TeleVideo Corporation was a

U.S. The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...

company that achieved its peak of success in the early 1980s producing

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. Most early computers only had a front panel to input or display ...

s. TeleVideo was founded in 1975 by K. Philip Hwang, a

Utah State University Utah State University (USU or Utah State) is a public university, public land grant colleges, land-grant research university with its main campus in Logan, Utah, United States. Founded in 1888 under the Morrill Land-Grant Acts as Utah's federal ...

Hanyang University Hanyang University (HYU, ) is a Private university, private research university in Seoul and Ansan (ERICA campus), South Korea. ''Hanyang'' () derives from the Names of Seoul, former name of the capital Seoul used during the Joseon period. The u ...

graduate born in

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...

who closed a successful

7-Eleven 7-Eleven, Inc. is an American convenience store chain, headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Seven-Eleven Japan, which in turn is owned by the retail holdings company Seven & I Holdings. The chain was founde ...

franchise he and his wife had run, and invested $9000 in savings in the new company. Hwang had run a business producing

CRT monitor A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms on an oscilloscope, ...

s for

arcade game An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are presented as primarily game of skill, games of skill and in ...

s since 1975. The company was headquartered in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...

. TeleVideo's terminal protocol was popular in the early days of microcomputers and was widely supported by applications as well as

terminal emulator A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote term ...

s (often referred to as "TeleVideo 925 emulation"). TeleVideo also built

CP/M CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/Intel 8085, 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Dig ...

-compatible 8-bit desktop and portable

personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

s based on the

Z80 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog that played an important role in the evolution of early personal computing. Launched in 1976, it was designed to be software-compatible with the Intel 8080, offering a compelling altern ...

processor. Up to sixteen of these machines could be connected to proprietary multi-user systems through

serial interface A serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in parallel. Throughout mo ...

s. After 1982 sales of $98.5 million, the company had 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 investm ...

in March 1983, valuing Hwang's shares in the company at $500 million. In April 1983, TeleVideo introduced an MS-DOS 2.0-compatible personal computer based on the

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

8088 The Intel 8088 ("''eighty-eighty-eight''", also called iAPX 88) microprocessor is a variant of the Intel 8086. Introduced on June 1, 1979, the 8088 has an eight-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers ...

. This was introduced as the Model TS-1603 and included 128 KB RAM (expandable up to 256 KB), integrated monitor, modem and keyboard. The Model TS-1603 ran both TeleVideo PC DOS 2.0 and CP/M-86 1.1. The company later turned to manufacturing

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

-compatible

thin client In computer networking, a thin client, sometimes called slim client or lean client, is a simple (low-Computer performance, performance) computer that has been Program optimization, optimized for Remote desktop, establishing a remote connectio ...

computers, but eventually sold this business line to

Neoware Neoware Systems, Inc., was a company that manufactured and marketed thin clients. It also developed and marketed enterprise software, thin client appliances, and related services aimed at reducing the TCO of IT infrastructure. Neoware owned one ...

in October 2005. The latter was subsequently taken over by

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

in 2007. On March 14, 2006, TeleVideo, Inc. filed a voluntary petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. After more than 35 years in business and with millions of terminals sold worldwide, TeleVideo discontinued the manufacturing and sales of all terminal products as of September 30, 2011.

Products

* Terminals: TeleVideo 905, 910, 912, 914, 920, 921, 922, 924, 925, 9320, 935, 950, 955, 965, 970, 990, 995-65, Personal Terminal * Graphic boards for Terminals: 914GR, 924GR, 970GR *

systems: TeleVideo TS-800, TS-802, TS-803 * CP/M Plus and MP/M II: TeleVideo TS-804 (4 users for MP/M II) *

CP/M-86 CP/M-86 is a discontinued version of the CP/M operating system that Digital Research (DR) made for the Intel 8086 and Intel 8088. The system commands are the same as in CP/M-80. Executable files used the relocatable .CMD file format. Digital Re ...

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 op ...

systems: TeleVideo TS-1603 * TeleVideo TPC-1, a portable CP/M system similar to the Osborne-1 * Early multi-user systems: TeleVideo TS-806 (6 users), TS-816 (16 users) * 80286 IBM AT clone TELECAT 286, a small green desktop IBM AT clone with a 6 or 8 MHz 80286 CPU Trademark filing for TELECAT-286 1986 Televideo TeleCAT-286

References

External links

*
TS-802 CP/M personal computer History of Televideo founders Background on TS-1603 All In One ComputerTerminals Wiki
{{DEFAULTSORT:Televideo 1975 establishments in California 2011 disestablishments in California American companies established in 1975 American companies disestablished in 2011 Companies based in San Jose, California Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2006 Computer companies established in 1975 Computer companies disestablished in 2011 Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct computer systems companies Manufacturing companies established in 1975 Manufacturing companies disestablished in 2011 Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area