Industry | Computer Manufacturing |
---|---|
Founded | 1978Culver City, California | in
Founder | Ben C. Wang |
Fate | Bankruptcy, acquired by Legacy |
Rexon Business Machines, later Rexon, Inc., was a manufacturer of small business computer systems founded by Ben C. Wang in 1978 in Culver City, California. It also became a major manufacturer of tape drives and related products. At its height, it played a significant role in the development and sale of magnetic tape data storage products. It traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol REXN until it filed for bankruptcy in 1995 [1] and was acquired by Legacy Storage Systems, a Canadian company. [2] It was last headquartered in Longmont, Colorado.
Rexon computer systems were based on the proprietary RECAP operating system and ran Thoroughbred Basic a superset of Business Basic with operating system primitives right in the language. As of April 2013, there are still functional Rexon computers in use in various places worldwide. encompassIT.ca, a Canadian company, specializes in converting Rexon / RECAP software to a Microsoft Windows environment.
Prior to its bankruptcy filing, Rexon closed the Solon, OH and Ponce, Puerto Rico facilities. [5] and moved its operations to Longmont, CO. When Legacy acquired Rexon (out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy), it was renamed Tecmar Technologies, Inc. (TTInc) and operated as an independent subsidiary. In 1997, Legacy changed its name to Tecmar Technologies International (TTIntl). In 2000, the assets of TTInc were sold to Overland Data, but as of 2007, the Tecmar, WangTek, and WangDAT brands are no longer in use.
Maxtor Corporation was an American computer hard disk drive manufacturer. Founded in 1982, it was the third largest hard disk drive manufacturer in the world before being purchased by Seagate in 2006.
Data acquisition is the process of sampling signals that measure real-world physical conditions and converting the resulting samples into digital numeric values that can be manipulated by a computer. Data acquisition systems, abbreviated by the acronyms DAS,DAQ, or DAU, typically convert analog waveforms into digital values for processing. The components of data acquisition systems include:
Wang Laboratories, Inc., was an American computer company founded in 1951 by An Wang and G. Y. Chu. The company was successively headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1954–1963), Tewksbury, Massachusetts (1963–1976), and finally in Lowell, Massachusetts (1976–1997). At its peak in the 1980s, Wang Laboratories had annual revenues of US$3 billion and employed over 33,000 people. It was one of the leading companies during the time of the Massachusetts Miracle.
Dictaphone was an American company founded by Alexander Graham Bell that produced dictation machines. It is now a division of Nuance Communications, based in Burlington, Massachusetts.
Silicon Forest is a Washington County cluster of high-tech companies located in the Portland metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Oregon. The term most frequently refers to the industrial corridor between Beaverton and Hillsboro in northwest Oregon. The high-technology industry accounted for 19 percent of Oregon's economy in 2005, and the Silicon Forest name has been applied to the industry throughout the state in such places as Corvallis, Bend, and White City. Nevertheless, the name refers primarily to the Portland metropolitan area, where about 1,500 high-tech firms were located as of 2006.
Waterloo Maple Inc. is a Canadian software company, headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario. It operates under the trade name Maplesoft. It is best known as the manufacturer of the Maple computer algebra system, and MapleSim physical modeling and simulation software.
The Ditto drive series was a proprietary magnetic tape data storage system released by Iomega during the 1990s. It was marketed as a backup device for personal computers.
Storage Technology Corporation was a data storage technology company headquartered in Louisville, Colorado. New products include data retention systems, which it calls "information lifecycle management" (ILM).
Exabyte Corporation was a manufacturer of magnetic tape data storage products headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Exabyte Corp. is now defunct, but the company's technology is sold by Tandberg Data under both brand names. Prior to the 2006 demise, Exabyte offered tape storage and automation solutions for servers, workstations, LANs and SANs. Exabyte is best known for introducing the Data8 (8 mm) magnetic tape format in 1987. At the time of its demise, Exabyte manufactured VXA and LTO based products. The company controlled VXA technology but did not play a large role in the LTO community.
Ohio Scientific, Inc., was a privately owned American computer company based in Ohio that built and marketed computer systems, expansions, and software from 1975 to 1986. Their best-known products were the Challenger series of microcomputers and Superboard single-board computers. The company was the first to market microcomputers with hard disk drives in 1977.
Overland Storage Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sphere 3D Corp. It has acquired Tandberg Data shortly before being acquired by Sphere 3D itself. The two subsidiaries were later rebranded under the common Overland-Tandberg brand.
Archive Corporation was a computer tape drive manufacturer, based in Costa Mesa, California, that was acquired by Conner Peripherals in 1993.
Tecmar Inc. was an American manufacturer of personal computer enhancement products based in Solon, Ohio. The company was founded in 1974 by Martin Alpert, M.D., and Carolyn Alpert. The company's first products were computerized medical equipment; the company shortly after pivoted to data acquisition boards for the first generation of microcomputers. Popular products included the Scientific Solutions LabMaster series of boards for S-100 and Apple Computer.
The Linear Tape File System (LTFS) is a file system that allows files stored on magnetic tape to be accessed in a similar fashion to those on disk or removable flash drives. It requires both a specific format of data on the tape media and software to provide a file system interface to the data.
P-CAD was the brand name of Personal CAD Systems, Inc., a California-based manufacturer of electronic design automation (EDA) software. It manufactured a CAD software available for personal computers. The company was divested into ACCEL Technologies, which was purchased by Altium in 2000. The last release of the software was in 2006, before it was retired in favor of the Altium Designer product.
Dot Hill Systems Corp. was a manufacturer of computer storage area network arrays. Providing computer hardware and software products for small and large computer data storage systems. Dot Hill came into being when Box Hill Systems Corp acquired Artecon, Inc. based in Carlsbad, California. BoxHill was already traded on the NYSE as BHSC. After the combined company changed its name to Dot Hill Systems Corp, the symbol changed to HILL. Box Hill sold hardware products with names including the word Box as well as backup software and renamed OEM tape libraries from manufacturers like ATL Odetics and StorageTek. Artecon sold its own selection of drive array products with the additional selling point of being NEBS-certified. Around 1998 or 1999, Box Hill had found itself in a difficult position. Its flagship fibre channel product was unable to deliver the features originally intended and had to rely on software RAID instead. It performed well mirroring, but fell short otherwise. After the acquisition by Dot Hill, the inevitable merging of products and talent led to the eventual migration of the headquarters to Carlsbad and a shift away from backup and tape products. The resulting changes lead to a large change in workforce as the former Artecon management team took the lead.
Terry Johnson was an engineer and entrepreneur notable for his work on hard disk drives (HDD). Johnson's early career included engineering and management roles in magnetic recording at IBM (1964–70) and Memorex (1971–73). He then joined in the development of STC 8000 Super Disk, a high-end rotary actuator HDD funded by StorageTek.
Cipher Data Products, Inc., was an American computer company based in San Diego, California, and active from 1968 to 1992. The company was once a leading manufacturer of magnetic-tape data drives and media for minicomputers, becoming a pioneer in tape streamer technology in the early 1980s. In the late 1980s, they also briefly manufactured WORM optical discs, through a joint venture with 3M. In 1990, they were acquired by Archive Corporation for $120 million.
Colorado Memory Systems, Inc. (CMS), was an American technology company independently active from 1985 to 1992 and based in Loveland, Colorado. The company primarily manufactured tape drive systems, especially those using quarter-inch cartridges (QIC)s, for personal computers and workstations. Colorado Memory Systems was founded by Bill Beierwaltes as an offshoot of his previous company, Colorado Time Systems, also based in Loveland. It was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 1992.
Kennedy Company, often shortened to Kennedy Co., was an American computer storage company active from 1963 to 1988. Founded by Charles J. Kennedy (1920–1996) and based in the Greater Los Angeles area, the company was one of the largest independent manufacturers of magnetic-tape data drives for mainframe and minicomputer users. Beginning in the late 1970s, the company also manufactured hard disk drives. In 1979, Kennedy was acquired by Allegheny Ludlum, where it continued to operate independently as a subsidiary. In 1987, it was acquired by Shugart Corporation, who promptly sold off Kennedy's assets to Irwin Magnetic Systems.