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press
REVIEW
The following articles are reprinted solely as items of interest for the independent evaluation by members of The Association of Time-Sharing Users and The
Association of Small Computer Users. The opinions, statements of fact, and conclusions expressed herein are not those of either Association.
500,000 Share Offering Filed by Sci . Time Sharing
WASHINGTON - Scientific Time
Sharing Corp. has filed a registration
statement with the Securities and Ex¬
change Commission to sell 500,000
shares of common stock, the first
public sale of the privately-held cor¬
poration.
Half the amount to be sold will be
newly-issued shares, the company
said. The other 250,000 shares will
come from the holdings of the private
stockholders, according to a company
spokesman.
The company was founded in 1969
and had revenues last year of about
$10.2 million. A consultant to the FCC,
reporting last summer on electronic
mail systems, said Scientific Time
Sharing is the largest U.S. vendor of
time-sharing services based on the
APL language.
Almost half the company is owned
by four investors: Burton C. Grey, a
director, 20.8 per cent; T.A. As¬
sociates, a Boston investment banker,
12.4 per cent; Daniel Dyer, the presi¬
dent, 11.2 per cent; and Allen J. Rose,
vice-president and technical director,
4.6 per cent. The remainder is owned
by a group of officers and directors of
the company.
The company said proceeds of the
proposed sale will be used to retire
part of its outstanding indebtness.
The sale is to be managed by L.F.
Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin and
Alex. Brown & Sons.
Scientific said its services are
available in over 200 cities in North
America, Europe and the Far East.
The company has pending before
the FCC an application to market its
Mailbox electronic mail service as a
resale communications carrier and
an associated application for waiver
of the FCC’s requirement under the
existing Computer Rules to establish
a separate subsidiary if it wants to
market the mailbox service as a com¬
munications product separate from
computer time-sharing.
2 Major Banks to Form EDP Services Subsidiaries
NEW YORK — In moves apparent¬
ly prompted by a court action filed
last year, Citibank and Chase Manhat¬
tan Bank last week told Adapso, the
computer services trade organiza¬
tion, that they would set up subsidiary
companies to offer computer ser¬
vices.
Citibank said it will form Interac¬
tive Computer Center as a separate
subsidiary to market the DEC
system-based time-sharing services it
introduced in 1976. Chase Manhattan
said it would operate Managistics,
Inc., a computer payroll firm it is ac¬
quiring, as a separate profit center
with separate staff and facilities.
Both banks agreed not to use their
respective names in their computer
services marketing efforts.
Adapso had filed in federal court
here in May, 1977, to restrain Citibank
from providing computer services
and to request that the Comptroller of
the Currency not authorize national
banks to sell such services.
Adapso said it was “extremely
pleased with both settlements” and
noted that it will drop its suit against
Citibank when the bank fulfills its
part of the new arrangement.
Citibank said it had “in no way
made any concessions regarding the
legalities” of its offering computer
services and noted that it has always
operated interactive computer
centers as a separate profit center.
Reprinted with permission, Electronic News,
September 4 and September 11,1978, ©Fairchild
Publications.
NEWS BUREAU
GENERAL tiH ELECTRIC
8150 Leesburg Pike, Suite 510
Vienna, Virginia 22180
Area Code 202 - 637-4557
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For further information, contact:
John A. Kosta
Barbara M. Lenahan
General Electric:
(301) 340-4721
FAIRFIELD, CT — June 5, 1978 — General Electric Company and Honeywell
announced today that they have reached an agreement in principle to
combine the worldwide operations of General Electric's Information
Services Business Division with Honeywell's timesharing marketing
operations in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. The new
company will be 84 per cent owned by General Electric and 16 per cent
owned by Honeywell.
Honeywell is now the exclusive distributor of General Electric's
MARK III computer services in the U.K., Italy, and Australia. The
other major countries of western Europe are served by HB Network
Information Services, a company jointly held by Honeywell and
Compagnie des Machines Bull, whose minority interest Honeywell has
been negotiating to purchase.
Plans for the new company call for improved integration of the
marketing and support capabilities of this global network information
services business. The new company will be in a better position to
take advantage of the rapidly growing worldwide demand for such services
and to better serve customer needs for remote access data processing
services throughout the world.
The new company is scheduled to begin operations November 1, 1978,
contingent upon necessary corporate and governmental approvals.
news
On-Line Systems Inc.
115 Evergreen Heights Drive
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15229
Contact: Henry Caplan (412)9317600
For Immediate Release June 27, 1978
On-Line Systems Inc. announced today that the
U.S. Attorney's Office formally notified On-Line that the
investigation of the procurement by On-Line of its Office of
Education contract has been completed and that the Grand Jury has
determined that the evidence does not warrant the bringing of any
charges against the Company, its employees or consultants.
The U.S. Attorney's Office explained the decision was based
upon an "extensive investigation" that proceeded with On-Line's
"full cooperation." The U.S. Attorney concluded in his letter
that "...this entire matter [including similar allegations
concerning a contract with the U.S. Senate],..is no longer a
subject of inquiry or investigation by this office."
This investigation and the HEW investigation which preceded
it were accompanied by a number of inaccurate news stories.
Rather than responding specifically to these stories, On-Line has
maintained since its original statements last year that these
contracts were procured competitively through proper procurement
procedures. This position has now been fully vindicated.
General Motors
Designing autos: One picture is worth 10,000 print-outs
Mapping With a Computer
T he congressman sits down at the com¬
puter terminal and, by pressing a
series of keys, fires off a barrage of com¬
mands: draw a map of the percentage of
people in Florida with four years of high-
school education, the number of persons
employed in manufacturing in Iowa, the
percentage of the civilian labor force
unemployed in New York City. On a
screen, the displays pop up in seconds,
illustrated in color and matched on the
map with similar statistics from across
the country.
This mammoth information system,
known as Odyssey, may soon be in¬
stalled for the U.S. House of Representa¬
tives. It is one example of the rapidly
growing technology of computer graph¬
ics, which uses the statistical wizardry of
computers to produce not just print-outs,
but sophisticated pictures on terminal
screens. Such technology already is be¬
ing used in a wide range of fields, from
map-making and marketing to movie ani¬
mation and engineering.
Magic: Clarity and speed are the crucial
features of computer graphics. Given
enough time, patience and sharp pencils,
a skilled cartographer can manually pro¬
duce a map illustrating the distribution
of the elderly throughout the U.S. But
the computer can do it in just moments—
and then superimpose an additional fea¬
ture, such as dental health, over the first
map. While such information could be
presented in a standard computer print¬
out form, it would be much more confus¬
ing to absorb.
Computerized cartography depends
for its magic on two systems of informa¬
tion: one that draws the maps and an¬
other that fills them in. To create the
maps, the computer is fed billions of
bytes of data generated in part by an
orbiting NASA satellite that takes aerial
photographs of the earth. Then the ma¬
chinery has access to a wealth of statistics
from the U.S. Census Bureau, Labor De¬
partment or other reliable sources.
Computers can interpret data with so
many combinations and permutations
that they sometimes reveal unexpected
relationships between factors. A cluster
of cancer cases in a community juxta¬
posed against the distribution of chemi¬
cal plants in the area might give medical
researchers clues to the cause of the
outbreak. “Assumptions are frequently
challenged by what appears on the
screen, and a computer map will often
highlight a clear exception to the norm,”
says Allan H. Schmidt, executive direc¬
tor of Harvard’s Laboratory for Computer
Graphics and Spatial Analysis.
The potential uses of computer map¬
ping seem nearly endless. If the House
of Representatives adopts Odyssey, each
legislator may someday have a terminal
in his office that he can tap for instant
information. Faced with a bill on em-
Walter Lieberman
Console cartoon: Smooth transition
ployment, for example, he could call up a
map of his own district for a close-up of
its blue-collar population. Doctors might
use such a system to find out which
hospitals could provide appropriate spe¬
cialists to treat their patients.
Varied Uses: But mapping is only one
application of computer graphics. At
MIT, researchers are using computers to
make animated films. The computer
smooths the transition between individ¬
ual drawings, sparing tedious hours of
work. A city planner can program a
computer with details on a traffic system,
including the proportion of cars to trucks,
bus routes and peak congestion hours.
Then he can test a road pattern, and the
computer will show where and when it
may cause traffic jams. Given that infor¬
mation, the planner can feed in new
speed limits, road widths and access
routes to major highways—until the com¬
puter shows he has got it right.
At General Motors, computer graphics
has become an essential part of the de¬
sign and engineering of new auto¬
mobiles. Clay models of a proposed de¬
sign are scanned by the computer and
stored in its memory. Then, using a spe¬
cial pencil or the computer's keyboard,
the designer can alter various features of
the auto and get a quick response on how
one change will influence such factors as
the car's weight, stability and impact
resistance. Similarly, jet-aircraft design¬
ers at McDonnell Douglas Corp. are
finding graphics more valuable than
blueprints in building the Navy's new
F-18 fighter plane. With the basic design
stored in the computer's memory, the
engineers can summon it to the screen
and find out just how a change will affect
the craft's aerodynamic stability, load
capacity and weight.
Helpful Image: A staggering amount of
information can be conveyed in just one
computer image—and that, says Har¬
vard's Schmidt, should prove helpful to
industry. “The human mind is limited in
the information it can manipulate,” he
says, “but fortunately, human beings are
exceptionally good at spatial recogni¬
tion.” For those who are not computer
experts, Schmidt adds, one picture is
worth 10,000 print-outs.
—JEAN SEUGMANN with JENNIFER FOOTE in Boston and
SHARON BEGLEY in New York
Peter Southwick—Liaison
Keyboard cartography: Wealth of data
Reprinted with permission, Newsweek, September 11, 1978, ©Newsweek Inc.
