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Dennis R. Morin (February 25, 1946 – December 31, 2012) was an American technology entrepreneur and programmer, based in
Irvine, California Irvine () is a Planned community, planned city in central Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. It was named in 1888 for the landowner James Irvine. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the ...
. He co-founded the software firm
Wonderware Wonderware was a brand of industrial software now owned by Aveva and rebranded under the AVEVA name. Wonderware was part of Invensys, Invensys plc, and Invensys plc was acquired in January 2014 by Schneider Electric. Invensys, Invensys plc.
.


Early life

Morin was born in
Saco, Maine Saco ( ) is a city in York County, Maine, United States. The population was 20,381 at the 2020 census. It is home to Ferry Beach State Park, Funtown Splashtown USA, Thornton Academy, as well as Saco Valley Shopping Center. General Dynamics ...
, a
New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...
state, the oldest of six children of Alfred and Annette Morin. He spent his early childhood in Saco, and attended several colleges but never graduated. In the late 1960s, he moved to
Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
where he drove a taxi for some time before finally moving to
California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
.


Career

In his early career, Morin worked as a project manager at a Georgia Pacific plant in Phoenix for a Watertown,
Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...
-based company called Ionics. After moving to California in the late 1970s, he went on to work for many companies including Purex, Varco Oil and Tools,
Hughes Aircraft The Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace company, aerospace and defense contractor founded on February 14, 1934 by Howard Hughes in Glendale, California, as a division of the Hughes Tool Company. The company produced the Hughes ...
and Triconex. He had no formal training in computer science or software programming; he learned everything on the job himself, with little help from his engineer colleagues. At Triconex he learned how to use the FIX and FactoryLink programs to create demos of the Tricon in action. Triconex was where Morin went deeper into the
industrial automation Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machine ...
business and his product-related ideas started taking shape. In Morin's own words: After he was done with the TriStation design, Morin started working on TriView, a user interface. But, the Triconex board did not fund the project. In February 1986, during company re-organization Morin was laid off.


Wonderware

After leaving Triconex, Dennis Morin worked as a consultant doing PLC programming and creating FIX applications. During this time, his exposure to FIX and its apparent limitations motivated Dennis to work on and develop something better. By early 1987, he had worked out most of the basic design concept of InTouch. He shared his idea with Phil Huber, his former colleague from Triconex, and asked him to join hands in building a software company. He also contacted other friends (Cole Chevalier, Jerry Cuckler and Bill Urone) to help him code the product. A partnership agreement was signed and Wonderware came into existence on April 1, 1987. 'Wonderware' was actually supposed to be a temporary name, since Morin could not think of some catchy name. However, people liked the name and it just stuck around. It is said that Pinball Construction Set, an early computer game, was the source of inspiration for Morin. With the release of InTouch in 1989, Wonderware revolutionized industrial automation. When
Windows 3.0 Windows 3.0 is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, launched on May 22, 1990. It introduces a new graphical user interface (GUI) that represents applications as clickable icons, instead of the list of file names in its predecessors. ...
was released on May 22, 1990, Wonderware introduced its HMI software, InTouch 2.0, the very same day. In fact, Wonderware was the beta tester for Windows 3.0. InTouch was designed for
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
instead of
DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...
and other
operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
(OS), because Morin believed that
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
would eventually win the battle of operating systems. At that time,
Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...
’s operating system and
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
’s
OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...
were in a stronger position. Morin’s choice of betting his company’s future on the success of Microsoft Windows paid off soon; Wonderware gained a significant lead over its competitors and remained virtually unchallenged for next five years.


Legacy

In 2003, InTech, the magazine of the
International Society of Automation The International Society of Automation (ISA) Is a non-profit technical society for engineers, technicians, businesspeople, educators and students, who work, study or are interested in automation and pursuits related to it, such as instrumentatio ...
(ISA), listed Dennis Morin as one of the 50 most influential innovators in the history of industrial automation. The organization noted that Morin ‘bet the company’ on Microsoft’s Windows software and started a major transition from dedicated, hardware-based process control to Windows-based ‘open’ technology. Dennis Morin died on December 31, 2012, of cancer.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Morin, Dennis American computer businesspeople American industrial designers American technology chief executives Businesspeople from California People from Laguna Beach, California People from Irvine, California 1946 births 2012 deaths 20th-century American businesspeople