufacture it. He then raised an additional $8 million via a third Wall Street
Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...
-backed public offering, with a plan to raise sales from $18M to $100M within five years. As a result, under the chairmanship of O'Kelley, between 1973 and 1981, revenues grew at a 40% pace, with sales surpassing $100M in 1977, reaching $450M by 1981.
This growth was only enabled through the development of various products through the partnership between Ray, Roche, Poor and Pyle. These included Datashare, a concept that allowed many terminals to communicate with each other independent of a mainframe. In 1976, Datapoint introduced a machine that automatically routed outgoing telephone calls onto the cheapest available line, there by liberalising the US Telecoms market after the AT&T breakup
The breakup of the Bell System was mandated on January 8, 1982, by an agreed consent decree providing that AT&T Corporation would, as had been initially proposed by AT&T, relinquish control of the Bell Operating Companies, which had provided loc ...
. It then introduced telephone directory software and word processing programs, as well as electronic mail functions.
Other Datapoint inventions were ARCnet
Attached Resource Computer NETwork (ARCNET or ARCnet) is a communications protocol for local area networks. ARCNET was the first widely available networking system for microcomputers; it became popular in the 1980s for office automation tasks. It ...
, invented in 1977, originally called ARC (Attached Resource Computer), which was an early token-passing local area network (LAN) protocol, and the PL/B high-level programming language
In computer science, a high-level programming language is a programming language with strong Abstraction (computer science), abstraction from the details of the computer. In contrast to low-level programming languages, it may use natural language ...
, which was originally called ''Databus'' (from ''Datapoint business language'') and ran under the ''Datashare'' multi-user interpreter. Later developments included a Mapped Intelligent Disc System (MIDS) which networked 2200 series terminals to a single mass storage disc operating system and enhanced Distributed Data Processing. Proprietary operating systems included DOS and RMS, and Datapoint later moved its hardware to be based on Intel 386 CPUs.
ARCnet was briefly superseded by ARCnetplus, which provided throughput of 20 Mbit/s and include options such as LiteLink which used infra-red technology to link systems in adjacent buildings. This was launched around the time 100 Mbit/s Ethernet arrived so never really took much market share, even though ARCnet used simple, slender co-axial cable, not Ethernet's thick yellow cable, and despite have a slower transmission-speed had superior throughput, and was much simpler to configure and operate (servers could be connected and disconnected without taking the network down or reconfiguring).
Datapoint also developed and patented one of the earliest picture-in-picture
Picture-in-picture (PiP) is a feature that can be found in television receivers, personal computers and smartphones, consisting of a video stream playing within an inset window, freeing the rest of the screen for other tasks.
For televisions, pic ...
implementations of videoconferencing
Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio signal, audio and video signals by people in different locations for Real-time, real time communication. ...
called MINX (Multimedia Information Network eXchange). It was also part of the first video visitation and arraignment systems. It has been suggested they made more money from lawsuits over patent infringements than through sales of the product.
Decline: 1980-1984
By the early 1980s, Datapoint ranked as a Fortune 500
The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along ...
company. Lead times were extending rapidly as demand for Datapoint products increased, leading to delivery delays and unhappy customers. Pressure to increase sales led to some questionable orders being accepted. Compounding this, many of the orders were simply placed to guarantee availability of the product at a future point when it was expected that actual orders would be in place. When these actual orders never materialized, the excess capacity and inventories initiated a financial collapse. Additionally, some of the actual customers went broke before paying their bills due to the general business slowdown. Such factors forced Datapoint to reverse sales or to record substantial bad debts, which caused the company to lose $800 million of its market capitalization
Market capitalization, sometimes referred to as market cap, is the total value of a publicly traded company's outstanding common shares owned by stockholders.
Market capitalization is equal to the market price per common share multiplied by t ...
in a matter of a few months in early 1982. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market ...
(SEC) ordered Datapoint to stop this practice.
After cancelling the ground breaking ceremony in a new headquarters building in March 1982, the factory in Waco, Texas
Waco ( ) is the county seat of McLennan County, Texas, United States. It is situated along the Brazos River and I-35, halfway between Dallas and Austin. The city had a 2020 population of 138,486, making it the 22nd-most populous city in the ...
, closed in early 1982, and all Waco production transferred to the newer Fort Worth
Fort Worth is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Texas and the 13th-largest city in the United States. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly into four other counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Wise. According ...
factory. The Ft. Worth Factory closed in 1985 as the company continued in a virtual free-fall, leaving the San Antonio factory (aka "9725") as the sole remaining factory in the US. Production shrank further and several San Antonio facilities were consolidated, with much factory space in 9725 being converted to offices to allow termination of office leases in the area. While numerous factory personnel moved from Waco to Ft. Worth, very few relocated from Ft. Worth to San Antonio, as the company was shrinking in size rapidly.
Edelman takeover
In December 1984, corporate raid
In business, a corporate raid is the process of buying a large stake in a corporation and then using shareholder voting rights to require the company to undertake novel measures designed to increase the share value, generally in opposition to t ...
er Asher B. Edelman revealed that he had built up an 8% holding in Datapoint. In the same month Edelman offered $23 a share, or $416.3 million, to acquire the company. Datapoint's board rejected the offer but began inviting takeover proposals from other interested parties. Edelman then withdrew his bid, and began directly seeking shareholders' consent to oust Datapoint's board, replace them with his own designees and then sell the company to a third party or parties; his business takeover pattern deployed in other companies. Datapoint's board resultantly changed the company's bylaws to make the consent solicitation more difficult, a change Edelman later successfully blocked in court. In February 1985, Datapoint reported its predicted increased loss for the last quarter 1984, of $15.9 Million. After a three-month fight, on March 16 the board of Datapoint agreed to restructure the company, led by the immediate resignation of O'Kelley and his replacement as chairman by Edelman, who dropped his legal challenges.
Divestiture
After the Edelman takeover, Datapoint spun off its service division into Intelogic Trace, Inc., which initially specialized in servicing Datapoint equipment but later broadened into supporting products from other vendors as well. Intelogic Trace declared Chapter 11
Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, wheth ...
bankruptcy, and on April 6, 1995, its assets were sold to a company in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
.
Datapoint itself weathered a subsequent battle for control of the company that triggered more attention from the SEC. In December 1999, all of Datapoint's patented video communications technologies, along with all inventory and assets associated with the video business group was sold to one of its resellers, VUGATE. A handful of the loyal video group employees went to work for this company which is still selling the product today.
On May 3, 2000, Datapoint filed for Chapter 11
Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, wheth ...
bankruptcy, and was broken up:
*Datapoint UK Limited - on June 19, the company sold the Datapoint name and various operations to its European subsidiary for $49.3 million. The company changed its emphasis to call center equipment and largely pulled out of the computer market. Purchased by Alchemy Partners
Alchemy Partners is a British private equity firm, which specialises in investing in distressed and undervalued or underperforming businesses and other special situations through debt and equity throughout Europe.
Alchemy was founded in 1997 by ...
, in 2007 it acquired the assets of Touchbases' Avaya
Avaya Holdings Corp., often shortened to Avaya (), is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, that provides cloud communications and workstream collaboration services. The company's platform includ ...
business to expand its footprint and extend into enterprise communications. Headquartered in Brentford
Brentford is a suburban town in West London, England and part of the London Borough of Hounslow. It lies at the confluence of the River Brent and the Thames, west of Charing Cross.
Its economy has diverse company headquarters buildings whi ...
, England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
, it has clients on 5,000 sites in 41 countries.
*Dynacore Holdings Corporation - on June 19, 2000, the remnant of Datapoint's US operations changed its name to Dynacore Holdings Corporation and formed a subsidiary that pursued 14 lawsuits based on two patents granted to Datapoint regarding local area network
A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger ...
s. With only $1.3 million left from the sale of its European operations after paying its debts and no products left to sell — its total revenues for the first half of 2001 dwindled to $9,000 and a year later fell to nothing — Dynacore searched for a company to buy. In February 2003, Dynacore engaged in a reverse takeover
A reverse takeover (RTO), reverse merger, or reverse IPO is the acquisition of a public company by a private company so that the private company can bypass the lengthy and complex process of going public. Sometimes, conversely, the public compan ...
of The CattleSale Company. Asher Edelman now sits in CattleSale's board of directors.
*Datapoint U.S.A., Inc. - in April 2003, Datapoint U.S.A., Inc. assumed control of all RMS Operating System based products from Datapoint Group(UK). Datapoint U.S.A., Inc. is based in San Antonio, TX and continues to provide RMS development, maintenance and support services to users worldwide. An office building and street in San Antonio still bear Datapoint's name, but is not associated with the residual US company.
References
{{Reflist, 30em
External links
Homepage of DatapointUSA, the US-based RMS support center company
Homepage of Datapoint, the European call center & enterprise communications company
VUGATE, the company that sells and supports the MINX product line
Video Datapoint 1560 Processor with floppy drive, In place - Retro Computer museum, Zatec, Czech Republic
1968 establishments in Texas
2000 disestablishments in Texas
American companies established in 1968
American companies disestablished in 2000
Computer companies established in 1968
Computer companies disestablished in 2000
Companies based in San Antonio
Defunct companies based in Texas
Defunct computer companies of the United States
Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange
Videotelephony
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2000