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Sorcim
Sorcim Corporation was an early start-up company in Silicon Valley, founded in June 1980 by Richard Frank, Paul McQuesten, Martin Herbach, Anil Lakhwara, and Steve Jasik - all former Control Data Corporation employees working in the Language Group in Sunnyvale, CA. Jasik left company early on, to develop the MacNosy product for the Macintosh.
Sorcim was best known for SuperCalc, a spreadsheet the company developed for the Osborne Computer Corporation portable computer. The company made many other products, including SuperWriter and SuperProject before its acquisition by Computer Associates in 1985. Although the company continued as a largely autonomous division of CA, it never again achieved prominence after the acquisition.
The company was named "Sorcim" after Richard Frank saw a reflection of the word “micros” in an airplane window.[citation needed]
The company was founded to expand the microcomputer products from Digicom, a company formed by Richard in 1978. Paul joined in 1979. The Digicom software programs ran on the CP/M operating system using the Intel 8080, 8085 and later the 8086, Zilog Z80 and the Z8000. The company's early products included Pascal/M, and ACT - a set of cross assemblers including one for the Atari (8080) and the Commodore PET (6502).
In these early days of the company, and before the introduction of the IBM PC and MS-DOS, Sorcim used Godbout S100 bus CP/M machines for development; these machines were fast and the people at Godbout were competent hardware developers. Bill Godbout was one of the first commercial accounts for Sorcim, supporting the company's cross assemblers and Pascal/M. In fact at one time Godbout helped relieve a short-term cash flow problem by doing a one-time buy of development tool products. "Bill was one of those people who always provided you an honest opinion (sometimes to the dismay of Sorcim managers) and great Friday lunch meetings."[citation needed]
In 1980 at one of the local monthly computer industry poker parties, Bill Godbout introduced Richard Frank to Adam Osborne. Lee Felsenstein was developing the industry's first portable computer for Adam Osborne's new company, and he needed a CP/M BIOS. This computer was released as the Osborne 1.
In late Fall of 1980, Adam was looking for a spreadsheet for the Osborne 1. His efforts to acquire rights to VisiCalc[citation needed] were disappointing, so he asked Sorcim if they would be interested in developing a spreadsheet that would be competitive with VisiCalc, and develop it in time to showcase it at the West Coast Computer Faire in April 1981. The company accepted the challenge, working days on contract programming (a CHILL compiler for Siemens) and nights on the Osborne BIOS and SuperCalc. With Martin Herbach as the lead architect, the company hired Gary Balleisen, as the lead developer, to implement a demo version of the application.
The product was introduced in April 1981 at the West Coast Computer Faire in the Osborne booth. The enthusiastic reception surprised the Sorcim folks. SuperCalc was written in assembly code using Sorcim's ACT assembler. Eventually SuperCalc was ported to over 150 different hardware platforms - from the Osborne 1 to the Zenith Z89. By the 18-month mark, the company had sold over 250,000 copies of the original SuperCalc.[citation needed] During this period, the company estimated that VisiCalc's market share was about 85% and SuperCalc was about 15%. There were some other early spreadsheet programs, but these two programs shared essentially the entire market.[citation needed]
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Sorcim AI simulator
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Sorcim
Sorcim Corporation was an early start-up company in Silicon Valley, founded in June 1980 by Richard Frank, Paul McQuesten, Martin Herbach, Anil Lakhwara, and Steve Jasik - all former Control Data Corporation employees working in the Language Group in Sunnyvale, CA. Jasik left company early on, to develop the MacNosy product for the Macintosh.
Sorcim was best known for SuperCalc, a spreadsheet the company developed for the Osborne Computer Corporation portable computer. The company made many other products, including SuperWriter and SuperProject before its acquisition by Computer Associates in 1985. Although the company continued as a largely autonomous division of CA, it never again achieved prominence after the acquisition.
The company was named "Sorcim" after Richard Frank saw a reflection of the word “micros” in an airplane window.[citation needed]
The company was founded to expand the microcomputer products from Digicom, a company formed by Richard in 1978. Paul joined in 1979. The Digicom software programs ran on the CP/M operating system using the Intel 8080, 8085 and later the 8086, Zilog Z80 and the Z8000. The company's early products included Pascal/M, and ACT - a set of cross assemblers including one for the Atari (8080) and the Commodore PET (6502).
In these early days of the company, and before the introduction of the IBM PC and MS-DOS, Sorcim used Godbout S100 bus CP/M machines for development; these machines were fast and the people at Godbout were competent hardware developers. Bill Godbout was one of the first commercial accounts for Sorcim, supporting the company's cross assemblers and Pascal/M. In fact at one time Godbout helped relieve a short-term cash flow problem by doing a one-time buy of development tool products. "Bill was one of those people who always provided you an honest opinion (sometimes to the dismay of Sorcim managers) and great Friday lunch meetings."[citation needed]
In 1980 at one of the local monthly computer industry poker parties, Bill Godbout introduced Richard Frank to Adam Osborne. Lee Felsenstein was developing the industry's first portable computer for Adam Osborne's new company, and he needed a CP/M BIOS. This computer was released as the Osborne 1.
In late Fall of 1980, Adam was looking for a spreadsheet for the Osborne 1. His efforts to acquire rights to VisiCalc[citation needed] were disappointing, so he asked Sorcim if they would be interested in developing a spreadsheet that would be competitive with VisiCalc, and develop it in time to showcase it at the West Coast Computer Faire in April 1981. The company accepted the challenge, working days on contract programming (a CHILL compiler for Siemens) and nights on the Osborne BIOS and SuperCalc. With Martin Herbach as the lead architect, the company hired Gary Balleisen, as the lead developer, to implement a demo version of the application.
The product was introduced in April 1981 at the West Coast Computer Faire in the Osborne booth. The enthusiastic reception surprised the Sorcim folks. SuperCalc was written in assembly code using Sorcim's ACT assembler. Eventually SuperCalc was ported to over 150 different hardware platforms - from the Osborne 1 to the Zenith Z89. By the 18-month mark, the company had sold over 250,000 copies of the original SuperCalc.[citation needed] During this period, the company estimated that VisiCalc's market share was about 85% and SuperCalc was about 15%. There were some other early spreadsheet programs, but these two programs shared essentially the entire market.[citation needed]