Before starting his company, Martin graduated with a degree electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Early in the company's existence, Martin had aspirations of having a wide swath of industrial buyers who needed programmable controllers in factory environments.

[1] The company soon embraced this demographic, designing products for buyers desperate to get their hands on a microcomputer in the burgeoning market.

"[7] The Mike family of microcomputers were sold as kits or as fully-assembled units and were designed around a stack of circuit boards, each measuring 5.5 by 7 inches (14 by 18 cm), separated by spacers.

[12] Users enter instructions into the computer in octal form using the keypads, with the display updating in real-time to show the input as it is being typed.

[18] In the process it discontinued its kit computers, changed its name to Qwint Research, and moved its headquarters down the road from its original Commercial Avenue location in Northbrook.

[19] Instead of leaning into the rapidly developing personal computer market, however, Qwint decided to sell teletypes and printing terminals.

"[20] In Datamation, Philip H. Dorn attributed the fall of Martin Research's kit computer operations to the IBM Personal Computer becoming a commodity after its release in 1981, leading to the maturation of the microcomputer market where many pioneering companies, with their hobbyist-centric products, had difficulty competing.

[21] Qwint sold its first trio of products under the new brand in April 1981, with the KSR-743 transmit-and-receive printing terminal, the KSR-744 teletype, and the receive-only RO-743.

[24] The new business proved lucrative enough for Qwint to employ 130 in 1984; the same year, the company moved into a 46,907-square-foot facility in Lincolnshire, Illinois.