Artifact Details

Title

Frank, Werner oral history

Catalog Number

102657942

Type

Document

Description

Werner Frank discusses his emigration from Germany to the United States as an 8 year old and his educational background. He covers getting involved with computers while in the US Army. He then applied his mathematical skills to a variety of projects at Ramo-Wooldridge and later at TRW. He reviews some of the major military projects in Washington, DC and on the west coast. He then joined Walter Bauer and Richard Hill in forming Informatics as a subsidiary of Dataproducts. He describes some of the US Federal government projects he managed and how he started writing articles for Computerworld. Werner Frank then details how Equimatics was initiated as a jointly owned company between the Equitable Life and Informatics and how Equimatics purchased Informatics and changed the company’s name to Informatics General. He continues with how he developed an interest in microcomputers and tried to get Informatics to invest money in microcomputer products. Later, he left Informatics, was a consultant for almost two years and then became an executive with Sterling Software. He discusses the unfriendly acquisition of Informatics by Sterling Software and how the two companies were successfully merged. He reviews some of the principal acquisitions that Sterling Software made and how successful (or unsuccessful) they were. Attached is a copy of a chapter “Achieving the American Dream: Becoming an Entrepreneur” from his book: “Legacy: The Saga of a German-Jewish Family Across Time and Circumstance” published in 2003.

Date

2006-02-14

Contributor

Frank, Werner L., Interviewee
Grad, Burt, Editor
Rosenshteyn, Yan, Cameraperson
Yost, Jeffrey, Interviewer

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Mountain View, Calif.

Identifying Numbers

Other number OHP 236

Extent

30 p. oral history; 53 p. book excerpt

Category

Transcription

Subject

Williams, Sterling; Wyly, Sam; Blow, Warner; Cook, Bob; VM Software; Computer Associates; Knowledgeware; Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI); Sterling Commerce; Software business history; Frank, Werner; Ramo-Wooldridge; TRW; SHARE; USE; Informatics; Hill, Richard; Bauer, Walter; Tomash, Erwin; Postley, John; Mark IV; HUD Contract; STIFF; Lemons, Richards; Equitable Life; Equimatics; Informatics General; ComputerWorld; Israel projects; MultiMate; Sterling Software

Collection Title

Oral history collection

Lot Number

X3457.2006