Informer Computer Terminals, Inc., originally Informer, Inc., and later Informer Computer Systems, Inc., was a privately held American computer company active from 1971 to 2007. It manufactured

data 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 an ...

s that could communicate with

mainframe A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...

s and

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ...

s, mainly those manufactured by IBM and

Digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals **Digital camera, which captures and stores digital i ...

. It was originally based in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

, California; in the early 1980s, it moved to

Laguna Beach Laguna Beach (; ''Laguna'', Spanish for "Lagoon") is a seaside resort city located in southern Orange County, California, in the United States. It is known for its mild year-round climate, scenic coves, environmental preservation efforts, and a ...

, and in the late 1980s, to Garden Grove.

Corporate history

Informer, Inc. was co-founded in

, California, in 1971 by Donald Allen Domike (1927–2017). Originally located in the far corner of

West Los Angeles West Los Angeles is an area within the city of Los Angeles, California. The residential and commercial neighborhood is divided by the Interstate 405 freeway, and each side is sometimes treated as a distinct neighborhood, mapped differently by di ...

, Informer moved to

Westchester, Los Angeles Westchester is a neighborhood in the City of Los Angeles and the Westside Region of Los Angeles County, California. It is home to Los Angeles International Airport, Loyola Marymount University, Otis College of Art and Design, and Westchester ...

, in fall 1976, occupying a facility as their headquarters, manufacturing plant, and research and development laboratory. Informer in the mid-1970s appointed Bryon Cole as president of the company and Wilfred "Will" R. Little as vice president of marketing. By 1981, Little replaced Cole as president. Informer in 1976 manufactured

glass terminal Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of ...

s with small CRTs as well as traditional keyboard-send-and-receive and receive-only teleprinters. It achieved sales of US$1 million in fiscal year 1976, projecting a doubling of sales for the following year. By 1981, the company had achieved yearly sales in excess of $10 million. The company established ten branch offices in the United States by that year; at some point in the mid-1980s, they also opened a Canadian subsidiary in

Richmond, British Columbia Richmond is a coastal city in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia, Canada. It occupies almost the entirety of Lulu Island (excluding Queensborough), between the two estuarine distributaries of the Fraser River. Encompassing the ad ...

. Its products in the early 1980s comprised not only glass terminals and teleprinters but also

barcode reader A barcode reader is an optical scanner that can read printed barcodes, decode the data contained in the barcode to a computer. Like a flatbed scanner, it consists of a light source, a lens and a light sensor for translating optical impulses into e ...

s and batch terminals. Informer's terminals were used for data entry, data monitoring, remote job entry, and software programming. Following struggling sales in the mid-1980s, the company appointed Malcolm K. Green, formerly of

Emulex Emulex Corporation is a provider of computer network connectivity, monitoring and management hardware and software. The company's I/O connectivity offerings, including its line of Ethernet and Fibre Channel-based connectivity products, are or w ...

as president and

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

. Green shortly thereafter relocated the company's headquarters to

Garden Grove, California Garden Grove is a city in northern Orange County, California, United States, located just southwest of Disneyland (located in Anaheim, CA). The population was 171,949 at the 2020 census. State Route 22, also known as the Garden Grove Freeway, ...

. By the early 1990s the company had renamed itself to Informer Computer Systems, Inc. In 1994, the company spun off its local area and

dial-up Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telepho ...

networking security software operations as Informer Data Security, Inc. Bradley Little was named president of the new company. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the company began orienting their products toward state

emergency service Emergency services and rescue services are organizations that ensure public safety and health by addressing and resolving different emergencies. Some of these agencies exist solely for addressing certain types of emergencies, while others deal wit ...

s, manufacturing terminals and call-tracking systems for 9-1-1 call centers, though they still offered general-purpose terminals as well. Edward P. Dailey replaced Little as president and CEO around this time. In 2000, the company employed 20 in Garden Grove. Informer went defunct in 2007.

Notable products

In May 1990, the company unveiled the Informer 213PT, a portable terminal that also doubles as a

PC-compatible IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. ...

computer, complete with an

i386 The Intel 386, originally released as 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors 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 ...

3.3 in

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * R ...

. The 213PT contains a 9,600-bps

V.32 V3 or V03 may refer to: Medicine * Mandibular nerve, (V3),division of the trigeminal nerve * ATC code V03, a subgroup of the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System * Area V3 of the visual cortex * V3, one of six precordial leads in ...

modem that establishes connections with

IBM mainframe IBM mainframes are large computer systems produced by IBM since 1952. During the 1960s and 1970s, IBM dominated the large computer market. Current mainframe computers in IBM's line of business computers are developments of the basic design of th ...

s using the

3270 terminal The IBM 3270 is a family of Block-oriented terminal, block oriented display and printer computer terminals introduced by IBM in 1971 and normally used to communicate with IBM mainframes. The 3270 was the successor to the IBM 2260 display ter ...

protocol. Switching between terminal and PC modes is achieved via a single keystroke. In PC mode, the computer relies on a host server to provide DOS applications, as it lacks any

drive bays A drive bay is a standard-sized area for adding hardware to a computer. Most drive bays are fixed to the inside of a case, but some can be removed. Over the years since the introduction of the IBM PC, it and its compatibles have had many form f ...

for mass storage, including

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

s and

hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

s. The 213PT has 1 MB of

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * Ra ...

and an additional 4 MB of RAM acting as a solid-state drive; the contents of the latter are kept preserved for up to a month when the unit is powered off through the use of an internal battery. The 213PT has an active-matrix electroluminescent display, with a grid of pixels providing EGA resolution. Informer followed this up in 1991 with the Informer 213AE, a cheaper asynchronous terminal that used an emulator to convert DEC

VT100 The VT100 is a video terminal, introduced in August 1978 by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was one of the first terminals to support ANSI escape codes for cursor control and other tasks, and added a number of extended codes for special f ...

protocol to 3270 protocol. The 213AE lacked the PC-compatible element of the 213PT but kept the electroluminescent display.

References

External links

* {{webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000816201719/informer911.com, title=Official website, date=August 16, 2000 1971 establishments in California 2007 establishments in California American companies established in 1971 American companies disestablished in 2007 Computer companies established in 1971 Computer companies established in 2007 Computer terminals Defunct computer companies based in California Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies