On Tue, 13 Aug 2002, Wayne M. Smith wrote:
> Here's the text from a 1978 Business Week article. Note the quote from
> "Billy Gates":
Not the same William H. Gates of Microschlock.
> Initial reaction from customers is enthusiastic. "The 300 has incredible
> potential" for a distributed system, says Billy V. Gates,
> data-processing manager for Longs Drug Stores Inc. in Walnut Creek,
> Calif. "We are looking at the possibility of distributing data
> processing to all our stores, and this is the type of equipment we could
> do that with."
What's interesting about this is that the venerable Roger Sinasohn,
sometime list contributor, has been actively consulting for Longs Drugs
for the past few years to upgrade their HP3000 based store chain network
to more modern hardware. It's really neat to see this quote from when
those systems were first installed (and ironically from a guy named Billy
Gates of all things :)
> The "windowing" feature on the 300 display screen, allowing various
> information files to be viewed simultaneously, appeals to Gary G.
> Specker, data-processing head for General Mills Inc. "Many times there
> is a problem because you can't see all your data on one screen," he
> says. "Windowing is a beautiful solution."
That's pretty good prior art, at least for the trademark dispute.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Wed Aug 14 2002 - 05:52:00 BST