From doc OCR

Page 1

ON THE INTRODUCTION OF THE COGAR 4
Remarks by George R. Cogar, president, Cogar Corporation New York, January 18, 1971
Eighteen months ago, my colleagues and I, at a press conference here in New York, for the first time publicly announced the philosophy and the intentions of Cogar Corporation. We were then an infant Company of 165 people, entering a highly competitive industry, with a business plan that called for our introducing into that industry a technology which most of the industry’s experts were then proclaiming lay 5 to 8 years in the future.
Most of our discussion at that meeting was concentrated on the Technology Division in Wappingers Falls, New York. We described a memory market for computers that was doubling every 2-1/2 years and how Cogar anticipated a revolution in Memory Technology beginning in 1970 which would see monolithics dominate the memory market by 1974. We described a family of memory products which Cogar would be making available to com-puter manufacturers in model quantities in 1970 and major production capabilities in 1971.
Cogar has made good on those projections. We began deliveries of our first high performance memory products early in the
second calendar quarter of 1970, on our medium performance products in the third quarter, on our cost performance products by the fourth quarter of 1970. We are now in volume production on each of these three types of memory product.

Page 2

Extending these capabilities into the near term, during the third calendar quarter of this year, our Technology Division will be delivering the Cogar 70, a totally monolithic main memory system that will replace or enhance IBM 2365 add-on memory, making available to system 360 users, the reliability and cost/performance advantage of 370 type Technology.
With the introduction of the 370 system, the importance, the timing, in fact the domination of the memory market by Monolithic Technology, is no longer a point to be argued. Today we are of the opinion that Cogar is the only production source of monolithic memories. Moreover, Cogar is one of only two companies in the world who, as suppliers of computer systems, also has a fundamental capability for both develop-ment and production of advanced Monolithic Technology.
At the meeting held in September of 1969, I spoke in less detail, but with equal conviction, on the importance of the application of new Technologies to the development of equip-ments which could make meaningful, the enlar:ging computational power of computers.
For lack of a better name, appliances which could translate the energies represented by, computers into the solutions of the more day-to-day business problems, simplifying the interface between man and these new machines.

Page 3

3
Over the previous five years there has been much advertising and little invention directed at the solving of the real man/machine interface problems of how to get the computing power available to the person who really needs to solve a problem, systems which can begin in today’s environment, emulating the procedures and equipments presently in use, while affording the user a straightforward and low risk path to a more reliable and efficient management of the collection and processing of his business information.
Thus, a product to be viable in terms of the customer’s long term needs, must have an easily recognizable interface, an interface which is amenable to the actual environment of the potential user’s business, and its impact in terms of risk, start-up cost, etc., must be commensurate with the advantages it offers. This impact must be predictable within the perspective and to the satisfaction of the potential user.
Today, Cogar Corporation’s Information Systems Division unveils the first of what we envision as an enlarging family of equipments and systems which can contribute to the simplification and improved efficiency of the man/machine interface.
Between the 1890’s and 1960’s, there was a gradual evolution in the machines utilizable for the entry or conversion of media into a form acceptable for mechanized processing. The world knows this media as an IBM card and the conversion equipment as a keypunch and its cohort, the verifier.

Page 4

While history included a number of manufacturers of key-punches and verifiers, practically speaking, one manufacturer dominated the world market, and from this base maintained a presence within virtually every company which employed mechanized handling and processing of information.
There were a number of abortive attempts to compete with the keypunch card as a media conversion system. However, no serious inroads were made until 1965, with the introduction by a new company of a new device called a data recorder, which made practical for the first time, both in terms of cost and function, media conversion to magnetic tape.
The new system was an immediate success, which was to a great extend unrelated to direct functional or economic advan-tages. Nonetheless, many people again predicted an early demise to the punch card and a host of companies appeared on the scene with their copy of the key to tape concept. It then became all too obvious that only a limited percentage of the total keypunch, key verifier market was really impactable by these new key to tape devices.
Although the thruput advantages offered by this new generation of media conversion devices ‘fell short with regard to many of the functional advantages of the punched card as a unit record – and further that many of the procedural aspects of the information handling and processing base of the users had the punch card as an integral part, and while the user did indeed desire to modernize and improve the capture and inputting

Page 5

of his business information — he viewed the key to tape as at best an interim step toward his ultimate goal, that of making the data capture and inputting function interactive with his business data base.
The Cogar System 4 makes available for the first time, a system immediately and easily introduceable into the present work environment, while at the same time, offering a clear and identifiable path to the user’s ultimate goal, without the trauma of continually revising either hardware and – equally important — employee skills.