What Happened on December 31st

Harry Garland and Roger Melen, two roommates at Stanford University, form CROMEMCO, a company to manufacture microprocessor-based computers. CROMEMCO was an acronym for their college residence: CROthers MEMorial Hall + CO (company). A year before, in December 1975, they proposed to attach their Cyclops camera to the Altair, for use as a security camera, and a month later they received Altair number 0002. In October 1976, CROMEMCO advertised their Z80 S-100 processor board. In 1983, the business grew to a maximum size of 450 employees and $42,000,000 in sales. In 1986, CROMEMCO merged with Dynatech, Inc. In 1990, Dr. Garland and professor Melen founded of Canon Research Center America Inc., an entrepreneurial subsidiary of Canon KK of Japan, dedicated to developing imaging technologies and products.