Computer History Museum

Frank, Werner oral history

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.

Item Details

Date
2006-02-14 (Made)
Type
Document
Catalogue number
102657942
Other identifying number
OHP 236 (OTHER IDENTIFYING NUMBER)
Organization
Computer History Museum
People
Jeffrey Yost (Interviewer)
Yan Rosenshteyn (Videographer)
Burt Grad (Editor)
Werner L. Frank (Interviewee)
Category
Transcript
Extent
30 p. oral history; 53 p. book excerpt
Place of publication
North America/USA/CA/Mountain View
Language
English
Acquisition number
X3457.2006
Subject
Software Business History, ComputerWorld, Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI), Mark IV, Informatics, SHARE, TRW, Ramo-Wooldridge, Computer Associates
Archive collection
CHM Oral History Collection
Archive hierarchy
CHM Oral History Collection