Scala is a producer of multimedia software. It was founded in 1987 as a

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

company called Digital Visjon. It is headquartered near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, and has subsidiaries in Europe and Asia.

History

In 1987 a young Norwegian entrepreneur, Jon Bøhmer founded the company "Digital Visjon" in

Brumunddal Brumunddal is a town in Ringsaker Municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. The town is the administrative centre of the municipality. It is located on the shores of the lake Mjøsa, about north of the town of Hamar. The town is a small, densely ...

, Norway to create multimedia software on the

Commodore Commodore may refer to: Ranks * Commodore (rank), a naval rank ** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom ** Commodore (United States) ** Commodore (Canada) ** Commodore (Finland) ** Commodore (Germany) or ''Kommodore'' * Air commodore, a ...

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...

computer platform. In 1988 they released their first product which was named InfoChannel 0.97L, which had hotels and cable TV companies as their first customers. In 1990, they redesigned the program with a new

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows User (computing), users to Human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through graphical icon (comp ...

. They renamed the company and the software "Scala" and released a number of multimedia applications. The company attracted investors, mainly from Norway and incorporated in the US in 1994 and is now based in the United States with their

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...

an headquarters located in the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. The name "Scala" was given by Bøhmer and designer Bjørn Rybakken and represents the scales in colors, tones and the opera in Milan. The name inspired a live actor animation made by Bøhmer and Rybakken using an Amiga, a

video camera A video camera is an optical instrument that captures videos (as opposed to a movie camera, which records images on film). Video cameras were initially developed for the television industry but have since become widely used for a variety of othe ...

and a frame-by-frame video

digitizer DigitizationTech Target. (2011, April). Definition: digitization. ''WhatIs.com''. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/digitization is the process of converting information into a digital (i.e. computer-r ...

. The animation, named "Lo scalatore" (

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

for 'The Climber'), featured a magic trick of

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fakirs Fakir ( ar, فقیر, translit=faḳīr or ''faqīr'') is an Islamic term traditionally used for Sufi Muslim ascetics who renounce their worldly possessions and dedicate their lives to the worship of God. They do not necessarily renounce al ...

of a man climbing a ladder and disappearing in the air. This animation was then included into one of the Demo Disks of Scala Multimedia in order to show the capabilities of that presentation software in loading and playing animations whilst also manipulating it with other features of the software. In 1994 Scala released Multimedia MM400 and InfoChannel 500. In 1996, due to the bankruptcy of Commodore, Scala left the Amiga platform and started delivering the same applications under MS-DOS. Scala Multimedia MM100, Scala Multimedia Publisher and Scala InfoChannel 100 were released for the x86 platform. Scala MM100 won Byte Magazine's "Best of Comdex" in 1996.

Corporate governance

As of December 2013, the

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especiall ...

of Scala is

Tom Nix Tom or TOM may refer to: * Tom (given name), a diminutive of Thomas or Tomás or an independent Aramaic given name (and a list of people with the name) Characters * Tom Anderson, a character in ''Beavis and Butt-Head'' * Tom Beck, a character ...

, who was formerly a regional vice president. Nix succeeds

Gerard Bucas Gerard is a masculine forename of Proto-Germanic origin, variations of which exist in many Germanic and Romance languages. Like many other early Germanic names, it is dithematic, consisting of two meaningful constituents put together. In this ...

, who retired after nine years.

Scala Multimedia

The first versions for the Amiga computer were a video titler and slide show authoring system. Scala was bundled with

typefaces A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

, background images, and a selection of

transition Transition or transitional may refer to: Mathematics, science, and technology Biology * Transition (genetics), a point mutation that changes a purine nucleotide to another purine (A ↔ G) or a pyrimidine nucleotide to another pyrimidine (C ↔ ...

effects to be applied to them. The artwork was designed by Bjørn Rybakken. Scala was also capable of working with

Genlock Genlock (generator locking) is a common technique where the video output of one source (or a specific reference signal from a signal generator) is used to synchronize other picture sources together. The aim in video applications is to ensure the ...

equipment to superimpose titles over footage played through the devices video input. Succeeding versions of the program on the same platform added features such as animation playback, more effects ("Wipes") and the ability to interact with multimedia devices through a programming language called "Lingua" (Latin for "language"). With its move to

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

, Scala became more complex and gained the ability to support languages such as Python and

Visual Basic Visual Basic is a name for a family of programming languages from Microsoft. It may refer to: * Visual Basic .NET (now simply referred to as "Visual Basic"), the current version of Visual Basic launched in 2002 which runs on .NET * Visual Basic (c ...

Scala5

In late 2008, Scala stopped calling their product line InfoChannel and went through a period of referring only to their "solutions". At the start of 2009, the product line was being called 'Scala5' and being referred to as such in all their press releases. Scala5 has three main components: Scala Designer, an authoring program which is used to create dynamic content, Scala Content Manager, which is used to manage and distribute content, and Scala Player, which plays back the distributed content.

Scala Enterprise

Scala's latest suite of

Digital signage Digital signage is a segment of electronic signage. Digital displays use technologies such as LCD, LED, projection and e-paper to display digital images, video, web pages, weather data, restaurant menus, or text. They can be found in publi ...

software is referred to as Scala Enterprise. The solution, a software suite consisting of Scala Designer, Scala Player, and Scala Content Manager officially launched in mid- 2013. At launch, release version 10.0 featured

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HT ...

and Android player support, the usage of interactive features on mobile devices to engage with retail and corporate communications audiences, and social media integrations. As of April 2018, the latest version of Scala Enterprise is version 11.05.

References

External links

* {{official, www.scala.com
Original animation of "LoScalatore" and other Scala demos
preserved for historical purposes on randelshofer.ch site
Scala's Trade Mark 'InfoChannel' (CTM 301275) has been cancelled by the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market
1987 establishments in Norway Norwegian companies established in 1987 Companies based in Pennsylvania Presentation software Amiga software Software companies of the United States Signage