It's like a story from an alternate version of reality - I think of all the articles I've read touting 'the two Steves', and this is the first time I've read about Lore Harp McGovern.
> ... CP/M for the in-development Vector 4. Switching would potentially mean redesigning the next line of machines.<p>The Vector 4 and 4-S did receive MS-DOS 2.0 support at some point. I have a working Vector 4 with MS-DOS, and this floppy[1] looks to be for the 4-S. Although larger changes would have been needed to become more "IBM compatible" (of which 4-S was a step).<p>> They rejected her plan to develop a new machine that would focus on networking and telecommunications, which she saw as the future of computing.<p>Vector was one of the first shipping a product using twisted-pair networking[2]. It seems that didn't make much of a splash; very little information is available. It was a S-100 board, which maybe limited market appeal by that time.<p>1. <a href="https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29115" rel="nofollow">https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29115</a>
2. <a href="https://groups.google.com/g/s100computers/c/Q8BUj8xHp5E/" rel="nofollow">https://groups.google.com/g/s100computers/c/Q8BUj8xHp5E/</a> (my post)
I just wanted to say that the framing of this intro is really, really good. Kudos to the author, who is knocking this series out of the park—hell of a writer.
I remember seeing a Vector Graphics computer at a computer store around 1978, when I was shopping for my first computer. I was excited by the name Vector Graphics, only to be disappointed to learn that it was a meaningless name, and their computers had nothing to do with vectors or graphics. I vaguely remember that it was a generic business machine (maybe with a 16 bit version?) with nothing to recommend it to a hobbyist over the competition.<p>In that era Apple had an enormous lead in graphics, software, and peripheral cards.
It’s not just that she overcame odds as a woman in the tech business that amazes, but that she was so clearly someone who cared about people, and chose to risk her business and reputation more than once to stay true to her values. That’s perhaps even more rare in this industry than being a successful female CEO.
If you enjoyed this, back in 2015 I wrote a feature about Lore Harp McGovern and her business partners for Fast Company that goes into the creation of Vector Graphic in detail: <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/3047428/how-two-bored-1970s-housewives-helped-create-the-pc-industry" rel="nofollow">https://www.fastcompany.com/3047428/how-two-bored-1970s-hous...</a>
article says<p>> <i>With her friend Carole Ely, she grew their company, Vector Graphic, into a major manufacturer of microcomputers</i><p>wikipedia says<p>> <i>Vector Graphic sales peaked in 1982, by which time the company was publicly traded, at $36 million. It faltered soon after...</i><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_Graphic" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_Graphic</a><p>taking a microcomputer company from nothing to a near-billion-dollar market cap on the public markets is nothing to sneeze at. on the other hand, tens of thousands of microcomputers per year doesn't qualify as 'a major manufacturer of microcomputers'. commodore sold three hundred thousand c64s in 01982. apple broke a billion dollars in sales that year. lore harp's company had almost 4% of that. you could reasonably describe mits, imsai, commodore, apple, atari, and tandy/radio shack as 'major manufacturers of microcomputers' in that time period, but not vector. they were small fry, like heath/zenith or cromemco<p>this unforgivable level of puffery suggests that much of the article may be false (as valley_guy_12 points out in <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39972703">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39972703</a>, this puffery is something it has in common with the company's name, even if it doesn't quite rise to the level of 'intergalactic digital research')
Interestingly enough the empire fell when the Vector 4 suffered the same fate of Commodore (albeit later) when the Vector 4 specs were leaked. Although, there were a few blunders on the wikipedia page but this was also indicative of the era during the IBM PC / DOS dominance.<p>[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_Graphic" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_Graphic</a>
This story of Carole Ely and Lore Harp reminded me a little of the (fictional) women in <i>Halt and Catch Fire</i>. Fantastic show. I wonder if Vector Graphic was an inspiration for the writers.
"Vector was late in moving from machines with 8K processing to 16K, which had become the new industry standard." I was interested in S100 bus machines, but couldn't afford one! If I'd only known, I'd have borrowed to buy a Vector Graphic S100 back then, just for the novelty of having an 8192-bit CPU! ;-)
In case anyone wondered, here you can see the manual for one of their machines' video cards (I am not sure where it fits in their range).<p><a href="http://www.s100computers.com/Hardware%20Manuals/Vector%20Graphic/Vector%20Graphic%20High%20Resolution%20Graphics%20Board%20(Rev.%201-D).pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.s100computers.com/Hardware%20Manuals/Vector%20Gra...</a><p>Sadly both the display technology and the graphics memory are raster. I was hoping it would be something like the Vectrex or the Imlac.
Also see “Steve" Shirley, she build a company of coders, women only [0], from the '60s on with remote first :-)<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Shirley" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Shirley</a><p>[0] She hired all the female IBM coders who couldn't make a career at IBM
I do believe there are unique challenges to being a woman in tech, but the odds seem in favor of women doing well both back in the 70's and today with todays stats having roughly 20% of CS grads being female while some 23% of SWEs are female. That suggests there are more women in software jobs than women who have been pursing that career academically. What stats do you see that suggest the odds are against women in tech? I frequently recommend tech as a good field for young girls, but I'll probably not do that anymore if the odds are truly against them.
Isn't it kind of depressing that it's virtually and effectively impossible for anyone to replicate a comparable success story like this in 2024, short of maybe being a billionaire nepo baby?
Backwards in high heels, indeed<p>Behind every successful woman is a man, who tried to stop her: Not quite, but her husband could not cope with a wife better than him. Perhaps she was "out of his league"?