Recently at church one of our Youth, CD, a ten year old who has
impressed me with his willingness to participate in our Sunday
School discussions, Scripture reading, and other worship
activities, came to me and asked, "Did you really work for Bill
Gates?" I explained to him, "No, I have never worked
for Bill Gates. But, I did work with Bill Gates and Paul Allen
before they started Microsoft."
In the mid-1970s, before there were PC desktop computers or Apple computers, Ed Roberts, owned a small company in Albuquerque, New Mexico named MITS. The company made and sold build-it-yourself electronic calculators and test equipment. With the advent of the new 8-bit Intel and Zilog microprocessors, Ed Roberts decided to package them into build-it-yourself computers for hobbyist, small companies, and such. Roberts developed the first real home computer, the Altair 8800, which was featured on the January 1975 cover of Popular Electronics magazine. Paul Allen, a young engineer at Honeywell, and his friend, Bill Gates (who was in college at Harvard), saw the magazine and began writing software for the Altair computer. Soon, Bill dropped out of college and they moved to Albuquerque to do software contract work for MITS. Basically they became the company's programming staff.
At that same time, I joined MITS as their Western Region Sales Manager with the responsibilities of selling the Altair computer to industry. Initially, my main task was twofold: (1) to contract independent Manufacturers Sales Representative organizations to sell the product, and, (2) to organize and present Microcomputer Seminars to prospective hobbyist and engineers who wanted to learn more about this new idea, a small microprocessor based desktop computer, to use in their homes and businesses.
While working at MITS, Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft in Albuquerque and originally named it "Micro-Soft" as Paul Allen recounted in his 1995 Fortune magazine article. The company later moved their small company, now called Microsoft, to Seattle, Bill and Paul's hometown, where Bill's dad had a successful law firm. And the rest is history.
At a 1975 MITS Microcomputer Seminar I presented at Ricky's Hyatt Hotel in Palo Alto, California, a young man, Paul Terrell, attended the seminar and signed on to sell the MITS computer through his Sales Rep organization. At that time there was one hobby computer store in America - owned by a couple in Los Angeles. After signing on to represent the MITS Altair computer - Paul and his partner, Boyd Wilson, opened the Byte Shop computer store in Mountain View, California - the second hobby computer store in America. Paul and Boyd successfully grew that one store into a nationwide chain of computer stores, also named the Byte Shop. Fast forward a few years, other computer store chains were formed - and the Byte Shop stores were sold to another chain, allowing Paul and Boyd to pursue other interests.
And, that recent chat at church with my young friend, CD, prompted me to take another walk down Memory Lane:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In a 2014 TimesDaily Religion Forum discussion titled "Let's Talk About It" - a Forum Friend, who tells us he is a Christian believer, yet attacks everything I write about God's Word and the Christian faith - now shares his opinion of me with folks on the Religion Forum:
That tirade was prompted by the Religion Forum discussion named above which was begun by another Forum Friend - who questions whether I even know how to use a computer or not.
So, just for the record, let me respond to their Religion Forum posts - Bill Gray, This Is Your Life!
Fresh out of the Air Force in August 1958, I joined Burroughs Corporation as a Computer Systems Technician at their plant in Pasadena (Sierra Madre), California. A year later, in 1959, I transferred into the company's Field Engineering department and was assigned to help maintain the Burroughs B220 computer system at the Naval Supply Depot in Norfolk, Virginia. Nine months later, I was transferred to the Burroughs office in Washington DC - where I was lead Field Engineer on their system at Atlantic Research Corporation in Virginia. Later, I was assigned to test and then install a Burroughs computer which was part of much larger Melpar Corporation system installed at the Air Force SAC Headquarters at Offutt AFB in Omaha, Nebraska.
A few years later, I was recruited from Burroughs by the man, Chuck Hill, who had been my Burroughs Washington DC Regional Manager. By the way, he was also the same man who, in 1958, hired me to work in the Computer System Test department in Pasadena. He was hired away from Burroughs to establish a Test Department for Ramo-Wooldridge (later TRW) in Canoga Park, California, and asked me to join him in that endeavor. Ramo-Wooldridge designed the first military spec minicomputer, the AN/UYK-1 - and our job was to create a test department for that computer. Later, I wrote the AN/UYK-1 Test Manual to guide newly hired test technicians as we expanded the department.
After helping establish the Test Department for the AN/UYK-1 at Ramo-Wooldridge, I moved into their Military Support/Field Engineering department. After that transition, I traveled to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard where I installed an AN/UYK-1 computer onboard the USNS Kingsport where it was the antennae control computer. This was the ship which controlled the Syncom satellite which allowed President Kennedy to make the first satellite based telephone call between two continents.
While working in the Military Support/Field Engineering department at Ramo-Wooldridge, I was asked to help the Training Department. Each month I would spend two weeks teaching classes on the AN/UYK-1 computer system to engineers and technicians sent for training by client companies. The rest of the month I would visit customer sites to install new computers or repair existing installations.
A few years later, I left Ramo-Wooldridge and joined Scientific Data Systems where I was a member of their initial corps of experienced Field Engineers. I installed the first SDS-930 computer system at MIT Lincoln Labs near Boston; then I traveled to Boeing in Seattle where I installed the second SDS-930 computer as part of a larger Boeing designed and implemented Space-Flight Simulator (Astronaut Reentry Training Simulator System) - which trained astronauts for their reentry flights, one of the most critical and dangerous times in the entire mission. I was honored to be there the day the first group of astronauts arrived for training.
Later, North American Rockwell-Downey was using a larger SDS-9300 computer system as part of their Space Capsule Simulation System. When the local SDS Field Engineers could not get the system to operate as it was supposed to, I was sent to the site to correct the problem. I designed a temporary fix to make their computer function as they wanted. And my temporary fix was still in that system when I visited the site several years later. Why fool with success?
After a period of time working as a Special Systems Engineer at SDS, I found that I was being asked to visit and repair systems at customers' sites which the local Field Engineers should have been able to diagnose and repair. I asked our department manager to allow me to set up a special intensive training class designed to help the Field Engineers learn techniques for trouble-shooting the SDS-930 and SDS-9300 computer systems. He arranged to have half the Field Engineers in the first one week class, then the other half in for the second one week class. For the second class, the head of the SDS Training department asked if he could have his instructors and several visiting customer engineers sit in during the class.
In the mid-1960s, as a Field Engineer/Special Systems Engineer for SDS, I spent time at UC Berkeley where I worked with the Project Genie team headed by Professor Wayne Lichtenberger, given an ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) grant to develop a time sharing computer, and Melvin Pirtle (who later became Dr. Mel Pirtle, Director of NASA Ames Research Center, and who also married our SDS Palo Alto office secretary). My task was to modify the SDS-930 computer by adding more memory hardware to the system. Point of interest: ARPAnet, developed by the Department of Defense in conjunction with several universities, was the precursor to the Internet we use today.
Project Genie was an ARPA funded computer research project started in 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley. It produced an early time-sharing system based upon the SDS-930 computer and the Berkeley Timesharing System software (the pioneer time-sharing operating system), which was then commercialized as the SDS-940. The system that Scientific Data Systems (SDS) would call the SDS-940 was created by modifying an SDS-930 24-bit commercial computer so that it could be used for timesharing. And, implementing those hardware modification designs for the Project Genie team at UC Berkeley was my task.
A few years later, Dr. Lichtenberger and the modified computer system now called the SDS-940 moved to the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Hawaii to work on another ARPA project. By then I was in sales for Digital Equipment and made a sales call at the University of Hawaii. I was able to visit with him and my SDS-940 computer system on the Hawaii campus. It was like running into old friends.
Once the system had been developed at UC Berkeley, SDS began building and selling SDS-940 Timesharing computer systems. I installed the first one at a newly formed company named Tymshare Corporation in Cupertino, California. The company, founded by Tom O’Rourke and Dave Schmidt, was the first to offer commercial timesharing computer services.
During my 12 years as a Field Engineer/Special Systems Engineer - I worked with a number of distinguished and very interesting customers and systems all over the country.
My engineering and technical knowledge was a big asset when I transitioned into sales and marketing. Those were the days when we traveled to prospective client sites, sat down with client engineers to better understand their needs, and helped them configure systems to meet their requirements. Those applications ranged from Mission Planning and Defense, to Simulators, to Ocean Surveillance, Computer Aided Design, Animation, Geophysical and Chemical Data Analysis, Process Control, Biomedical Engineering, and many more very interesting applications. That was the excitement of being a Sales Engineer in those days - we got involved in and gained knowledge (jack of all trades/master of none) in many different areas of science, engineering, manufacturing, and education.
However, my Forum Friend is right about the way people view computer sales people today. And, mostly for very good reason. Most computer sales today are done over the telephone or in computer stores - where intimacy with client needs and applications is rarely experienced. Many telephone sales people today are merely warm bodies who have been taught a few technical words, given a script of questions to ask, and placed in a cubicle with a telephone. When the computer industry transitioned to that level, that is when I lost interest and, praise God, that is when God gave me a writing ministry to keep me focused on Him.
My first job in Sales was with Digital Equipment Corporation. I began as a Sales Application Engineer in the late 1960s. In that position I would help customers apply our computer products to their applications. I recall getting a phone call from a gentleman in a small company in Nevada. He wanted to configure an interface to connect a DEC PDP-8s computer to a television screen for a game he was designing. I was able to design and configure that interface for him using DEC Logic Modules. The small company was Atari and the game was Pong. The rest, as they say, is history.
Later, at DEC, I designed a Stimulation/Response system, using a DEC PDP-8s computer and DEC Logic Modules, for the Psychology department at Stanford Research Institute which allowed them to apply different stimuli to lab rats to train them for specific responses.
At the same time, I was also giving one day Logic Seminars for DEC clients and prospective clients - teaching them to use DEC computer logic modules to implement special systems for their own needs. The first seminar I gave was at the University of Cal, Berkeley - where 80% of the attendees were Ph.ds from the university faculty and staff, and from Lawrence Berkeley Atomic Energy Lab. That full day seminar was my baptism into presenting Computer Seminars - and with that level of attendees, the baptismal water, at times, got a wee bit warm.
Then, I went into full time sales - as a Sales Engineer. During my years in sales for DEC - in Northern California and in their Huntsville office - I continued to give Computer and Computer Logic Seminars for customers and wanna-be customers.
In 1968, I worked with Judith Edwards, director of a government funded education program formed to put computers into local blue-collar schools in Oregon. This program was to address the social/societal aspect of the coming computer society, rather than the more common academic application. It was a program aimed at children from blue collar homes who were more likely to go into vocational training rather than college - to take the mystery out of computers and help them better understand how computers would impact their lives in the future. We installed a group of DEC PDP-8s computers in Elementary School classrooms and allowed the children to get hands-on experience using a computer.
Fast forward to the mid-1970s and I joined a small company based in Albuquerque named MITS. The company had just introduced a kit-form "build it yourself" microcomputer called the Altair.
My task there was to establish a network of independent sales offices (manufacturer's rep companies) to sell our Altair product - and to travel around giving Microcomputer Seminars. At that time, there was only one computer store in all of America. It was a store-front computer store in Los Angeles owned by a man and wife team.
A Microcomputer Seminar I gave at Ricky's Hyatt Hotel in Palo Alto, California, was so successful that a gentleman named Paul Terrell met with me that evening and agreed to represent our company in Northern California. A month later, he and his partner, Boyd Wilson, opened the first Byte Shop computer store (the second computer store in America) in Mountain View, California. Then, with his brother he opened another store in Palo Alto - and then with a second brother he opened a third store in Oregon. That grew into the first computer store chain, also called the Byte Shop. Some years later other computer store chains were begun - and Paul and Boyd sold the Byte Shop chain, now 250 stores, to another chain and retired, young.
By the way, when I was at MITS, there were two young computer programmers who comprised the company's programming staff. Their names are Bill Gates and Paul Allen. They left MITS and started a new company. You may have heard of it - they named it Microsoft. That was in the mid 1970s.
Fast forward about ten years and I was hired as Regional Manager for Ferranti International Controls Corporation, a Houston based subsidiary of the larger Ferranti International PLC of Manchester, England. The company, Ferranti, a large user of computer graphics terminals and systems, hired me because they wanted to develop their own computer graphics manufacturing capability. But, because they did not want to limit the market for this new computer graphics product to just Ferranti companies - they asked me to do a rather extensive market survey across America to determine what kind of computer graphics product the U.S. market wanted.
I spent three months traveling around America meeting with and interviewing top level Engineering people, typically VP Engineering and Engineering Management level. I did this with small, medium sized, and large corporations - and with computer consultants and many government agencies. At the end of my market survey tour, I made several trips with our U.S. senior engineering managers to Ferranti in Manchester, England, and Ferranti in Edinburgh, Scotland, where we spent days bringing them up to speed on what U. S. companies wanted to see in the new Ferranti computer graphics product.
From those meetings in England, a new product was born and the following article in Computer Technology Review, Summer 1986 issue, describes the design philosophy behind it:
So, to my "Doubting Thomas" TimesDaily Religion Forum Friend, as you can see I have lived a rather dull, mundane life in the computer industry. But, not too bad for a guy whom you suggested did not even make it out of high school. I am sure that my teachers and classmates, those of my Sheffield High (Alabama) graduating class of 1955, will be disappointed by how, according to you, I have wasted my life.
But, somehow I struggled through, finally left my computer industry career behind me, except for using the products - and have spent the past twenty-five plus years, and counting, concentrating on sharing the Word of God with the world, using a computer. My Friend, I pray that I will have many opportunities to share His Word with you over the coming years.
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill
In the mid-1970s, before there were PC desktop computers or Apple computers, Ed Roberts, owned a small company in Albuquerque, New Mexico named MITS. The company made and sold build-it-yourself electronic calculators and test equipment. With the advent of the new 8-bit Intel and Zilog microprocessors, Ed Roberts decided to package them into build-it-yourself computers for hobbyist, small companies, and such. Roberts developed the first real home computer, the Altair 8800, which was featured on the January 1975 cover of Popular Electronics magazine. Paul Allen, a young engineer at Honeywell, and his friend, Bill Gates (who was in college at Harvard), saw the magazine and began writing software for the Altair computer. Soon, Bill dropped out of college and they moved to Albuquerque to do software contract work for MITS. Basically they became the company's programming staff.
At that same time, I joined MITS as their Western Region Sales Manager with the responsibilities of selling the Altair computer to industry. Initially, my main task was twofold: (1) to contract independent Manufacturers Sales Representative organizations to sell the product, and, (2) to organize and present Microcomputer Seminars to prospective hobbyist and engineers who wanted to learn more about this new idea, a small microprocessor based desktop computer, to use in their homes and businesses.
While working at MITS, Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft in Albuquerque and originally named it "Micro-Soft" as Paul Allen recounted in his 1995 Fortune magazine article. The company later moved their small company, now called Microsoft, to Seattle, Bill and Paul's hometown, where Bill's dad had a successful law firm. And the rest is history.
At a 1975 MITS Microcomputer Seminar I presented at Ricky's Hyatt Hotel in Palo Alto, California, a young man, Paul Terrell, attended the seminar and signed on to sell the MITS computer through his Sales Rep organization. At that time there was one hobby computer store in America - owned by a couple in Los Angeles. After signing on to represent the MITS Altair computer - Paul and his partner, Boyd Wilson, opened the Byte Shop computer store in Mountain View, California - the second hobby computer store in America. Paul and Boyd successfully grew that one store into a nationwide chain of computer stores, also named the Byte Shop. Fast forward a few years, other computer store chains were formed - and the Byte Shop stores were sold to another chain, allowing Paul and Boyd to pursue other interests.
And, that recent chat at church with my young friend, CD, prompted me to take another walk down Memory Lane:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In a 2014 TimesDaily Religion Forum discussion titled "Let's Talk About It" - a Forum Friend, who tells us he is a Christian believer, yet attacks everything I write about God's Word and the Christian faith - now shares his opinion of me with folks on the Religion Forum:
The troll (that is me, Bill Gray) was initially in computer sales. And to tell you what the industry thinks of their sales people would take more time than I have. He subtly, and carefully, hints that he worked in Field Service Engineering - attempting to give the impression he was a Field Service Engineer. Anyone experienced in the field knows that the title Field Service Engineer is reserved for those with an engineering degree. There is some question in my mind if he actually graduated from high school. Computer expert indeed!
That tirade was prompted by the Religion Forum discussion named above which was begun by another Forum Friend - who questions whether I even know how to use a computer or not.
So, just for the record, let me respond to their Religion Forum posts - Bill Gray, This Is Your Life!
Fresh out of the Air Force in August 1958, I joined Burroughs Corporation as a Computer Systems Technician at their plant in Pasadena (Sierra Madre), California. A year later, in 1959, I transferred into the company's Field Engineering department and was assigned to help maintain the Burroughs B220 computer system at the Naval Supply Depot in Norfolk, Virginia. Nine months later, I was transferred to the Burroughs office in Washington DC - where I was lead Field Engineer on their system at Atlantic Research Corporation in Virginia. Later, I was assigned to test and then install a Burroughs computer which was part of much larger Melpar Corporation system installed at the Air Force SAC Headquarters at Offutt AFB in Omaha, Nebraska.
These articles explain more about that installation and the Burroughs computer system:
Strategic Air Command Gets $15-Million Data Processor(Electronic Design, June 21, 1961, p. 34) : http://electronicdesign.com/displays/strategic-air-command-gets-15-million-data-processor
Burroughs 220 Computer System: https://wiki.cc.gatech.edu/folklore/index.php/The_Burroughs_220_Computer
A few years later, I was recruited from Burroughs by the man, Chuck Hill, who had been my Burroughs Washington DC Regional Manager. By the way, he was also the same man who, in 1958, hired me to work in the Computer System Test department in Pasadena. He was hired away from Burroughs to establish a Test Department for Ramo-Wooldridge (later TRW) in Canoga Park, California, and asked me to join him in that endeavor. Ramo-Wooldridge designed the first military spec minicomputer, the AN/UYK-1 - and our job was to create a test department for that computer. Later, I wrote the AN/UYK-1 Test Manual to guide newly hired test technicians as we expanded the department.
After helping establish the Test Department for the AN/UYK-1 at Ramo-Wooldridge, I moved into their Military Support/Field Engineering department. After that transition, I traveled to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard where I installed an AN/UYK-1 computer onboard the USNS Kingsport where it was the antennae control computer. This was the ship which controlled the Syncom satellite which allowed President Kennedy to make the first satellite based telephone call between two continents.
While working in the Military Support/Field Engineering department at Ramo-Wooldridge, I was asked to help the Training Department. Each month I would spend two weeks teaching classes on the AN/UYK-1 computer system to engineers and technicians sent for training by client companies. The rest of the month I would visit customer sites to install new computers or repair existing installations.
A few years later, I left Ramo-Wooldridge and joined Scientific Data Systems where I was a member of their initial corps of experienced Field Engineers. I installed the first SDS-930 computer system at MIT Lincoln Labs near Boston; then I traveled to Boeing in Seattle where I installed the second SDS-930 computer as part of a larger Boeing designed and implemented Space-Flight Simulator (Astronaut Reentry Training Simulator System) - which trained astronauts for their reentry flights, one of the most critical and dangerous times in the entire mission. I was honored to be there the day the first group of astronauts arrived for training.
Later, North American Rockwell-Downey was using a larger SDS-9300 computer system as part of their Space Capsule Simulation System. When the local SDS Field Engineers could not get the system to operate as it was supposed to, I was sent to the site to correct the problem. I designed a temporary fix to make their computer function as they wanted. And my temporary fix was still in that system when I visited the site several years later. Why fool with success?
After a period of time working as a Special Systems Engineer at SDS, I found that I was being asked to visit and repair systems at customers' sites which the local Field Engineers should have been able to diagnose and repair. I asked our department manager to allow me to set up a special intensive training class designed to help the Field Engineers learn techniques for trouble-shooting the SDS-930 and SDS-9300 computer systems. He arranged to have half the Field Engineers in the first one week class, then the other half in for the second one week class. For the second class, the head of the SDS Training department asked if he could have his instructors and several visiting customer engineers sit in during the class.
In the mid-1960s, as a Field Engineer/Special Systems Engineer for SDS, I spent time at UC Berkeley where I worked with the Project Genie team headed by Professor Wayne Lichtenberger, given an ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) grant to develop a time sharing computer, and Melvin Pirtle (who later became Dr. Mel Pirtle, Director of NASA Ames Research Center, and who also married our SDS Palo Alto office secretary). My task was to modify the SDS-930 computer by adding more memory hardware to the system. Point of interest: ARPAnet, developed by the Department of Defense in conjunction with several universities, was the precursor to the Internet we use today.
Project Genie was an ARPA funded computer research project started in 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley. It produced an early time-sharing system based upon the SDS-930 computer and the Berkeley Timesharing System software (the pioneer time-sharing operating system), which was then commercialized as the SDS-940. The system that Scientific Data Systems (SDS) would call the SDS-940 was created by modifying an SDS-930 24-bit commercial computer so that it could be used for timesharing. And, implementing those hardware modification designs for the Project Genie team at UC Berkeley was my task.
A few years later, Dr. Lichtenberger and the modified computer system now called the SDS-940 moved to the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Hawaii to work on another ARPA project. By then I was in sales for Digital Equipment and made a sales call at the University of Hawaii. I was able to visit with him and my SDS-940 computer system on the Hawaii campus. It was like running into old friends.
Once the system had been developed at UC Berkeley, SDS began building and selling SDS-940 Timesharing computer systems. I installed the first one at a newly formed company named Tymshare Corporation in Cupertino, California. The company, founded by Tom O’Rourke and Dave Schmidt, was the first to offer commercial timesharing computer services.
During my 12 years as a Field Engineer/Special Systems Engineer - I worked with a number of distinguished and very interesting customers and systems all over the country.
My engineering and technical knowledge was a big asset when I transitioned into sales and marketing. Those were the days when we traveled to prospective client sites, sat down with client engineers to better understand their needs, and helped them configure systems to meet their requirements. Those applications ranged from Mission Planning and Defense, to Simulators, to Ocean Surveillance, Computer Aided Design, Animation, Geophysical and Chemical Data Analysis, Process Control, Biomedical Engineering, and many more very interesting applications. That was the excitement of being a Sales Engineer in those days - we got involved in and gained knowledge (jack of all trades/master of none) in many different areas of science, engineering, manufacturing, and education.
However, my Forum Friend is right about the way people view computer sales people today. And, mostly for very good reason. Most computer sales today are done over the telephone or in computer stores - where intimacy with client needs and applications is rarely experienced. Many telephone sales people today are merely warm bodies who have been taught a few technical words, given a script of questions to ask, and placed in a cubicle with a telephone. When the computer industry transitioned to that level, that is when I lost interest and, praise God, that is when God gave me a writing ministry to keep me focused on Him.
My first job in Sales was with Digital Equipment Corporation. I began as a Sales Application Engineer in the late 1960s. In that position I would help customers apply our computer products to their applications. I recall getting a phone call from a gentleman in a small company in Nevada. He wanted to configure an interface to connect a DEC PDP-8s computer to a television screen for a game he was designing. I was able to design and configure that interface for him using DEC Logic Modules. The small company was Atari and the game was Pong. The rest, as they say, is history.
Later, at DEC, I designed a Stimulation/Response system, using a DEC PDP-8s computer and DEC Logic Modules, for the Psychology department at Stanford Research Institute which allowed them to apply different stimuli to lab rats to train them for specific responses.
At the same time, I was also giving one day Logic Seminars for DEC clients and prospective clients - teaching them to use DEC computer logic modules to implement special systems for their own needs. The first seminar I gave was at the University of Cal, Berkeley - where 80% of the attendees were Ph.ds from the university faculty and staff, and from Lawrence Berkeley Atomic Energy Lab. That full day seminar was my baptism into presenting Computer Seminars - and with that level of attendees, the baptismal water, at times, got a wee bit warm.
Then, I went into full time sales - as a Sales Engineer. During my years in sales for DEC - in Northern California and in their Huntsville office - I continued to give Computer and Computer Logic Seminars for customers and wanna-be customers.
In 1968, I worked with Judith Edwards, director of a government funded education program formed to put computers into local blue-collar schools in Oregon. This program was to address the social/societal aspect of the coming computer society, rather than the more common academic application. It was a program aimed at children from blue collar homes who were more likely to go into vocational training rather than college - to take the mystery out of computers and help them better understand how computers would impact their lives in the future. We installed a group of DEC PDP-8s computers in Elementary School classrooms and allowed the children to get hands-on experience using a computer.
Fast forward to the mid-1970s and I joined a small company based in Albuquerque named MITS. The company had just introduced a kit-form "build it yourself" microcomputer called the Altair.
My task there was to establish a network of independent sales offices (manufacturer's rep companies) to sell our Altair product - and to travel around giving Microcomputer Seminars. At that time, there was only one computer store in all of America. It was a store-front computer store in Los Angeles owned by a man and wife team.
A Microcomputer Seminar I gave at Ricky's Hyatt Hotel in Palo Alto, California, was so successful that a gentleman named Paul Terrell met with me that evening and agreed to represent our company in Northern California. A month later, he and his partner, Boyd Wilson, opened the first Byte Shop computer store (the second computer store in America) in Mountain View, California. Then, with his brother he opened another store in Palo Alto - and then with a second brother he opened a third store in Oregon. That grew into the first computer store chain, also called the Byte Shop. Some years later other computer store chains were begun - and Paul and Boyd sold the Byte Shop chain, now 250 stores, to another chain and retired, young.
By the way, when I was at MITS, there were two young computer programmers who comprised the company's programming staff. Their names are Bill Gates and Paul Allen. They left MITS and started a new company. You may have heard of it - they named it Microsoft. That was in the mid 1970s.
Fast forward about ten years and I was hired as Regional Manager for Ferranti International Controls Corporation, a Houston based subsidiary of the larger Ferranti International PLC of Manchester, England. The company, Ferranti, a large user of computer graphics terminals and systems, hired me because they wanted to develop their own computer graphics manufacturing capability. But, because they did not want to limit the market for this new computer graphics product to just Ferranti companies - they asked me to do a rather extensive market survey across America to determine what kind of computer graphics product the U.S. market wanted.
I spent three months traveling around America meeting with and interviewing top level Engineering people, typically VP Engineering and Engineering Management level. I did this with small, medium sized, and large corporations - and with computer consultants and many government agencies. At the end of my market survey tour, I made several trips with our U.S. senior engineering managers to Ferranti in Manchester, England, and Ferranti in Edinburgh, Scotland, where we spent days bringing them up to speed on what U. S. companies wanted to see in the new Ferranti computer graphics product.
From those meetings in England, a new product was born and the following article in Computer Technology Review, Summer 1986 issue, describes the design philosophy behind it:
Article: Design Factors Limit 2-D Raster Graphics System Architectures (F. Rodney Belch, Ferranti Computer Systems PLC, and Bill Gray, Ferranti International Controls Corporation)
https://www.facebook.com/notes/bill-gray/article-design-factors-limit-2-d-raster-graphics-system-architectures/806686719377483
So, to my "Doubting Thomas" TimesDaily Religion Forum Friend, as you can see I have lived a rather dull, mundane life in the computer industry. But, not too bad for a guy whom you suggested did not even make it out of high school. I am sure that my teachers and classmates, those of my Sheffield High (Alabama) graduating class of 1955, will be disappointed by how, according to you, I have wasted my life.
But, somehow I struggled through, finally left my computer industry career behind me, except for using the products - and have spent the past twenty-five plus years, and counting, concentrating on sharing the Word of God with the world, using a computer. My Friend, I pray that I will have many opportunities to share His Word with you over the coming years.
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill
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