It was founded by John Taft Potter (1911–1987), a prolific inventor of electronic instruments and magnetic computer storage devices.
[4][2] In 1948, John T. Potter filed for a patent that describes a random access mass storage device working in three dimensions that uses steel wires as the recording medium.
Potter with the help of George Comstock later tweaked the design to use half-inch magnetic tape (suspended in the frames using springs) instead of steel wire.
[3][6] National Cash Register would later work upon the patent to create Card Random-Access Memory, or CRAM, which was much more commercially successful than Potter's own device.
[12] While the bulk of Potter's facilities remained physically locked up amid bankruptcy proceedings, the company's 100-worker military products division continued to operate in spite of orders from above.