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
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Frank, Werner L., Interviewee
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Grad, Burt, Editor
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Rosenshteyn, Yan, Cameraperson
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Yost, Jeffrey, Interviewer
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Publisher
Computer History Museum
Place of Publication
Mountain View, CA, USA
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
