MASSCOMP

Originally conceived by C. Forbes Dewey of MIT and inventor Chester Schuler, it was founded formally in 1981.

[1] Its target market was real-time computing, with a focus on high-speed data acquisition.

[2] 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 (a spinoff company that was part public but majority-owned by Perkin-Elmer) in 1988[3][4] in a "junk bond deal" and assumed the Concurrent name, with aim of becoming the number one vendor in the real-time computing market.

[5] Perkin-Elmer sold this company as part of restructuring of their business due to low profits in the computer market.