Dennis R. Morin (February 25, 1946 – December 31, 2012) was an American technology entrepreneur and programmer, based in
Irvine, California
Irvine () is a Planned community, master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on ...
. He co-founded the software firm
Wonderware
Wonderware was a brand of industrial software now owned by Aveva and rebranded under the AVEVA name. Wonderware was part of Invensys plc, and Invensys plc was acquired in January 2014 by Schneider Electric. Invensys plc.
Early life
Morin was born in
Saco, Maine
Saco is a city in York County, Maine, York County, Maine, United States. The population was 20,381 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. It is home to Ferry Beach State Park, Funtown Splashtown USA, Thornton Academy, as well as General ...
, a
New England
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
state, the oldest of six children of Alfred and Annette Morin. He spent his early childhood in Saco, and attended several colleges but never graduated. In the late 1960s, he moved to
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
where he drove a taxi for some time before finally moving to
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
.
Career
In his early career, Morin worked as a project manager at a Georgia Pacific plant in Phoenix for a Watertown,
Massachusetts
Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...
-based company called Ionics. After moving to California in the late 1970s, he went on to work for many companies including Purex, Varco Oil and Tools,
Hughes Aircraft
The Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace and defense contractor founded on February 14, 1934 by Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American business magnate, record-setting p ...
and
Triconex
Triconex is both the name of a Schneider Electric brand that supplies products, systems, and services for safety, critical control, and turbomachinery applications and the name of its hardware devices that utilize its TriStation application softwa ...
. He had no formal training in computer science or software programming; he learned everything on the job himself, with little help from his engineer colleagues. At Triconex he learned how to use the FIX and FactoryLink programs to create demos of the Tricon in action. Triconex was where Morin went deeper into the
industrial automation
Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...
business and his product-related ideas started taking shape.
In Morin's own words:
After he was done with the TriStation design, Morin started working on TriView, a user interface. But, the Triconex board did not fund the project. In February 1986, during company re-organization Morin was laid off.
Wonderware
After leaving Triconex, Dennis Morin worked as a consultant doing PLC programming and creating FIX applications. During this time, his exposure to FIX and its apparent limitations motivated Dennis to work on and develop something better. By early 1987, he had worked out most of the basic design concept of InTouch. He shared his idea with Phil Huber, his former colleague from Triconex, and asked him to join hands in building a software company. He also contacted other friends (Cole Chevalier, Jerry Cuckler and Bill Urone) to help him code the product. A partnership agreement was signed and Wonderware came into existence on April 1, 1987. 'Wonderware' was actually supposed to be a temporary name, since Morin could not think of some catchy name. However, people liked the name and it just stuck around. It is said that Pinball Construction Set, an early computer game, was the source of inspiration for Morin. With the release of InTouch in 1989, Wonderware revolutionized industrial automation. When
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.0 is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, launched in 1990. It features a new graphical user interface (GUI) where applications are represented as clickable icons, as opposed to the list of file names seen in its predecesso ...
was released on May 22, 1990, Wonderware introduced its HMI software, InTouch 2.0, the very same day. In fact, Wonderware was the beta tester for Windows 3.0.
InTouch was designed for
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
instead of
DOS
DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems.
DOS may also refer to:
Computing
* Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel
* Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicatio ...
and other
operating systems
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also inc ...
(OS), because Morin believed that
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
would eventually win the battle of operating systems. At that time,
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
OS/2
OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 ...
were in a stronger position. Morin’s choice of betting his company’s future on the success of Microsoft Windows paid off soon; Wonderware gained a significant lead over its competitors and remained virtually unchallenged for next five years.
Legacy
In 2003, InTech, the magazine of the
International Society of Automation
The International Society of Automation (ISA), formerly known as The Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society, is a non-profit technical society for engineers, technicians, businesspeople, educators and students, who work, study or are int ...
(ISA), listed Dennis Morin as one of the 50 most influential innovators in the history of industrial automation. The organization noted that Morin ‘bet the company’ on Microsoft’s Windows software and started a major transition from dedicated, hardware-based process control to Windows-based ‘open’ technology.
Dennis Morin died on December 31, 2012, of cancer.