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From: wendyt@pyramid.UUCP (Wendy Thrash)
Newsgroups: net.works,net.legal
Subject: Re: xeroX slime ad warning
Message-ID: <321@pyramid.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-Apr-86 13:54:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyramid.321
Posted: Fri Apr 25 13:54:42 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 27-Apr-86 05:15:14 EDT
References: <719@hoptoad.uucp> <1846@calmasd.CALMA.UUCP>
Reply-To: wendyt@pyramid.UUCP (Wendy Thrash)
Organization: Pyramid Technology Corp., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 23
Xref: watmath net.works:1305 net.legal:3324

In article <1846@calmasd.CALMA.UUCP> jpm@calmasd.CALMA.UUCP (John McNally) writes:
>... Xerox also built the SIGMA-7 computer - the first
>good time-sharing machine - way ahead of its time, it even
>pre-dated the IBM 360 (TSO - yyuk!).  How many people have ever
>heard of the SIGMA series of multi-user computers?

Did Xerox really BUILD the Sigma-7, or did they BUY it?  The Sigma-7 was
produced by Scientific Data Systems as a successor to their earlier 940
(which some considered a fairly good, though kludgy, time-sharing machine).
Xerox liked SDS so well they bought the company (like the guy with the
electric razors), thereby making Max Palevsky their largest single
stockholder and a very wealthy man.

I'll confess some fuzziness on chronology.  I worked for SDS in the summer
of 1966 and again in 1967 (my intro to programming!) and followed things
with interest thereafter, but can't remember whether the Sigma-7 came out
before or after the Xerox purchase.  Certainly Xerox was one of the early
examples of a large corporate entity buying an aggressive small company and
running it into the ground.  (Though, to be fair, much of this happened
with Mad Max at the helm of Xerox.)
-- 
Wendy Thrash   {allegra,cmcl2,decwrl,hplabs,topaz,ut-sally}!pyramid!wendyt
Pyramid Technology Corp, Mountain View, CA  +1 415 965 7200 ext. 3001