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Ashton-Tate
Ashton-Tate Corporation was a US-based software company best known for developing the popular dBASE database application and later acquiring Framework from the Forefront Corporation and MultiMate from Multimate International. It grew from a small garage-based company to become a multinational corporation. Once one of the "Big Three" software companies, which included Microsoft and Lotus, the company stumbled in the late 1980s and was sold to Borland in September 1991.
The history of Ashton-Tate and dBASE are intertwined and as such, must be discussed in parallel.
In 1978, Martin Marietta programmer Wayne Ratliff wrote Vulcan, a database application, to help him make picks for football pools. Written in Intel 8080 assembly language, it ran on the CP/M operating system and was modeled on JPLDIS, a Univac 1108 program used at JPL and written by fellow programmer Jeb Long. Ashton-Tate was launched as a result of George Tate and Hal Lashlee having discovered Vulcan from Ratliff in 1981 and licensing it. (Ashton was Tate's after-the-fact parrot, whose cage was kept in his Culver City office.) The original agreement was written on one page, and called for simple, generous royalty payments to Ratliff.
Tate and Lashlee had already built three successful start-up companies, by that time - spring 1981.
The three companies were:
The first Software Store opened in May 1981. It was located on W. Pico Blvd, Los Angeles. Johnson's concept of retail store that sold software only, is the foundational retail concept of today's Apple & Google's App Stores.
By August 1984, SCI had grown to 113 stores, in 32 states.
Glenn Johnson was Co-Founder, C.E.O., and Chairman Of The Board of Directors of Softwaire Centre International. Tate & Lashlee were co-investors. SCI was poised to make its IPO around the summer of 1984 when the underwriters discovered that the company was almost out of cash, so they pulled the plug on the IPO. With the company on the edge of bankruptcy, Hal Lashlee and George Tate bought out Glenn Johnson for $1 and proceeded to wind down the company. In a year or so, Egghead Software was launched as a wholly owned software-only chain that picked up where SCI left off. Egghead did very well for a few years.
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Ashton-Tate
Ashton-Tate Corporation was a US-based software company best known for developing the popular dBASE database application and later acquiring Framework from the Forefront Corporation and MultiMate from Multimate International. It grew from a small garage-based company to become a multinational corporation. Once one of the "Big Three" software companies, which included Microsoft and Lotus, the company stumbled in the late 1980s and was sold to Borland in September 1991.
The history of Ashton-Tate and dBASE are intertwined and as such, must be discussed in parallel.
In 1978, Martin Marietta programmer Wayne Ratliff wrote Vulcan, a database application, to help him make picks for football pools. Written in Intel 8080 assembly language, it ran on the CP/M operating system and was modeled on JPLDIS, a Univac 1108 program used at JPL and written by fellow programmer Jeb Long. Ashton-Tate was launched as a result of George Tate and Hal Lashlee having discovered Vulcan from Ratliff in 1981 and licensing it. (Ashton was Tate's after-the-fact parrot, whose cage was kept in his Culver City office.) The original agreement was written on one page, and called for simple, generous royalty payments to Ratliff.
Tate and Lashlee had already built three successful start-up companies, by that time - spring 1981.
The three companies were:
The first Software Store opened in May 1981. It was located on W. Pico Blvd, Los Angeles. Johnson's concept of retail store that sold software only, is the foundational retail concept of today's Apple & Google's App Stores.
By August 1984, SCI had grown to 113 stores, in 32 states.
Glenn Johnson was Co-Founder, C.E.O., and Chairman Of The Board of Directors of Softwaire Centre International. Tate & Lashlee were co-investors. SCI was poised to make its IPO around the summer of 1984 when the underwriters discovered that the company was almost out of cash, so they pulled the plug on the IPO. With the company on the edge of bankruptcy, Hal Lashlee and George Tate bought out Glenn Johnson for $1 and proceeded to wind down the company. In a year or so, Egghead Software was launched as a wholly owned software-only chain that picked up where SCI left off. Egghead did very well for a few years.