Computer History Museum

Poor, Vic (Victor) oral history

Vic Poor discusses his childhood and early interest in radio. Following work at Stromberg-Carlson and Raytheon, Poor formed Frederick Electronics to manufacture radio and telegraphy equipment and later minicomputers for telex and message switching. Poor discusses his association with Gus Roche and Phil Ray, the founders of Datapoint and his suggestion to create a display terminal. Poor designed a more general terminal together with Harry Pyle and both eventually joined Datapoint. Vic Poor discusses the meetings with Intel to create the Datapoint 2200 processor on a single chip and the later lawsuits when Texas Instruments manufactured a version of the processor that Intel sold as the 8008. Poor explains how Datapoint 2200 users started using the terminal as a stand-alone computer and how for the later Datapoint 5500 ARCNET networking was developed. ARCNET was extended and Datapoint also developed video conferencing products. Poor goes over the PC competition Datapoint faced and the hostile takeover that shut down the company. He discusses the proprietary technologies and reflects on the developments of the markets. Vic Poor helped start AirNet to work on cellular phone stations and he discusses their technology. He closes with some views on engineers and managers.

Item Details

Date
2004-12-08 (Made)
Type
Document
Catalogue number
102658337
Organization
Computer History Museum
People
Len Shustek (Videographer)
Victor Poor (Interviewee)
Gardner Hendrie (Interviewer)
Alex Bochannek (Editor)
Category
Transcript
Extent
71 p.
Place of publication
North America/USA/FL/Melbourne
Language
English
Acquisition number
X3110.2005
Subject
Terminal, Datapoint 2200, ARCNET, Intel 8008 (Microprocessor), Raytheon Corporation, Teletype, Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI), Time-Sharing Computer Systems, Computer Terminal Corporation, Datapoint, Intel 8080 (Microprocessor), Intel
Archive collection
CHM Oral History Collection
Archive hierarchy
CHM Oral History Collection