Nelma Persona
subject: hardware: desktop computer
description: Historical Context: Nelma Data Corporation was a desktop computer manufacturer based in Mississauga Ontario. In 1982, the company announced its Persona desktop computer (the NDC 100 Persona). In Fall 1983, the computer was shown at computer expo trade show COMDEX'83 held in Las Vegas, and advertised as "the professional small business computer." The Persona was distributed through ComputerLand which, at that time, was possibly the world’s largest computer retail chain. Since its introduction in August 1981, the IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly referred to as the IBM PC) had been rapidly gaining in popularity despite the fact that it operated under little known DOS operating system from Microsoft instead of the popular CP/M operating system from Digital Research. The main idea behind the Persona's development was to offer an affordable desktop computer with capabilities (and appearance) similar to that of the IBM PC but running CP/M instead of DOS. Later, to deal with the popularity of the IBM PC and rapidly expanding IBM PC clone market, Nelma offered a hardware kit to turn the Persona into an IBM PC compatible computer. The Nelma Persona was designed by Jose Laraya -- the same engineer who in the early 1970s was leading the design of the MCM/70 personal computer at Micro Computer Machines of Toronto. Technical specifications: CPU: Zilog Z80A RAM: 64Kb external storage: two 180Kb floppy drives ports: serial and parallel keyboard: QWERTY-style, detachable, with keypad and 11 program function keys display: a stand alone 12 inch CRT, monochrome (green) Nelma offered a range of optional hardware for Persona including: Intel 8086 processor kit 360Kb floppy diskette drives 10Mb Winchester hard drive additional 64Kb or 128Kb RAM high resolution color graphics Software: CP/M operating system version 2.2, Digital Research WordStar word processor, MicroPro MailMerge mailing list handler, MicroPro CalcStar spreadsheet, MicroPro InfoStar database, MicroPro SpellStar …
creator: Nelma Data Corporation
date: 1982
coverage: North America

Ryerson 6800 Microcomputer
subject: computer hardware: educational computer
description: Historical context: Microprocessor-based computers (microcomputers) were built at educational institutions as soon as the first 8-bit microprocessors became commercially available. They were initially constructed as educational aids, as microprocessor trainers, and even as digital laboratory workstations set up at some universities to expose students to the principles of the emerging discipline of microprocessor systems design. These early educational microcomputers were built around microprocessor demonstration boards offered by semiconductor companies as a low cost hardware aid to assist systems engineers in programming microprocessor-based devices. In 1973, Intel offered its SIM-8 demonstration board. Soon after other semiconductor companies offered their demonstration boards to support their microprocessors: Microsystems International Ltd. introduced its MOD-8 demonstrator in 1974, Motorola released its MEK 6800 in 1976 and so did MOS Technology and NEC which offered their demonstrators (the KIM-1 and the TK-80, respectively) in the same year. In the 1970s, these demonstrators were popular with computer hobbyists. The Ryerson 6800 microcomputer was designed and constructed in the late 1970s at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Toronto Metropolitan University) to support its digital electronics course. According to a former Ryerson professor Peter Hiscocks. "The unit was put together to support the teaching of microprocessors when that was brand new in the EE curriculum at Ryerson. The person that put the unit together was Augustine [Lee], I believe." The course was coordinated by Jack Miller and taught by, among other instructors, Augustine Lee and Doug Hawkes. The Ryerson 6800 was built around the Motorola MEK 6800D2 demonstration board. It was one of several single-board microcomputers used by students of Ryerson's Electrical Technology Department. Technical Specifications (for the MEK 6800D2): CPU - Motorola 6800, 8-bit RAM - 1KB (4 x MCM 6810AP) ROM - SCM…
creator: Motorola and Ryerson Polytechnical Institute
date: 1970s
coverage: Toronto, Canada

Multiflex Video Display Terminal Kit
subject: computer hardware: video display terminal
description: Historical Context: Multiflex Technology Inc. was one of the companies of the Exceltronix group controlled by Eugen Hutka. In 1979, Hutka founded Exceltronix with its retail office at 319 College Street in Toronto. In the early 1980s, Multiflex was developing complete computer systems based on the Zilog Z80, Motorola 68000, and Intel 8086 processors together with a variety of peripheral and expansion cards. The company also manufactured stand-alone intelligent terminals, video display kits, as well as a range of other electronic products including peripheral and expansion cards for the Apple ][ computer. In 1984, Multiflex designed its first in the line of BEST computers compatible with the IBM PC and AT desktops, making Exceltronix one of the largest Canadian manufacturers of microcomputers of the 1980s. Multiflex Video Display Terminal Kit -- technical description (from the Exceltronix Catalogue Supplement, Spring 1983): The video display terminal is "originally designed as a low cost access unit for our [Exceltronix] soon to be operational computerized mail-ordering and bulletin board system." The terminal "is controlled by a Z80A microprocessor and a 6845 CRT controller chip. The keyboard is fully ASCII encoded and the character generator contains the full 128-character set as well as a 128-character alternate set both of which are in 5x7 dot matrix format. The screen display is 80 characters by 24 lines if the unit is hooked to an external monitor or 64 by 24 if run through an RF modulator to a TV. There are 3 software selectable attributes (dim, reverse video, and alternate character set) which can be chosen one at a time for the whole screen... Also included are 2 RS232 ports: one for a modem and one so that a printer can be attached to the terminal... The MULTIFLEX Video Display Terminal has provisions for an on board modem freeing a serial port." The Multiflex Video Display Terminal Kit was offered in 1982 and sold by Exceltronix. The museum has a complete …
creator: Multiflex Technology Inc.
date: 1982--
type: computer hardware
coverage: Canada, 1980s

Volker-Craig VC204 Video Display Terminal
subject: computer hardware: video display terminal
description: Historical Context: In the 1950s, the operators of mainframe computers used dedicated consoles, hardcopy terminals (such as teletypes and modified electric typewriters), and a variety of cathode ray tube (CRT) displays to run and control data processing tasks. Computer consoles typically featured rows of switches and associated lights that allowed operators to run and control the execution of programs, analyze data stored in memory, and to control other hardware interfaced with computers. Hardcopy terminals were used to print on roles of paper information such as operator's commands, computer responses, and other console messages. Finally, CRTs were used to displaying information (e.g. memory contents) in a rudimentary graphical form. The "glass teletype" that appeared in the mid-1960s was the first attempt at providing a single device allowing computer operators to run their systems having all the essential control and data processing information displayed on a screen. However, it was not until the early 1970s, when the first "dumb" video display terminals, featuring limited editing capabilities, were introduced (one of the earliest such terminals was the 7700A Interactive Display Terminal introduced by Lear Siegler Inc. in 1973). All these terminals shared the same basic keyboard-display-interface design: each featured a keyboard, a CRT screen that could display full sets of alphanumeric characters, and each had the capability to send and receive data via communication lines to a remote host computer. By the mid-1970s, video terminals became the most effective human-computer interface devices and they remain so until the mid-1980s, when they were displaced by microcomputers that could be interfaced with mainframes and minicomputers to perform terminal jobs in addition to microcomputing tasks, when PC monitors had become a common occurrence worldwide. In Canada, the design and manufacturing of computer display terminals began in the early 1970s. Comterm Inc. (Montr…
creator: Volker-Craig
date: mid-1970s
coverage: Canada, 1970s

Alias|Wavefront Maya 1.0
subject: software: 3D animation and visual effects software
description: Historical Context Since the 1950s, computer operators had used a variety of cathode ray tube (CRT) terminals for displaying information in a rudimentary graphical form during the execution of data processing tasks. Some computer users went further and, in their spare time, experimented with the use of computers and CRTs for entertainment. In 1958, an American physicist William Higinbotham created Tennis — possibly the first video game. As rudimentary as it was, it attracted much attention during visits to Brookhaven National Lab where Higinbotham was employed as an engineer in charge of instrumentation design. Then came more sophisticated video games such as Spacewar! developed in 1962 at MIT by Steve Russell in collaboration with other MIT students, as well as the first experimentation with computers for the purpose of art creation and animation. By the early 1970s, these experiments resulted in the first generation of commercial-grade computer image editing systems (such as Richard Shoup's SuperPaint, 1973) and animation programs (such as National Research Council Canada's computer animation program, 1971). These developments were possible in large part due to the advancements in computer and semiconductor industries, such as the arrival of affordable minicomputers and the introduction of semiconductor memories. Computer animation in Canada began in 1971 when the National Research Council Canada (NRC) scientists Nestor Burtnyk and Marceli Wein offered their animation software that greatly simplified a traditional and labor-intensive frame-by-frame animation process, requiring animation artists to draw every single frame. Instead, their program required an artist to draw only key frames leaving the generation of frames linking the key ones entirely to the computer. Peter Foldès was the first artist to use NRC's animation software. His 1973 film Hunger won, among other distinctions, a Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival in 1974, the Best Animated Film award at the 1…
creator: Alias|Wavefront
date: 1998
contributor: Artifacts donated by Robertson Holt
coverage: world, 1998--

SIM8-01 based prototype of the MCM/70
subject: computer hardware: microcomputer
description: Historical context (by Z. Stachniak) The MCS-8 microcomputer set was announced by Intel in late 1971. Everyone in systems engineering has been waiting for the under \$100 computer. Today it's here! [the alternative, Intel, 1971] The set consisted of a single-chip CPU—the 8-bit 8008 microprocessor—and standard semiconductor ROM's, RAM's, and shift registers. It was the MCS-8 and, in particular, its first implementation in Intel's SIM8-01 prototyping system that generated the first wave of design activities aimed at the development of microprocessor based architectures for general purpose programmable computers. In just a few months, the prototypes of such computers powered by the 8008 chip were already working on site at the French company Réalisations et Études Électroniques located in the suburbs of Paris and at Micro Computer Machines (MCM) with headquarters situated on the outskirts of Toronto. These firms fully recognized, articulated, and acted upon the immense potential of the budding microprocessor technology for the development of a new generation of cost effective computing systems. However, it was MCM which built the first microprocessor-based computer designed specifically for personal use — the MCM/70, the first PC. The SIM8-01 was marketed as a complete prototyping system for the development of MCS-8 applications. It was offered in April 1972 and, at that time, its schematic diagram included in the premiere edition of the 8008 8-Bit Parallel Central Processor Unit manual was the only published design of an 8-bit computer with a single-chip CPU. It was inevitable that MCM would use the SIM8-01 to attempt at implementing the core features of the company's future PC. In mid-1972 MCM’s chief hardware engineer Jose Laraya built the first prototype of the MCM/70. His computer utilized an Intel SIM8-01 simulation board as well as an Intel MP7-02 Eprom programmer which was used by MCM's software engineer Gord Ramer during the development of the MCM/APL interpre…
creator: Micro Computer Machines
date: 1972
coverage: Ontario, Canada, 1972

Wang 320SE calculator at York University
subject: hardware: electronic calcuator
description: Historical context (by Z. Stachniak) The commercialization of the transistor in the first half of the 1950s had a dramatic impact on the decade-old computer industry. The all-transistor computers were offered as early as 1953 and, by the end of the 1950s, all major computer manufacturers were building transistorized machines. Similar shift to solid-state technology was made across consumer electronics industry (for example, in the mid-1950s, all-transistor radios quickly began to replace large and bulky vacuum tubes-based radio sets). Despite clear advantages that solid-state electronics had to offer to calculator manufacturers (if built, transistor-based calculators would be smaller, quieter, more versatile, and virtually maintenance free when compared with the traditional desktop electro-mechanical calculators), the calculator industry was much slower in adopting the new technology. Calculator manufacturers were quite reluctant to venture into electronics when no competitors, even those with electronics divisions (such as Olivetti, Burroughs, Sony, and Canon), were putting any electronic calculators on the market. They were simply unwilling to go against their main core products that still delivered corporate wealth and prestige, they had no desire to invest substantial resources into concurrent divisions of electronic calculators that would internally compete with their best-performing divisions of electro-mechanical calculators. It was not until the early 1960s that the first solid-state calculators appeared on the consumer market and almost instantly gained consumer acceptance. While most of the early electronic calculators supported only rudimentary arithmetic operations with, in some cases, one or two memory registers for storing intermediate results, several firms introduced calculators with functionality that went far beyond that. The execution of short sequences of instructions (programs) was the most notable of these new features. Programs for such calcul…
creator: Wang Laboratories Inc.
date: 1968
coverage: York University, 1968-199?

Gandalf SAM 201 modem
subject: hardware: modem
description: Historical context (by Z. Stachniak) The rapid development of computer technologies and applications in the 1950s and 1960s created demand for sharing data and resources by connecting computers and computer equipment together over short as well as long distances. A pair of dedicated hardware devices called modems (MOdulator/DEModulators) were used to encode digital information originated at one end of the communications link and to decode such information using the second modem on the other end without degradation in accuracy of transferred data. By the end of the 1960s, there were over 2,000 digital computers installed in Canada and the number of new installations was steadily increasing in the following years. This advancement as well as the trend towards distributed processing and on-line remote access to data processing resources provided an opportunity to supply these new installations with made in Canada modems and other electronic data transmission devices. ESE Ltd. of Toronto and Gandalf Technologies Ltd. of Nepean were among the earliest and best known Canadian manufacturers of such products. Gandalf Technologies In April 1971, Desmond Cunningham and Colin Patterson incorporated Gandalf Data Communications Ltd. (later renamed as Gandalf Technologies, Inc.) with headquarters in Manotick, Ontario (later moved to Nepean). Gandalf's first product was the LDS 100 asynchronous modem (called Local Data Set or LDS). It's competitive price relative to the rental of modems offered by phone companies resulted in lucrative sales to major Canadian corporations and institutions including the federal government's Communication Research Centre, McGill University, Bell Northern Research, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Atomic Energy of Canada. The following year, Gandalf offerd the synchronous version of its modem -- the LDS 200. The success of these products led to the name 'Gandalf box' being adopted as a generic term for these and future Gandalf modems. The PACX d…
creator: Gandalf Technologies, Inc.
date: 1980s
coverage: world-wide, 1980s

Burroughs Bookkeeping Machine
subject: hardware: electromechanical calculator
description: Historical context (by Z. Stachniak) The industrial revolution of the 19th century brought new manufacturing methods and with them the ability to produce high quality precision instruments and mechanical devices in large quantities. The first typewriters appeared in the early 19th century and the first wave of useful calculators soon after in Europe and a few decades later in America. America entered the age of mechanical calculators in late 19th century, much later than Europe. When major European countries were undergoing extensive industrialization, the United States was still primarily involved in agriculture while Canada was not even on the map as a country. The Civil War of 1861-1865 did not help with the industrialization either, delaying the effects of the industrial revolution on the North American continent for a decade. It was not until after the Civil War when new forms of manufacturing (steam-powered) allowed the American industry to grow and spread across the nation. It was at that time, when a vibrant office equipment industry was created with calculator manufacturing centers in cities such as Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, and Philadelphia. Large businesses, agencies, and institutions were expanding fast, putting more and more people into their offices. It quickly became evident that ever increasing number of calculation tasks could not be handled cost-effectively without appropriate calculating aids. While American institutions were looking for efficient ways for conducting their business, inventors and entrepreneurs were determined to supply them with all sorts of office gadgets. Two individuals—Dorr E. Felt and William S. Burroughs—played a key role in establishing the calculator industry. Both were determined to provide businesses with just the right kind of calculators: fast, accurate, easy to operate and, in the case of Burroughs' calulators, with printing capabilities. In the end, they created calculator empires that dominated the American calcu…
creator: Burroughs Adding Machine Company of Canada
date: 1920s(?)
contributor: The calculator was donated by Unisys Canada Inc. in 2016
coverage: World, the early 1900s

Nortel Europa smartphone
subject: smartphone
description: Nortel Europa (description courtesy of Mobile Phone Museum) The Nortel One (also known as the Europa handset) was an early instance of what’s come to be known as a ‘smartphone’, developed to show off the future that Nortel envisioned as a product family it called the Orbitor. Work on the Orbitor vision started at Bell-Northern Research (Nortel’s R&D subsidiary) in the early 1990s with a series of concept models focusing on what a handheld personal communicator could be like. Once this proof-of-concept was validated through extensive user and chooser research, the design for Nortel One started apace in early 1995. It used the GSM radio and physical interface module from theNortel 92x/1920 phones with a digital signal processor (DSP) core for speech recognition and added an ARM processor module that interfaced with the touchscreen and powered the screen user interface. The first working units, of which 80 were made, were delivered at the end of February 1998 in time for the GSM World Congress in Cannes, France. The development of the Nortel One device was primarily a skunk works project undertaken at Nortel's Bell-Northern Research (BNR). It required the incorporation of many new technologies, overcoming internal corporate process challenges at Nortel, and managing a variety of logistics issues that the team working on the product had to address. The project largely flew under the radar at Nortel but succeeded thanks to a dedicated multi-disciplinary design team drawing on broad expertise at BNR (Ottawa, Canada) and AEG Mobile Communication (Ulm, Germany), then part of Matra-Nortel. Initially, the prototype devices were going to be manufactured at an AEG factory in Berlin, but the manufacturing was moved to an SCI factory in Bordeaux, France where the final units were built. When it was originally conceived, the Nortel Orbitor was envisaged as being a “highly featured, pocket-sized wireless device” that would use advanced voice-recognition technology and a touch-sensi…
creator: Bell-Northern Research
date: unveiled in 1995 at Telecom’95
contributor: donated by David Cuddy