Datapoint corporation: a computing might-have-been

[Archibald]

Doing research for my space TL I came across that company, Datapoint. I'm no specialist of computing history, but that (failed) corporation seem to have a HUGE potential.
Judge by yourself
- they created one of the first practical PC in 1970, the Datapoint 2200
- that PC was to have the the first microchip in history, in 1970. Ultimately they build the computer without it; no longer needing the chip, guess what happened: they sold it to Intel for nothing, and it become the 8008 / 8080 !
- later they designed a pretty good Ethernet competitor, Arcnet
- they had an hypertext pioneer, Ted Nelson of Xanadu fame, a decade before T.B Lee HTML that led to the internet as we know it in 1990 (and on paper at least, Xanadu look a lot better than HTML and all its dead links)

In short, Datapoint had a lot of elements on hand for an earlier Internet expension... and they failed.

Any taker ?

 

[ivanotter]

I have wanted to respond to this one for some time.

It is a nice fascinating little piece of early computing history.

The thing is as you wrote: They had a lot of elements.

What was required was some administrator who could put it togther. Look at Oracle. Larry might not be the best in terms of inventing things, but he can/could surely see what could be used where and how.

Look at Microsoft. Was DOS the best? But somehow somebody could see how it could work together.

Reminds me of Token-Ring from IBM. AT&T invented and patented the base technology for communication between PABX's (as far as I know). It was used internally at Bell Lab's but nobody saw any future in it outside the lab, so when IBM wanted it, well, they could have it.

I think Datapoint was a typical company of inventors but not much practical sense outside of raw technology.

There are a lot of other examples of this in any industry I think.

CP/M and Concurrent CP/M.

RSX-11M which was excellent in many ways

... and so on

Ivan

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Looking at the article, there are several hurdles.

First, Intel didnt succeed in building the chip until a couple years after the 2200 came out. Secondly, it didnt have sufficient power. Third, Datapoint was looking for a smart terminal, not a stand alone computer.

So... it would take a significant visionary to keep pouring the company's money into what could be a black hole, in the hopes that eventually they could use a second generation model as a stand alone....