Willow Peripherals, Inc., was an American computer hardware company active from 1986 to 2004 and based in New York City. The company was well known for their

frame grabber A frame grabber is an electronic device that captures (i.e., "grabs") individual, digital still frames from an analog video signal or a digital video stream. It is usually employed as a component of a computer vision system, in which video frames ...

and television output adapter cards for the

IBM Personal Computer The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a ...

and adapters. Willow was based in Port Morris in the

South Bronx The South Bronx is an area of the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of the Bronx. The area comprises neighborhoods in the southern part of the Bronx, such as Concourse, Bronx, Concourse, Mott Haven, Bronx, Mott Haven, Melrose, B ...

for most of its existence.

History

Willow Peripherals was originally incorporated in

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

in 1984 by founders Jonathan Vail, Bill Bares, Valerie Gardner, Calvin Berger and Howard Alexander. The company's first products were generic

expansion card In computing, an expansion card (also called an expansion board, adapter card, peripheral card or accessory card) is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot (also referred to as a bus sl ...

s and peripherals for the

. In 1986, the company moved to Port Morris in the

and began developing video-related products for the IBM PC shortly afterward. The company leased an 8,100-square-foot facility in Port Morris for a bargain $2 per square foot, a rate that barely grew in the decade that followed. The company however suffered from a lack of employees interested in working for the company, owing to the South Bronx's contemporary reputation for crime and urban decay. Between October 1992 and September 1993, the company's workforce dwindled from 25 workers to only 10. . Manufacturing of Willow's products was originally done out of their Bronx headquarters, but owing to increasing restrictions on environmental safeguards in New York in the early 1990s, production was outsourced to a factory in

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

. The company's first video-related product was the Publishers' VGA, a

, released in September 1988. The Publishers' VGA was relatively low-cost and had the advantage of being able to capture a single frame from a composite video source without the video source needing to be paused. The card tied in with Willow's Video Capture Software (VCAP), which could export the frame grab to a number of image file formats, including

TIFF Tag Image File Format or Tagged Image File Format, commonly known by the abbreviations TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is w ...

, PCX, and

EPS An extended play (EP) is a Sound recording and reproduction, musical recording that contains more tracks than a Single (music), single but fewer than an album. Contemporary EPs generally contain up to eight tracks and have a playing time of 1 ...

. Later in 1988, the company introduced the VGA-TV, a device which could output full

VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the IBM PC compatible industry within three years. T ...

video over a composite signal, the first product on the market with this purpose. In 1990, the product was revised as the VGA-TV GE/O, which supported the superior

S-Video S-Video (also known as separate video, Y/C, and erroneously Super-Video) is an analog video signal format that carries standard-definition video, typically at 525 lines or 625 lines. It encodes video luma and chrominance on two separate chann ...

signal, achieving near perfect reproduction of standard VGA pictures on certain equipped

NTSC NTSC (from National Television System Committee) is the first American standard for analog television, published and adopted in 1941. In 1961, it was assigned the designation System M. It is also known as EIA standard 170. In 1953, a second ...

television sets, as well as genlocking, allowing multiple video sources to be overlaid through a video mixer without instability. The VGA-TV saw widespread use in many disparate areas, including in the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...

, where it was used to pipe the output of PC

teleprompter A teleprompter, also known as an autocue, is a display device that prompts the person speaking with an electronic visual text of a speech or script. Using a teleprompter is similar to using cue cards. The screen is in front of, and usually bel ...

software for Presidents

George H. W. Bush George Herbert Walker BushBefore the outcome of the 2000 United States presidential election, he was usually referred to simply as "George Bush" but became more commonly known as "George H. W. Bush", "Bush Senior," "Bush 41," and even "Bush th ...

and

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...

to read; as well as in the film industry, where it facilitated certain special effects. Willow's website stopped updating in 2000 and went dark four years later. Compare with next available archived snapshot.

References

{{reflist, colwidth=30em 1984 establishments in New York (state) 2004 disestablishments in New York (state) American companies established in 1984 American companies disestablished in 2004 Computer companies established in 2004 Computer companies disestablished in 2004 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer companies based in New York (state) Defunct computer hardware companies