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Industry | Software industry |
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Founded | 1977 in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
Founders | Robert Swartz |
Defunct | 1995 |
Fate | Disestablished |
Headquarters | , U.S. |
Products | Coherent |
The Mark Williams Company was a small software company in Chicago, Illinois (later moved to Northbrook) that created Coherent, one of the first Unix-like operating systems for IBM PCs and several C programming language compilers. It was founded by Robert Swartz (father of Aaron Swartz) in 1977 [1] and discontinued operations in 1995. The name comes from the middle name of Robert Swartz's father, William Mark Swartz.
Robert Swartz moved the company (originally producing a soft drink called Dr. Enuf [2] [3] ) into software with his father's help and the company became known as the Mark Williams Company.
Mark Williams won a patent lawsuit ( U.S. patent 4,956,809 ) centered on 'byte ordering'.[ citation needed ] Separately, and at that time,[ when? ] Linux had made serious inroads in the UNIX clone market. Since Coherent was a commercially available package and Linux was distributed freely on the Internet via their GNU General Public License, Coherent sales plummeted and Swartz had no choice but to cease operations in 1995.[ citation needed ]
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Dr. Enuf is an American brand of soft drink bottled by Tri-City Beverage in Johnson City, Tennessee. It is a lemon-lime flavored drink Dr. Enuf is fortified with several water-soluble vitamins. Its marketing slogan is "Enuf is Enough!"
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In 1949 William Mark Swartz, President of Mark Williams Chemical Co. of Chicago, Ill., decided to create a soft drink that would relieve fatigue, headaches, indigestion etc…. He applied for a trademark for the drink on May 19, 1951.
According to corporate lore, Bill Schwartz [sic], a Chicago chemist, developed the formula after hearing his co-workers complain of lethargy.