Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucsd!network.ucsd.edu!calmasd!gdh
From: gdh@calmasd.Prime.COM (Gerald Hall)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: 'Antique' machine info sought...
Message-ID: <1765@calmasd.Prime.COM>
Date: 14 Sep 90 04:52:03 GMT
References: <142343@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <39321@siemens.siemens.com> <4026@kitty.UUCP>
Organization: Calma - A Division of Prime Computers
Lines: 26

In article <4026@kitty.UUCP> larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes:
>In article <39321@siemens.siemens.com>, fwb@demon.siemens.com (Frederic W. Brehm) writes:
>> > ... I like to think of it as a monument to all
>> >those startup companies that didn't quite make it.   :-/
>> 
>> Victor was hardly a startup company.  It made and sold calculators for a
>> long time before it sold personal computers.
>
>	Victor manufactured a rather classic product which predated the
>electronic calculator - a mechanical monster under the tradename of
>"Comptometer".  

The startup was "Sirius".  They had a marketing deal with Victor
but the Victor sales force seemed unable to "move" the new product.
So Sirius bought Victor (sort of like the tail wagging the dog)
in an early 'leveraged' buyout and adopted the Victor name which
was well known in the business world.  But the adding machine sales
force just never did quite make the transition to marketing computers.
Deciding to do all of their own internal computing on their own
machines didn't help much either since they really were just early
pc's and couldn't begin to handle the job.

-- 
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  /	Jerry		CalmaSD UNIX SysAdmin		+1 619 587-3065
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