Prime Computer
From Free net encyclopedia
Prime Computer was a Natick, Massachusetts-based producer of minicomputers from 1972 until 1992.
The company was started by 7 founders, some of whom worked on the Multics project at MIT. Image:Primecpu.png
- Robert Baron (President)
- Sidney Halligan (VP Sales)
- James Campbell (Director of Marketing)
- Joseph Cashen (VP Hardware Engineering)
- Robert Burkeweitz (VP Manufacturing)
- William Poduska (VP Software Engineering)
- John Carter (Director of Human Resources)
The company started with the motto "Software First".
Poduska left in 1980 to start Apollo Computer.
The company' operating system, PRIMOS, is a derivative of Multics. This OS was originally implemented mostly in the Fortran programming language. Subsequently the PL/P and Modula-2 languages were used in the Kernel. A number of new PRIMOS utilities were written in SP/L which was similar to PL/P.
The original products were clones of the Honeywell 316 and 516 minicomputers. The Prime 400 was a successful minicomputer of its day (late 1970's) and the Prime 750 (1979) was a competitor to the DEC Vax 11/780 and was one of the first 32bit superminicomputers.
The company was successful in the 1970s and 1980s, peaking in 1988 at number 334 of the Fortune 500.
By the late eighties, the company was having problems retaining customers who were moving to lower-cost systems. In addition, Prime was failing to keep up with the increasing need among the user base for raw computing power. By the end, not a single Prime computer was subject to COCOM export controls, as they were insufficiently powerful for the US Government to fear their falling into the hands of hostile powers.
The company explored transitioning into a computer-aided design company by purchasing several CAD companies including Computervision in 1989 for $300 million. The purchase left the company vulnerable to a hostile take-over. Such a take-over attempt was made by Bennett S. LeBow through his Basic4 corporation. To fend off the take-over, the company was bought back into private ownership by New York venture capitalist, JH Whitney. In the end, the computer design and manufacturing portions of the company was shut down and the company was renamed Computervision.