Cardinal Technologies was founded in February 1987 by Harold Krall and seven other ex-employees of the
RCA Corporation's New Products Division
research and development office and factory in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In 1986,
General Electric completed its acquisition of the ailing RCA Corporation, divesting RCA's New Products Division—which had incubated and produced many of the company's ideas for consumer electronics, by selling it to—
Thomson S.A. of France. In 1987, Krall and several of his colleagues from RCA bartered for the acquisition of the Lancaster plant, its equipment, and associated liabilities from General Electric and Thomson S.A. for $4 million. The colleagues incorporated Cardinal Technologies from this plant, which was to be their break into the fast-growing
personal computer market of the late 1980s, which GE and RCA had largely ignored. Krall and company planned for Cardinal to manufacture complete
computer systems from the onset but started small by manufacturing
modems for personal computers. The company became a major player in the field within three years of its incorporation, helped along by
OEM contracts with major computer systems brands. By the early 1990s, the company also produced
graphics cards, keyboards, and monitors. In 1991, Cardinal partnered with
Fujifilm to develop the Cardinal SnapPlus, an expansion card for IBM PCs and compatibles that acted as a both a
character generator and chroma keyer for superimposing digital graphical and textual elements over a videotape feed generated from the computer back onto tape. It also allowed for computers to import photographs from
Video Floppy disks taken by early electronic cameras, such as those Fujifilm had produced in the 1980s and 1990s. Employment numbers at the company's Lancaster headquarters hovered between 200 and 220 workers from 1991 to 1993. The company broke even in profits in 1991 and posted a loss in 1992. In September 1993, Between February and March 1994, Krall and two other co-founders were ousted from the board of directors and 31 management and factory employees were laid off, shortly after the company posted another loss for 1993. This round of layoffs was enacted by executives at Vulcan who intended to restructure the company, increasing its development budget and investing in newer manufacturing equipment while making the company's production schedule and payroll leaner. ==References==