A comprehensive history of Datapoint Corp. has been long over due! The Datapoint story, in it's own way is as seminal as the stories of Apple and Fairchild for it's influence and impact on the computer revolution that is now a ubiquitous part of are lives. The audacity of Gus Roche, Phil Ray, and Jack Frassanito in particular, to set out with just a few thousand dollars to implement bold and revolutionary ideas, set the computing world on it's ear. The founders and a host of hired guns pushed beyond the limits of the computing field at the time. It was a shame that a company with such a meteoric rise and such great potential died in obscurity. Perhaps if the founders and their creative spirit had survived we would be looking at a story yet to be completed. This is a must read for anyone interested in Technology History and is compelling as well,for those who love a great story of underdogs and innovation showing the big boys the way forward.

Kudos to Lamont Wood for taking this one on and bringing it to light!

It's wonderful to finally see somebody publicly recognize the revolution in the computer industry that was created by Datapoint Corporation (nee Computer Terminal Corporation) in San Antonio, Texas. Before the 2200, computers came in a chassis or rack, had all kinds of lights and sense switch toggles on their front panel, and had to be connected (usually with all kinds of complex cabling) to external storage, and a separate terminal (often an ASR 33 Teletype machine in those days). You had to plug interface cards into the backplane, and then run separate cables from each of those interface cards to their supported external devices. They were tended by tech types, were nothing like easily movable, and certainly weren't anything any serious business person would put on a secretary or receptionist's desktop.

I first became aware of the Datapoint 2200 when I was a student majoring in Computer Science at the University of Illinois, when one day in 1972 my academic advisor (and Department Head), one Dr. H. George Friedman, handed me a looseleaf ring binder for the Datapoint 2200, labelled as a "Programmer's Manual". I still have that manual!

The manual contains a general specification of the machine, processor architecture, instruction set, typewriter-style keyboard, built-in 12-row x 80-column CRT display, dual magnetic cassette-tape drives (which under program control could be read (including bidirectionally), written, slewed (faster) in both forward and reverse directions, rewound and more), switching regulator power supply (which was revolutionary at the time), a description of the command line commands and internal routines (callable by user programs) within the Cassette Tape Operating System (CTOS) (which supported multi-file tapes with a directory etc etc), General Editor program, Assembler, and even a complete assembler source listing of the CTOS (dated 2/5/1971 !).

Separate manuals provided details of the various versions of Cassette DATABUS (a business-oriented programming language) which were offered. (There were five or six versions of Cassette Databus, depending upon how the programmer wanted to trade off available features versus how much memory the system software would use and how much was needed for the user's application). There were also a text-formatting document printing program called Scribe, an interactive debugging tool, and much more. There were a whole variety of external communications adapters and other external interfaces which could be daisy-chained on the 50-pin processor I/O bus (which was the only plug socket available on the back of the 2200, besides the AC power cord). The revolutionary thing about the 2200 was that here was a machine, of about the size, weight, and form factor of an IBM Selectric typewriter which could readily be user-programmed to perform a wide variety of general-purpose functions (including business applications) using nothing but the components inside the desktop package.

Intrigued, I wrote an emulator for the University's IBM 360/75 that used mainframe 9-track tape drives to emulate the 2200's cassettes, and which was actually able to run CTOS, assembler, and other Datapoint 2200 software (although obviously limited by the lack of interactive terminals on the mainframe).

I had driven to the Datapoint sales office in Chicago to run a program I had written to copy various Datapoint cassettes (CTOS, editor, compilers, etc) to a 9-track tape drive, which allowed me to access and run the 2200 software on my mainframe-based 2200 emulator.

I actually proposed a system (based on the Datapoint 2200) intended to support ID card readers (for the University Residence Hall cafeterias) to check students entering the cafeterias and provide easy ways to bill their University student accounts for guests (family and friends) who wished to eat in the cafeteria with the student. Clearly this went well beyond what one could do with a desktop calculator, or other just "smart terminal".

The 2200's internal 8-bit registers were A, B, C, D, E, H, and L. H and L were the high and low order parts of the memory address register, which allowed the programmer to specify which bytes of the main memory could be loaded to or saved from the registers. People now familiar with programming on the 8008 (which was almost identical to the Datapoint 2200 CPU... the main difference was the addition of an "increment" and "decrement" instruction which the 2200 did not have.) And the 2200's register names are (very) familiar also to PC assembler-language programmers to this day.

When Datapoint's Disk Operating System was released shortly thereafter (to support a Diablo Series 30 removable 2.5 Mb cartridge disk drive, comparable to what was used on the IBM 1130, and there called a "2315" IIRC).Datapoint also added support for programming with RPG II, BASIC, COBOL, and a multi-user version of Disk Databus (called Datashare) which on a 16K 2200 supported up to 8 external video terminals (and which could run independent programs on each terminal).

As for pricing, the original serial-processor Type 1 2200 could be bought with up to 4 2K byte shift-register-based memory boards, and the Type 2 2200 (with the 8-bit serial processor and regular RAM memory) could be bought with 1 to 4 4K byte memory cards. The 16K type 2 2200, as I recall, cost $14,110 dollars at the time. A desk-mounted controller and 2.5 Mb Diablo cartridge disk drive cost $9800.

One of the truly curious things (and you still see this, for example, if you go to the Computer History Museum out in the Bay Area) is the failure to understand the distinction between a "Personal Computer" versus a "Hobbyist Computer". The early hobbyist computers (Altair and such), which actually used the Intel 8008 version of the Datapoint 2200 CPU, were a totally different beast than the 2200 was,,. they were essentially a cheap hobbyist microprocessor-based version of a classical minicomputer (complete with sense switches, I/O lights, and all the rest, just like the PDP-8 and other such machines were) and like the PDP-8 didn't have a built-in (alpha, anyhow) keyboard, or display, or internal storage. Those (like the minicomputers of the time) had to all be added as external, independently cabled. devices.

The Datapoint 2200 on the other hand was a single unit, needing nothing but a power cord, offering an operating system (complete with console commands), a full typewriter-style keyboard, CRT, magnetic dual-drive cassette tape storage, and providing editors (for text and programs), assembler, all sorts of utilities (including diagnostics, terminal emulators and other comm packages) and a variety of compilers.

And all of this, in any case, was several years BEFORE the Jobs/Wozniak Apple II, or Bill Gates, or the Altair or its various sister microcomputers, which people who OUGHT to know better (like the Computer History Museum) confuse with the radically better, more complete, and earlier Datapoint 2200... which TRULY was the world's first real general-purpose desktop "personal computer".

(As for me, I left the University of Illinois in April 1974 and moved to Datapoint Corporation in San Antonio, where I took a position in Software Development and soon thereafter was given the lead programmer role for the development of the more powerful DOS-dot disk operating systems, many new utilities, the Partition Supervisor multi-OS VM-type facility, and perhaps most significantly was the person there who proposed and wrote the system software for what became the world's first commercially available local area network system (LAN). You can see the company's video (from 1977) introducing that revolutionary concept to the public on Youtube, look for "Datapoint ARC System" there.)

If you’re interested in the history of technology this book should be on your reading list. It describes one of the most underappreciated and underrated companies in the computer business.

The story is a good one and could have been great. Unfortunately the first third of the book reads like a polemic as the author asserts that Datapoint invented the Microprocessor – and he’s going to prove to you by repeating that ad nauseam.

The reality is that like most inventions multiple people played a part in the invention of the microprocessor (including Lee Boysel at a company called 4-Phase.) The sad fact is that Intel’s marketing machine wrote everyone out of the history (including Federico Faggin) not just Datapoint. While Datapoint’s contribution was a part of history I didn't know, writing about it in such an aggrieved tone 40-years after the fact diminished what could have been a wonderful read.

The rest of the book is a good recounting of Datapoint and its contribution to computer history.

The downside is that the book feels like an extended series of newspaper articles rather than a great history. With another author or a great editor this book could have reached a much wider audience.

5-stars if you’re an ex-Datapoint employee or interested in the birth of the computer industry. 3-stars if you’re looking for a great history story.

Not So Fast, Datapoint...

Lamont Wood tries hard in the first third of this book to convince readers that the Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) invented the "personal computer." I find the evidence unconvincing, although CTC (renamed Datapoint) did influence the development of the 8008 8-bit microprocessor at Intel. The author claims, "Along the way, they [CTC] created the personal computer--and it created the modern world." Well, in my opinion, not quite.

Sadly, the author gives no credit to and hardly mentions the contributions of people involved with and designing microprocessor-based computers in the mid 1970s. These developments led to the PC revolution.

I enjoyed the final two-thirds of the book that provides an informative history of CTC and then Datapoint. The company made many technical advances that other hardware and software manufacturers eventually adopted or improved upon on their own. So the company deserves a lot of credit for those advances, although eventually they fell by the wayside and Datapoint went bust.

Now, back to the author's contention that CTC/Datapoint invented the PC, as well as a few errors.

Page 21: "...after enhancing their basic terminal with magnetic tape storage, they [CTC] planned to make a 'business oriented system' with a 'more extensive control unit. Presumably 'control unit' was their euphemism for computing power.

Presumptions don't count and authors shouldn't try to interpret the meaning of someone else's words long after the fact.

Page 23: "So, evidence agrees that creating a desktop computer, and the use of microchips, was firmly in mind when they went into start-up mode."

Perhaps, but more likely they had in mind an office computer much like those sold by companies such as Digital Equipment Corporation and Data General. There's a big difference between a desktop computer and a PC. (While in grad school I had a DEC PDP-8/L minicomputer in my apartment. It sat on a desk, but I never considered it a "home" or "personal" computer.)

Page 37: "Discussion then turned to the computational power represented by the TI [Texas Instruments] character generator chip."

Without a part number it's difficult to determine what "computational power" (if any) the device provided. At the time, character-generator ICs provided a read-only memory (ROM) that accepted a 7- or 8-bit value and provided the dot-matrix data that let other circuits display that character on a screen or print it on paper. Most ROMs I know of included no computational power. They acted like a lookup table.

Page 41: "...by which time the number of orders had risen to 1405 terminals, plus 141 magnetic tape decks."

Apparently the terminals had no serial port to connect to a teletypewriter. And it probably provided no ports to connect to anything else except perhaps a phone-line modem. How would someone get a printout? Doesn't sound like a PC of any type to me.

Page 53: "...4K of core RAM for the DEC PDP-8 costs $10,000 and had to be mounted in a rack."

A poor reference point. Actually, a PDP-8/L minicomputer, for example, came with 4K 12-bit words of memory within the computer. If someone wanted an additional 4K words, yes, they had to pay a high price and put it in a rack.

Page 53. "...address looping inside the shift register [memory] could be stopped and started at will, since there was no momentum.

Shift registers have no moving parts, so momentum makes no sense. Perhaps the author meant to compare shift registers with a hard-drive platter? Even that makes no sense because no one would start or stop a hard drive to get information from specific places on the disk platter.

Page 53: "But the reliance on registers remains a hallmark of the x86 architecture to this day."

True, but many early computers--as well as today's PC processors--use registers. Nothing unique there.

Page 55: "The idea that the personal computer was created by accident..." "The evidence is that Roche (and probably Ray as well) intended from the beginning to make a desktop computer."

That sounds reasonable, but a desktop computer in the early 1970s was nothing like a personal computer that one person could buy. Unfortunately, the author does not provide prices for the Datapoint desktop units here, so we cannot know whether a person could even afford one on his or her own. Only on page 171 do we get information that: "They cost $10,000 [$57,000 in 2014 dollars] to $50,000 [$285,000 in 2014 dollars]each, depending on the peripherals." Doesn't sound like a personal computer someone would run out and buy.

Page 56: "...intelligent source data capture terminal..."

Right, Datapoint wanted to replace a card-punch station with a "smart terminal" that would let typists enter information, check for format errors, allow for corrections, and then save information on tape. That is not a PC.

Page 81: "It described the 2200 as the 'first integrated remote terminal to provide local computational capability, reducing the load on the master computer..."

Correct, we have a smart terminal, not a PC.

Page 84: Footnote 63, "Early RAM chips were flakey. Monroe recalled one instance where a RAM chip worked fine in the lab but periodically failed in the field. It turned out that in the lab it was exposed to light and that made the difference.

Perhaps the author means electrically programmable read-only memory, or EPROM. These devices had a clear window transparent to ultraviolet light that would erase memory contents for reprogramming and reuse. Excess light might have caused an EPROM to become flakey, but it's unlikely any encapsulated RAM chips showed a sensitivity to light. (EPROMs were great tools for testing and debugging code.)

Page 91: "Look at the Datapoint 2200..." "She'll enter data directly from source documents. She'll verify it on the CRT screen. And it's transmitted with no other human involvement."

That's what a smart terminal does. It's not a PC.

Page 93: "The original idea was that we, CTC, would come up with some canned programs like terminal emulators..." "The thought had not entered their minds to give the user the capability of sitting down and writing programs and doing some things on their own."

Anyone creating a true computer would immediately recognize the need to provide users with programming tools and technical information. This statement means the CTC people did not understand what a true PC or desktop computer should offer. Eventually they helped people create their own programs, but the author doesn't mention any tools such as editors, assemblers, compilers, languages, debuggers, and so on. The lack of that information makes it difficult to determine when and how people started to write their own code.

Page 164: "A lot of minicomputers used floating-point math, which led to round-off errors so you would lose pennies here and there."

Although minicomputer manufacturers and user groups offered floating-point SOFTWARE, programmers could use integer math without any problems. They could handle decimal fractions by scaling values.

In the typical histories of the personal computer era, one of the key innovators - a startup company in San Antonio Texas named CNC (later DataPoint) is usually left out. This book sets the record straight. DataPoint’s original success was based on two key innovations: The personal computer, and the local area network. They also made fundamental contributions to the invention of the microprocessor. The Intel “x86” chips at the heart of most of today’s PCs and Macs are actually descendants of DataPoint’s original design.

Their work creating the PC was truly remarkable. They originally called the product a “programmable terminal” to avoid confronting IBM, who dominated the market for “computers” then. But make no mistake, it was a fully functioning PC, and it was shipping years before the products from MITS/Altair and Apple usually considered the first PCs. Their ARC local networking system was also fully deployed well before Ethernet emerged on the scene.

Datapoint was wildly successful in the 1970’s, briefly breaking into the Fortune 500 for a couple years. But the combination of financial shenanigans at the hands of Wall Street financiers addicted to their profit growth, and the onslaught of cheap, commodity PCs finally did them in.

Lamont Wood does an excellent job of capturing the story. He interviewed many of the principles involved, and reconstructed more of the story from original documents. This is a well done and important contribution to the history behind the PC, the LAN and the microprocessor.

Lamont provides insight about the true origin of the first integrated personal computer, washing away the incomplete lore and popular distortions that many in the computer industry have come to accept. It turns out to be more complex and interesting than is commonly understood by the public and most of those who worked on computer design during the 60's, 70s and 80's.

I believe this is the most informed and complete account written about Computer Terminal Corp/Datapoint Corp, the key role they played in creating the PC revolution and their sustained innovation and presence in the industry for decades. Lamont has done his research well, providing both corroborated facts and balanced assessment of areas where individual recollections differ.

If you want to really understand how mainframe and time share computing transitioned to the PC revolution and who the true players were, read Lamont's book. It is well written, interesting history, challenging to the status quo and valuable remembrance of how innovative individuals act in teams to build technology foundations that drive new world views.

The story is accurate in most details. Previous Datapoint employees will find this a fascinating read. I was at Datapoint for a couple of years for the building of the laser printer under David Monroe. (The print engine was a KIP rather than the reported Minolta.) Datapoint had layers and layers of talented engineers and it was a fun place to work. One layer came from Harris Corporation in Melbourne, FL. Neal Tompkins and Tommy Arends did not get mentioned in the book, but they were also great leaders and contributors ... Tommy doing the Light Link product shown in the illustrations. Gordon Peterson has some interesting Youtube references on Datapoint, also.

Concentrates on the principals who started Datapoint. I am a former TRW Datapoint employee. I know there were a lot of other very interesting stories about Datapoint. I would have liked to see some of that richness woven in.

Some examples may include:

o Bill Wilbur starting TRW Canada in Toronto by marching up and down financial row with a CTOS system in a wagon.

o The incredible talent of Harry Pile creating the DOS operating system.

o Datapoint HASP, 3780, 2780 terminals that helped Canadian companies build national networks.

o TRW Datapoint banking solutions that sparked innovation in the Toronto financial community.

o TRW Datapoint initiatives at Walden University that lead to successful spinoff companies.

Maybe these are a bit out of scope and could become part of a second publication: Datapoint Its Influence on the Computer Industry. I think its influence was considerable on those that came after it such as Microsoft.

I can remember demonstrating Datapoint Datashare to companies that accussed me of faking the demo because we showed them 8 terminals running in 16K. When they finally got it they were floored. What they were used to were rooms of equipment not the CTOS operating system that did the same thing.

Great read for those of us there at the time