Analyzing the figures, Amidon, ULIAT, and the industry’s future

The contributions of one inventor who said "I can do it," can not be quantified. The rise of an industry that supported that inventor can not be over estimated. In his first three challenging cases, inventor, Roger Amidon, and those who supported him, lifted the wristwatch industry from an ancient single-function time piece, to a new type of information display technology: multiplexing LCD displays. Revenues from the billions of units of multiplexed LCDs sold can be directly traced to the inventor who said "It can be done": Roger Amidon. See cases 1 - 3 for details of how an impossible engineering problem was solved by Amidon. Then read the rest of the cases to see how Amidon similarly transformed the computer industry in decade after decade. He is ready to do it again, with ULIAT.

Before the industry benefits from Roger’s next and most revolutionary breakthrough inventions, ULIAT will pay homage to Roger, with fair and ethical business practices that his benefactors should have performed throughout his career: patent prior to production. Roger has always served his employers extremely well and been modestly rewarded. ULIAT will promote fair treatment of all inventors under its wing. ULIAT will not tolerate the mainstream rush-to-market mentality that short-changes both the inventor’s ownership and sense of fulfillment, and harms customers with slapdash products.

This is an attempt to document the products and inventions that I have created or have helped to create or have caused to be created. They will be listed in an approximate chronological order.

The figures mentioned are educated guesses, and will not be totally accurate. In many cases, I was not in a position to know the actual sales figures. In other cases, I must rely on memory, as any documentation to support the figures is no longer available. I will attempt to explain both the "product" and the reason it was developed, on a case by case basis. There are other products and inventions that were never officially distributed in a commercial manner. I am only including those that I feel had a significant impact in my field.

Case 1: Product: Watches Sold >100,000 watches with this switch.

In the production of one of the first mass-produced digital "LCD display" watches, a reputable company manufactured a special "stem switch" for time setting.

Problem:

Our company found that over 20% of the switches were malfunctioning after installation in the watch. I was asked to design a "test jig" to be able to quickly test for the proper functioning of the switch.

Solution:

It was a complicated switch, and difficult to test - especially quickly. I designed an electronic logic board that was able to do the job. The design I created was considered revolutionary at the time, and involved a new theory in logic. This "product" greatly improved the quality of the company's final product, and also saved them tens of thousands of dollars.

Case 2: Product: Watches. Sold millions of watches adjusted with this system.

Our engineering team was asked to develop a test system to automatically adjust the time-keeping oscillator in a digital watch to be accurate to at least +/- 1 second per month. In order to make this adjustment automatically, we had devised a jig where you would place the watch core, push a button, and the watch would be probed and adjusted. A motorized screwdriver would turn the adjustment capacitor back and forth until the frequency of the oscillator was 100% correct.

Problem:

It was taking over 1 minute for the adjustment to be complete. This was too slow for a manufacturing situation.

Solution:

We were using the best possible reference for the frequency measurement. It was running at 10 MHz., and was oven controlled, calibrated against an atomic clock. Using that as our base, it took almost 4 seconds per frequency measurement. The screwdriver would turn the adjustment, then have to wait 4 seconds to discover if the frequency went up or down, and how close to being correct it was. It had to repeat this process many times. I invented a mechanism to allow the same accuracy of measurement but with my method, it only took 4/10ths of a second per measurement. We went from an average of 1 minute to an average of 6 seconds per watch.

Case 4: Product: "Smart" Terminals >10,000 sold for $499.00

Problem:

The current state of technology for CRT monitors at this time was "Dumb Terminals". They were often called "Glass Teletypes". They simply processed serial character streams, placing the characters on the screen. They also included a keyboard. But they were dumb.

Solution:

I was asked to help develop an embedded CPU, which would be included inside one of these dumb terminals, thus creating one of the world's first "Smart Terminals". It was 8008 based (the first truly successful 8 bit CPU) and the program was written with a mixture of "PL/M" and assembler. I helped the aid in the design of the hardware, but was primarily responsible for developing the software. It was a great success, and the company sold tens of thousand of these terminals.

Case 5: Product: "ZPU" - a Z80 CPU Card. > 100,000 sold at average $150.

Problem:

The state of personal computing at the time was the "Altair" 8080 based computer. It used an Intel 8080 microprocessor. A former Intel engineer formed a spin-off company, called "Zilog", and they created a major improvement to the 8080 processor, known as the "Z80". However, because it was not pin or circuit compatible with the 8080, it was of no use to the tens of thousand of 8080 based computers.

Solution:

Even though Zilog felt it couldn't be done, I was able to design a circuit board that would replace the 8080 board in all those "Altair" machines, allowing the use of the more powerful Z-80 processor. It was called the "ZPU Card", and it was a hugely successful product, selling over 10,000 boards at $269 each, and then 50,000 at $189 each (some 6-months later, when our cost on the Z-80 chip came down.)

Case 6: Product: Apple Monitor Sold >10,000 copies.

Problem:

As software was being written for those tens of thousand computers, one problem became evident. Each computer had it's own unique peripherals. Different keyboards (parallel, serial) different I/O (Teletype-style keyboard/printer, "dumb terminal", video board, etc.) It was becoming very difficult (and expensive) for the software people to build in all of the needed support for all of the combinations of devices.

Solution:

I felt that all I/O should be vectored to separate routines for each function. Each computer would then have the unique software "drivers" to handle the particular hardware on the machine. The application software then need not know the details of each device. If it had a character to "output" to the "console device", it would vector to a standard address, and the system would take over to place the output where it belonged. My program was called "The Apple Monitor", and it was sold nationwide in 1975 for $50 a copy. Over 10,000 were sold over a 3 year period. This was the beginning of "operating systems" for personal computers.

Case 7: Product: Zapple Monitor and SMB >50,000 sold at average of >$250

Problem:

The company that was formed for the sale of the previously mentioned Z-80 board decided the next product should be a further refinement of my original "Apple Monitor", but customized for the Z-80 processor. We called it "The Zapple Monitor", simply placing a "Z" in front of the original Apple name to designate it as a Z-80 based program.

Solution:

We decided to build a complete I/O board for controlling peripherals. We made the Zapple Monitor part of the board, and included it in a "masked ROM" (cheaper, and tamper proof). We also included 2 K of RAM on the board, for loading customized drivers when and if needed. This product was called the "TDL System Monitor Board" or "SMB" for short. It sold like crazy, and 20,000 were sold for $289, another 20,000 for $239. This was the beginning of the "BIOS ROM" concept. We later created an improved version, called "SMB-II" and sold thousands more for $299.

Case 8: Product: 16 K Memory Card for PC's >30,000 at average >$250

Problem:

The currently available memory for these Z-80 machines was mostly 4K (four thousand-byte) boards. They were unreliable, and drew a lot of current.

Solution:

A small memory manufacturing company announced a low current memory chip based on CMOS technology. Using their chip, I designed a single board product that would hold 16K of RAM memory, the largest of its kind at that time. We sold 10,000 of those at $389, 10,000 at $299, and another 10,000 at $189. It was a great success.

Case 9: Product: "Z-80 Basic Interpreter" sold >10,000 at $49

Problem:

Even though the Z-80 was a successful product, it was able to run software made for the 8080 processor as well. Of course this software did not take advantage of the richer instructions that the Z-80 was capable of. One of the more popular programs at that time was "Basic", the most popular one being Microsoft's version.

Solution:

I inquired if Microsoft was going to make a newer version of their Basic that would be designed specifically for the Z-80. They said no. I therefore decided to write a comparable version of Basic, but specifically for the Z-80. It was called "TDL Z-80 Basic". It was 1/4 smaller in size than the Microsoft version, and ran 20% faster. It was a success, and we sold well over 10,000 copies at $49.

Case 10: Product: "TPM Operating System" Sold >100,000 at $50

Problem:

Hard drives were beginning to be affordable to the home computer user. Initially there were many attempts to design disk operating systems. Each one had it's own structure and were mostly incompatible with each other. Finally, a clear winner began to emerge, called "CP/M". Since we were a "Z-80" based company, we asked the creator of CP/M if he would do a "Z-80" version for us. He said no. He felt the "Z-80" was a "flash-in-the-pan" and that the "8080" was the processor for the future. (In the long run, he was sort of correct, since the "8086" was Intel's next processor, and all of the Intel processors since can still run native "8086" software. However, the "8086" was NOT compatible with the 8080, so he was not truly correct.)

Solution:

I wrote an entire disk operating system, called "TPM", which was 20% faster and had more features than CP/M. In a later version, called "TPM-II" I included "time & date" stamps on the files and also included dynamic partitioning of files into 255 different directories, a pre-cursor to the Windows "folder" concept. We sold 20,000 copies of TPM and TPM-II. A final version of TPM, called "TPM-III" was developed for the Epson QX-10 computer. It added more features and included directory screening and file protection technology. That version was "included" with the sale of the Epson "QX-10" model personal computer, along with the "Zapple Monitor". They sold over 75,000 of those machines, @ > $3,000.

Case 11: Product: Valdocs Sold >100,000 copies at $300

Problem:

Word processing was still very elementary in 1982, when Epson asked me to help develop a "state of the art" computer system, which I did. I was working with a few other people on this design and it became evident to all of us that to make this hardware truly revolutionary, we had to develop the software for it as well.

Solution:

A complete integrated approach was designed, with the "center piece" being a newly designed word processor designed by and for writers rather than by computer engineers. We were responsible for the phrase "What you see is what you get!" with our word processing system. It also included a spreadsheet, drawing program, support for the entire line of Epson Printers built-in, and the TPM-III operating system. The name for this product was "Valdocs", for Valuable Documents. It was very well received by the public, especially by writers. There were thousands of letters from buyers of this machine that were amazed at how simple it was to use, and how powerful the word processor was. Some "technical" reviews did complain that the word processor was slow, but considering it was a floppy disk based system, it was tolerable, and we rarely heard that complaint from the actual users of the software.

In 1989 I realized that Video Games were going through a re-birth. I had been involved with the Z-80 products during the initial popularity of video games, and I watched it "tank" in the early 1980's. In 1986, Nintendo began selling its Nintendo Entertainment System. It started slowly, but by 1988 it had become very popular. I researched the game field and felt I could contribute. I designed a game cartridge for that Nintendo system that I felt was unique. However, I needed a producer and distributor. I began making the rounds of the active game companies, and showed my game to the executives at these companies. Each and every one thought it was a terrific product. However, they declined producing it because they felt that the "kids" wouldn't take to it, and they felt it wouldn't sell well enough to make a sufficient amount of money. I really think they were wrong on this. My local testing of my cartridge with the neighborhood kids said otherwise. However, I was offered a challenge by one of the game companies I had visited. Nintendo had just released their "Gameboy" hand-held system. They wanted me to build a game for that system. It took almost a year, but it was a great game, and sold well. It was called "Turn and Burn", a combat flight simulator. Many of their in-house programmers felt it couldn't be done, but I pulled it off. It was the beginning of a new career.

The following is a list of games developed where I was either the only programmer, the lead programmer, or contributed substantial amounts of programming to the creation of the game. I was also involved in various parts of the design for most of these games. Please remember that the following sales figures are meant as a guide, and may not be totally accurate.

There is substantial evidence Amidon ranks among the pioneers of the computer industry. When Amidon has said "it can be done," he was able to do it, often in the face of doubt by the original technology’s inventors. Companies who supported Amidon have benefited from substantial and sustained revenues.