The Massachusetts Computer Corporation (MASSCOMP) was a computer manufacturer based in

Westford, Massachusetts Westford is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was at 24,643 at the time of the 2020 Census. History Westford began as 'West Chelmsford', a village in the town of Chelmsford. The village of West Chelmsfor ...

. Originally conceived by C. Forbes Dewey of

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

and inventor Chester Schuler, it was founded formally in 1981. Its target market was

real-time computing Real-time computing (RTC) is the computer science term for hardware and software systems subject to a "real-time constraint", for example from event to system response. Real-time programs must guarantee response within specified time constra ...

, with a focus on high-speed data acquisition. Its major innovation was that it created the first widely available computer product which was able to

sample Sample or samples may refer to: Base meaning * Sample (statistics), a subset of a population – complete data set * Sample (signal), a digital discrete sample of a continuous analog signal * Sample (material), a specimen or small quantity of so ...

analog signals An analog signal or analogue signal (see American and British English spelling differences#-ogue, -og, spelling differences) is any continuous signal representing some other quantity, i.e., ''analogous'' to another quantity. For example, in an ...

at one million samples per second and store the resulting data to disk continuously. Given the technology available at the time—

Motorola 68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sect ...

series

CPUs A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

of only a few megahertz in speed and slow disk drives—this product represented quite a technological achievement. The MASSCOMP MC-500 is a 68000-based microcomputer running a real-time variant of the

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

operating system. For a small company, MASSCOMP incorporated a number of ambitious and innovative projects in addition to Real-Time Unix, including their own C and Fortran compiler, a block diagram language known as "Laboratory Workbench" that allowed visual programming of real time systems to connect real-time analog inputs and outputs to signal processing operations and interactive virtual instruments for data display, and their own high level graphics subsystem. MASSCOMP grew to about $65 million in sales per year and ultimately purchased

Concurrent Computer Corporation Concurrent Computer Corporation was an American computer company, in existence from 1985 to 2017, that made real-time computing and parallel processing systems. Its products powered a variety of applications including process control, simulators, ...

(a spinoff company that was part public but majority-owned by

Perkin-Elmer PerkinElmer, Inc., previously styled Perkin-Elmer, is an American global corporation focused in the business areas of diagnostics, life science research, food, environmental and industrial testing. Its capabilities include detection, imaging, inf ...

) in 1988 in a "

junk bond In finance, a high-yield bond (non-investment-grade bond, speculative-grade bond, or junk bond) is a bond that is rated below investment grade by credit rating agencies. These bonds have a higher risk of default or other adverse credit event ...

deal" and assumed the Concurrent name, with aim of becoming the number one vendor in the real-time computing market. The deal cost Masscomp $240 million."Concurrent Computer Corporation"
Encyclopedia.com, accessed 15 October 2019 Perkin-Elmer sold this company as part of restructuring of their business due to low profits in computer market.

References

External links

*There is a MASSCOMP system at th
Rhode Island Computer Museum
Defunct computer companies of the United States Companies based in Massachusetts {{compu-company-stub