Browsing by Subject "Ampex Corporation"
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Item Oral history interview with Chester Irwin Lappen(Charles Babbage Institute, 1993-06-10) Lappen, Chester IrwinAfter briefly describing his educational background and activities prior to the 1950s, Lappen discusses his association with Telemeter, Telemeter Magnetics, and DataProducts. Through his work with Mitchell, Silberberg and Knupp, Lappen became involved in the management of Telemeter, a Paramount company that developed a precursor to pay and cable TV. He discusses Telemeter's research and development work including: pay TV; a development contract with the Bank of America for a check sorter; a machine for language translation; the construction of ERMA for the Bank of America. Lappen describes the separation of Telemeter Magnetics which manufactured core memories for computer companies from the pay TV operation. He discusses the growth of Telemeter Magnetics and the addition of disk files, buffers, and line printers to their product line. Lappen describes the decision by Paramount to sell Telemeter Magnetics to Ampex and recalls the decision by Erv Tomash, Bill Drake and Lappen to found DataProducts in 1962. He describes the initial capitalization of DataProducts and Cliff Helms' development of a line printer superior to any on the market. Lappen concludes the interview with an assessment of the innovations made by DataProducts and the challenges associated with forming a high technology company.Item Oral history interview with Erwin Tomash(Charles Babbage Institute, 1973) Tomash, ErwinTomash discusses his work with Engineering Research Associates (ERA). Topics include: the firm's management, the roles of William Norris, Frank Mullaney, and Arnold Cohen in ERA, Tomash's development of West Coast marketing for ERA after it became a part of Remington Rand, competition with International Business Machines, the development of Williams tube storage devices and core memories, and the ERA 1103 computer. He also recounts his move from Remington Rand to Telemeter Magnetics, later Ampex Computer Products, the formation of Dataproducts Corporation and its subsidiary, Informatics Inc., headed by Walter Bauer.