retroelectro
He saw an opportunity to put a microprocessor in the cash register, fuel dispenser, card reader, etc. He felt like it was going in a strong direction when it abruptly ended. In 1970, General Electric sold its computer division to Honeywell, and Peddle’s POS dream hit a wall. Intelligent terminal systems Peddle did what most unemployed inventors do, he started his own business. Intelligent Terminal Systems. For the next few years, he was determined to develop the Electronic Cash Register. With a small team, he tuned the concept and design to the limit of available technology. There simply were not enough logic chips to manage the computer needs of a gas station.
computer stood in stark contrast to the timeshare model, which was the best way to access a computer. Numerous businesses would have paid any amount of money to have their own computer, and Viatron was offering to lease it to them for as low as $40 a month. Investors lined up, Viatron made millions, and soon they found themselves in a real ‘Elizabeth Holmes situation.’ They had partnered with Motorola to design custom ICs for their product. While Motorola worked to create the chips, Viatron focused on securing as many preorders and as much investment capital as possible. This continued until the machine was supposed to be released in February 1970. Delays at Motorola postponed the product’s release schedule, revealing that the product ‘System 21’ sort of didn’t actually exist.
One of Peddle’s first positions was on the first hard disk team at GE, where he played a pivotal role in advancing storage technology. Among Peddle’s early accomplishments is his patent for ‘Zoned Bit Recording’ while on this team. Chuck Peddle patented the pattern used with ‘zoned bit recording’ for hard drives. This work contributed to optimizing data storage, making hard disk drives more practical, and gave him a deep understanding of hardware design and large-scale systems. These experiences honed his technical expertise and prepared him for future challenges. This showed the ‘higher ups’ that Peddle would bring a unique perspective, and that put him on different teams while at General Electric, settling on him having a desk in the networked systems department.
be old enough to remember when stores used the ‘knuckle buster’ to obtain an imprint of your card to call it in to confirm your account before you could complete your purchase. The rise in central computing and mainframes made it possible for remote terminals to connect to powerful computers on the other side of town. This could allow cash registers in a store to have a terminal for automatic credit verification. This is when the magstripe on payment cards was introduced. They debuted the system at a local JCPenney as a full-scale test. Everything went smoothly, but on the busiest shopping day of the year, the day after Thanksgiving, the system had a catastrophic failure. The entire computer division had egg on its face. This brought to the front Peddle’s new concept of a computer inside every part of the shopping experience: ‘Distributed Intelligence.’ With this new concept, Peddle approached companies like Exxon, looking for cooperation in developing this new online point of sale (POS) terminal. Retro Electro fun fact: at this time, Butler Lampson at UC Berkeley was working on ‘Project GENIE’ for ARPA, which developed the key systems needed for effective and optimized timesharing of mainframe computers. Learn more in the Retro Electro Article ‘Project ALOHANET - Task II.’
this team, and legend goes that Bennett used the incomplete System 21 designs as a starting point to design the Motorola 6800. The Motorola 6800 Chuck Peddle’s efforts to develop the Intelligent Terminal Systems product led him to the doors of Motorola. Tom Bennett hired him to work on the 6800 project, and Peddle, along with Bill Mensch, was instrumental in completing the project and designing peripherals for the 6800. When the 6800 was ready for the market, Peddle switched to being a Field Applications Engineer. His time working with Exxon and Intelligent Terminal Systems gave him a sharp ear to customer wants and needs. The 6800 sold for around $300 a unit in 1974, so it was important that it was used where it made the most sense, and it was Peddle’s job to figure it out. This microprocessor was highly robust and capable, particularly for the early 1970s, but its complexity made it too expensive, and the team knew this. Retro Electro fun fact: this coincides with the industry-wide recession that caused Hans Camenzind to get laid off from Signetics. Learn more in the Retro Electro Article: ‘Five Five Five: The Story of Interdesign Inc.’
Figure 4. Chuck Peddle 1960
the eyes and ears work. This ‘first principles’ approach that he learned from this class made Chuck’s ambitions take a hard right turn toward computers. General Electric After he finished school, he knew two things. He wanted to work with computers, and he wanted to live on the West Coast. He applied to lots of places and then settled upon a junior position at General Electric, who was the first business in the world to own and operate its own computer system.
Not yet.
Motorola - We want to turn out computers like GM turns out Chevys In the late 1960s, a company named Viatron entered the market, attempting to lease computers to anyone who wanted one. They felt like if they could be one of the first in the market, there was no way they could lose. Having your own
Tom Bennett
Online point of sale terminals
Viatron went bankrupt in March 1971, leaving its creditors in the wind. The Motorola team developing the chips for the ‘System 21’ computer suddenly didn’t have anything to work on. The mythical Tom Bennett headed
The popularization of payment cards began in the early sixties. BankAmericard and Master Charge (now Visa and Mastercard) were becoming the preferred payment method for consumers. You might
“When I left my campus (at the University of Maine) in 1959, there was not a single computer on the campus.” - Peddle
“It’s too bad we did not patent the **Expletive** out of it, because we could have been very wealthy as a result.” - Chuck Peddle on the Electronic Cash Register
Peddle had his own take on the
we get technical
36
37
Powered by FlippingBook