Polytron Corp. was a software company founded in 1982 to create a line of instrumentation products for the

IBM Personal Computer The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...

. It was the creator of the Polytron Version Control System (PVCS). The company was acquired by

Sage Software The Sage Group plc, commonly known as Sage, is a British multinational enterprise software company based in North Tyneside, England. As of 2017, it is the UK's second largest technology company, the world's third-largest supplier of enterpri ...

of Rockville, Maryland in 1989, and is now part of

Serena Software With operations in 11 countries, Serena Software Inc. is an American software company that provides IT management products to enterprises. Serena solutions offer a process orchestration approach and span the areas of development, DevOps and IT ...

Background

The original company goal was to create a line of instrumentation products for, or based on, the then–recently introduced IBM

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 ...

. The company was founded in 1982 by Richard Kinnaird, Don Kinzer, Charlie Perkins, and Doug Root.Polytron Corp.
IT History Society online; accessed December 2013 With the exception of Root, all of them had worked at

Tektronix Tektronix, Inc., historically widely known as Tek, is an American company best known for manufacturing test and measurement devices such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and video and mobile test protocol equipment. Originally an independent ...

in various hardware and/or software engineering positions. The company's headquarters was established in

Elkhart, Indiana Elkhart ( ) is a city in Elkhart County, Indiana, United States. The city is located east of South Bend, Indiana, east of Chicago, Illinois, and north of Indianapolis, Indiana. Elkhart has the larger population of the two principal cities of th ...

Product development

The first product developed was a

GPIB Glycoprotein Ib (GPIb), also known as CD42, is a component of the GPIb-V-IX complex on platelets. The GPIb-V-IX complex binds von Willebrand factor, allowing platelet adhesion and platelet plug formation at sites of vascular injury. It is defici ...

controller (computing) plug-in board for the IBM PC. The founders eventually came up with the idea of creating one or more software development tools for the PC which they could sell to provide working capital. The first such product was ''PolyLibrarian'', an

object module An object file is a computer file containing object code, that is, machine code output of an Assembly language#Assembler, assembler or compiler. The object code is usually Relocation (computing), relocatable, and not usually directly executable. T ...

library utility, which was introduced in late 1982 and written by Kinzer. At the time, there were few, if any, object module librarians available to PC programmers. In 1983, Polytron introduced ''PolyMake'', an

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

version of the well known

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...

make utility, initially written by Perkins. The PolyMake product was followed in 1985 by the Polytron Version Control System (PVCS) (also written by Kinzer), that was loosely based on the RCS change control system authored by Walt Tichy while at

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and mone ...

Refocus

By the time that PVCS was released, Perkins had left the company. The three remaining founders realized that the business they had developed creating and selling software development tools had more profit potential than the original product idea. Consequently, no more effort was applied to pursuing the original product development plan.

Acquired

In 1989, the company was acquired by

of Rockville, Maryland (unrelated to

of the UK). In 1991, Sage Software merged with Index Technology to become Intersolv Inc. In 1998, Intersolv merged with

Micro Focus International Micro Focus International plc is a British multinational software and information technology business based in Newbury, Berkshire, England. The firm provides software and consultancy. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is ...

, and the new company was renamed Merant, PLC. In 2004,

acquired a portion of Merant (in part to acquire the ownership rights for PVCS). Serena was itself acquired in 2006, becoming a portfolio company of Silver Lake Partners, however Micro Focus reacquired Serena Software in 2016.

References and Notes

External links

Company website
Defunct software companies of the United States {{US-software-company-stub