Documation was an

American Stock Exchange NYSE American, formerly known as the American Stock Exchange (AMEX), and more recently as NYSE MKT, is an American stock exchange situated in New York City. AMEX was previously a mutual organization, owned by its members. Until 1953, it was known ...

-listed computer hardware manufacturer founded in 1969 in

Melbourne, Florida Melbourne ( ) is a city in Brevard County, Florida, United States. It is located southeast of Orlando, Florida, Orlando along Florida's Space Coast, named because of the region's proximity to Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. The city ...

that went public in 1976. They made (

punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a stiff paper-based medium used to store digital information via the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Developed over the 18th to 20th centuries, punched cards were widel ...

)

card reader A card reader is a data input device that reads data from a card-shaped storage medium and provides the data to a computer. Card readers can acquire data from a card via a number of methods, including: optical scanning of printed text or barcod ...

s used in some American elections 3 decades later. They also produced

Impact Impact may refer to: * Impact (mechanics), a large force or mechanical shock over a short period of time * Impact, Texas, a town in Taylor County, Texas, US Science and technology * Impact crater, a meteor crater caused by an impact event * Imp ...

Line printer A line printer Printer (computing), prints one entire line of text before advancing to another line. Most early line printers were printer (computing)#Impact printers, impact printers. Line printers are mostly associated with unit record eq ...

s. In late 1980,

Storage Technology Corporation Storage Technology Corporation (StorageTek or STK, earlier STC) was a data storage technology company headquartered in Louisville, Colorado. New products include data retention systems, which it calls "information lifecycle management" (ILM). It ...

(STC) acquired Documation, which was subsequently spun off, and those companies which subdivided from it, most of which use Documation-like names, no longer manufacture computer peripherals. Documation was described as "a financially troubled printer manufacturer." Documation card reader

IMPACT Line printers

Documation's ''IMPACT 3000'', named for its 3,000 lines per minute rating, was followed a year later by the 3,800 LPM ''IMPACT 3800''. A 5,000 lines per minute printer was introduced in 1986, by which time the company was operating under the name StorageTek Printer Corp. Like earlier impact printer models, it is manufactured in Florida. At the time of the Series 5000's introduction, the company said that "impact printers dominate 85 percent of the market." The company's laser printers are rebadged from

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational technology conglomerate. It is focused on industrial automation, building automation, rail transport and health technology. Siemens is the largest engineering company in Europe, and holds the positi ...

Documation's Burroughs-rebadged printers

Four Documation printers, rebadged by Burroughs as DOC 2000B, DOC 1800B, DOC 1500B and DOC 1250B were introduced in 1978. Per their names, they were rated at "2,000-, 1,800-, 1,500- and 1,250" lines per minute, when using 48 character

ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...

Card readers

Among the card readers made by Documation for

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is ...

s in the 1970s were: * M-200 card reader, 300 cards/minute also sold by DEC as the CR-11 card reader for the

PDP-11 The PDP–11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers originally sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the late 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of a ...

* M-600 card reader, 600 cards/minute, also sold by HP as 2892A and 2893A * M-1000-L card reader 1,000 cards/minute Their card readers have been used in elections,(2006 elections, Arizona) including the

2000 2000 was designated as the International Year for the Culture of Peace and the World Mathematics, Mathematical Year. Popular culture holds the year 2000 as the first year of the 21st century and the 3rd millennium, because of a tende ...

"Chads" election in Florida.

End-user market

In late 1977 Documation successfully entered the end-user market. They initially focused on selling card readers to end-users; their model 6501 is IBM-compatible. They subsequently added line printers to the equipment they sold to end-users.

Storage Technology Corporation and thereafter

By 1992, the name Documation was no longer affiliated with Storage Technology Corporation in the US, but the latter still owned two Documation-named subsidiaries, one in France and the other in UK.

References

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External links

* French Wiki about a different ''Documation'' (a trade show organized by ''InfoPromotions'')
French trade show "Documation"'s Official website (same name but unrelated to this article's subject)
1968 establishments in Florida 1980 disestablishments in Florida 1980 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 1968 American companies disestablished in 1980 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Card reader (punched cards) Computer companies established in 1968 Computer companies disestablished in 1980