Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Just who do you think you are! (Part 2)

While doing my PHD studies at NYU, I was teaching computer science at Baruch College (part of the City University of New York system). I bumped into one of my old college buddies in the halls.... he was going for his MBA at Baruch. He told me that he and two friends were going to quit ValueLine and form their own company. He wanted to know if I might be interested in writing one of the first word processors for Unix.... I would write it, they would market it, and we would share the profits. Sounds good.

So, after about 7 months of slaving over my dining room table with my trusty Zenith CRT and 300 baud modem, I managed to crank out a respectable word processor.... Initially named WPScribe. We showed the product at the very first Unix Expo in New York in October of 1984.

The newly formed company did not last long. The profits that we made were consumed by the founders on the excesses of the 1980's. This left me without a marketing arm for my word processor (which, thankfully, I had the foresight to copyright in my name).

What would become of Marc and his word processor? Stay tuned for more...

Copyright ©2005 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved

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