Stephen Bernard Dorsey is a serial

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

"You can call him a serial entrepreneur," said Bolton. who founded several companies, two of which, he built into international leaders among manufacturers of word processors. He currently is the CEO of babyTEL, an Internet Telephony Service Provider.

Biography

Dorsey was born in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

, on July 10, 1937 and is a

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

-trained engineer. His son Dan Dorsey, as part of his preparation to film a video about his father, made a March 2017 visit to an exhibit at The Personal Computer Museum by curator Syd Bolton that focused on

MICOM The United States Army Aviation and Missile Command (AMCOM) is a research and development and product management command of the United States Army. It develops, acquires, fields and sustains aviation, missile and unmanned aerial vehicles. AMCOM ...

Career

In 1967, Dorsey founded AES Data Inc. in Montreal, developing industrial remote-control applications. In 1972, AES launched the AES 90 computer, years before Microsoft and Apple were companies. Marketed as a "word processing system," the AES 90 was really the world's first general-purpose personal computer. AES went on to grow to more than $200 million in annual sales. The

Word Processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current word ...

was the precursor to Microsoft Word, Apple and other software based business applications. Dorsey launched his next venture, Micom Co., after selling his stake in AES in 1975, again selling word processing and office automation systems, but adding telecommunications equipment. Having directed Micom to $200 million in revenue, Dorsey sold it to

Philips NV Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), simply branded Philips, is a Dutch multinational health technology company that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, its world headquarters have been situated in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarter ...

in 1984 and founded Voice & Data Systems in 1991.

Micom concentrators

Micom became known for its ads, often run on the back pages of popular-in-their-day computer industry publications, with the slogan "Concentrate. Because it's cheaper!" The initial ads showed oranges and what resembled a can of frozen orange juice, with a "brand name" of Micom. After adding variations, they began advertising on television. The focus of the ads, within their telecommunications products, was their line of

Concentrator In telecommunications, the term concentrator has the following meanings: * In data transmission, a functional unit that permits a common path to handle more data sources than there are channels currently available within the path. A concentrator ...

s. Their print ads included the

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...

ed phrase "MICOM: MicroComputers for DataCommunications(tm)"

References

External links

CASE STUDY of companies founded by Stephen Dorsey
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dorsey, Stephen Bernard 1937 births Living people Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Businesspeople in information technology Businesspeople from Montreal Canadian company founders History of telecommunications