Stephen Bernard Dorsey is a serial entrepreneur"You can call him a serial entrepreneur," said Bolton. who founded several companies, two of which, he built into international leaders among manufacturers of word processors. He currently is the CEO of babyTEL, an Internet Telephony Service Provider.

Biography

Dorsey was born in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

, on July 10, 1937 and is a

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

-trained engineer. His son Dan Dorsey, as part of his preparation to film a video about his father, made a March 2017 visit to an exhibit at The

Personal Computer Museum The Personal Computer Museum was located in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, in a building formerly owned by the municipal government. The building was built with bricks reclaimed from the Brantford Opera House. Over fifty interactive personal compute ...

by curator Syd Bolton that focused on

MICOM Micom was a manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, best known for their line of concentrators. The company was founded by serial entrepreneur"You can call him a serial entrepreneur," said Bolton. Stephen Bernard Dorsey in 1975 and sold ...

Career

In 1967, Dorsey founded AES Data Inc. in Montreal, developing industrial remote-control applications. In 1972, AES launched the AES 90 computer, years before Microsoft and Apple were companies. Marketed as a "word processing system," the AES 90 was really the world's first general-purpose personal computer. AES went on to grow to more than $200 million in annual sales. The

Word Processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...

was the precursor to Microsoft Word, Apple and other software based business applications. Dorsey launched his next venture, Micom Co., after selling his stake in AES in 1975, again selling word processing and office automation systems, but adding telecommunications equipment. Having directed Micom to $200 million in revenue, Dorsey sold it to Philips NV in 1984 and founded Voice & Data Systems in 1991.

Micom concentrators

Micom became known for its ads, often run on the back pages of popular-in-their-day computer industry publications, with the slogan "Concentrate. Because it's cheaper!" The initial ads showed oranges and what resembled a can of frozen orange juice, with a "brand name" of Micom. After adding variations, they began advertising on television. The focus of the ads, within their telecommunications products, was their line of Concentrators. Their print ads included the

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from others ...

ed phrase "MICOM: MicroComputers for DataCommunications(tm)"

References

External links

CASE STUDY of companies founded by Stephen Dorsey
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dorsey, Stephen Bernard 1937 births Living people Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Businesspeople in information technology Businesspeople from Montreal Canadian company founders History of telecommunications