[GreenKeys] EXTEL

[jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu]

EXTEL was started by Walt Zenner, retired R&D VP from Teletype, and
Peter Mero.  Their first product was a stock ticker that could be
programmed to print selected stocks only.  They called it the Quotemaster.
TransLux, the company that made projection stock display for brokerage
offices, bought the design and the name.  They never went into production.

The name Extel comes not from ex-Teletype, as has been rumored, but from
a private telegraph company used by the London Stock Exchange and named
Exchange Telegraph, usually abbreviated to Ex Tel.

With money from the sale of the stock ticker they developed a 5x7 dot
matrix printer.  Just in time, Texas Instruments announced a single
ROM chip that was perfectly suited to translating Baudot into dot
matrix.  

Mero was not enthusiastic about the product but had to sell it as the 
company was out of money.  He demonstrated to Reuters.  They liked it.

Reuters executives visited the factory.  Mero arranged for 11 actors to 
populate the factory during the visit, as there were only 5 real 
employees.

With the Reuters orders in hand, Mero raised funds for manufacturing the
printers by selling 51% of the company to Kemper Insurance.  At this point
Zenner resigned, still holding his half of the 49% of the remaining
shares.  About a quarter million printers were made during the lifetime
of the product.

The above is taken from a transcript of an interview with Walt Zenner,
done by phone in 2001.