[TMC] Why ?

[Jim Haynes]

There are some parallels in what happened to Teletype Corp.  The company
was absolutely world class in designing and manufacturing complicated
mechanical equipment.  Electronics was not neglected - the company was
designing some transistorized equipment by the mid-1950s and toward
the end was manufacturing its own MOS integrated circuits.  But the
value of the plant and shop floor know-how for mechanical stuff
evaporated practically overnight as electronics replaced mechanisms.

A unique problem was that the company was owned by AT&T and was
pretty much dependent on the parent company for marketing and
product planning.  And AT&T was a near monopoly.  And there was a
consent decree which prohibited AT&T and its subsidiaries from
marketing any products not originally intended for the telephone
company's business (with an exception for government work).  So
the company was not really able to reach out to the end-user community.
There was also a prohibition against engaging in data processing work.
Some may remember the FCC's lengthy and ultimately futile effort to
determine the boundary between communication and computing.

Then there was the sale of the TWX business to Western Union, which
was to crash and burn soon after; and then the Bell System breakup.
After the Bell System breakup AT&T II was apparently being run by
some clowns who couldn't figure out what business they were in.

But in the competitive arena, the PC revolution created a demand for
low-cost hard-copy printers which the Japanese companies largely
filled.  And even before that the transition from hard copy terminals
to CRTs meant a transition from a near monopoly to a business that
had a large number of competing manufacturers, and that could be entered 
by a garage-type company.  Teletype made some good CRT terminals, after
a few false starts, but apparently was unable to sell them in competition
with all the others out there.

jhhaynes at earthlink dot net