Data 100 Corporation was founded as American Data Corporation in December 1968 in
Minneapolis, Minnesota, by Bruce Bambrough, Marvin Bookin, David Jerry Eckberg, and Edward Orenstein. All four of its co-founders had previously worked as executives for
Control Data Corporation (CDC) in nearby
Bloomington before starting their own company. While working at CDC, Orenstein and the three other co-founders had witnessed the rapid growth of
remote job entry equipment and wanted CDC to enter the field with their own line of
remote batch terminals to compete with
IBM, which had a near-monopoly in the field. When they were met with apathy from CDC's top management, they exited CDC to establish American Data Corporation, with each of the four co-founders pooling 35,000 of their own money to finance its foundation. Soon after, they attracted $2 million in venture capital and an additional $4 million after filing its initial public offering in early 1969. and October 1969. The Model 70 was succeeded in July 1970 with the Model 78, which was more versatile than its predecessor, featured broader compatibility with IBM's systems, and was optioned with a variety of
peripherals, including CRT displays,
tape drives, line printers, and
card readers. In September 1973, Data 100 introduced both the Model 71 remote batch terminal, the successor to the Model 78 that introduced compatibility with the
IBM 3780, itself the enhanced successor to IBM's 2780. Shortly afterward the company introduced the Model 74, a
minicomputer intended to compete with IBM's entry-level models in the
IBM System/360 family, namely the
Models 20 and
30; it could also perform as a remote batch terminal compatible with the 2780 and 3780. Data 100 optioned the Model 74 with Keybatch, a
key-to-disk subsystem that allowed data entry directly to
8-inch floppy disk. The Keybatch was also compatible with the Model 78. Amid the
1969–1970 recession in the United States, the company established an international subsidiary, Data 100 Limited, overseas in London. Between 1973 and 1974, Data 100 raised a 20,000-square-foot factory in
Hemel Hempstead and another 27,000-square-foot factory in Scotland. By 1976, Data 100 had formed additional international subsidiaries in
Amsterdam,
Australia,
Frankfurt, and
Toronto and had established a joint venture with
Sumitomo of Tokyo. At its peak in 1977, the company employed 3,063 people, owned seven manufacturing plants, and had 64 branch offices worldwide. In November 1977, Bambrough was ousted as vice president of Data 100, while remaining on the board of directors. In April 1978, Data 100 introduced its final system as an independent company, the ambitious Model 85. It was their attempt to get into the standalone
electronic data processing field and was capable of running
IBM RPG. In May 1978, the aerospace company
McDonnell Douglas of
St. Louis, Missouri, made a bid to acquire Data 100 in a
stock swap valued at $145 million. In July that year,
Northern Telecom (Nortel) of Montreal counteroffered with a slightly higher bid, with Data 100 ultimately agreeing to Nortel's offer on July 10. By September 1978 the acquisition was finalized. It was Nortel's second acquisition of a terminal manufacturer that year, after purchasing
Sycor the previous May. In 1979, Nortel established Northern Telecom Systems Corporation (NTSC) in the United States, with Sycor and Data 100 becoming subsidiaries of NTSC. ==See also==