The characteristic ND dotted logo used from 1973

Norsk Data was a (mini-)computer manufacturer located in Oslo, Norway. Existing from 1967 to 1992, it had its most active period in the years from the early 1970s to the late 1980s. At the company's peak in 1987, it employed over 4,500 people. In 1994, most of the assets of Norsk Data were purchased by Microsoft Corporation. Image File history File links ND-logo. ... Image File history File links ND-logo. ... Minicomputer (colloquially, mini) is a largely obsolete term for a class of multi-user computers which make up the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems (traditionally, mainframe computers) and the smallest single-user systems (microcomputers or personal computers). ... The NASA Columbia Supercomputer. ... Manufacturing is the transformation of raw materials into finished goods for sale, or intermediate processes involving the production or finishing of semi-manufactures. ... County District Viken Municipality NO-0301 Administrative centre Oslo Mayor (2004) Per Ditlev-Simonsen (H) Official language form BokmÃ¥l Area  - Total  - Land  - Percentage Ranked 224 454 km² 426 km² 0. ...

Historical overview

The origins of Norsk Data go back to the development of digital computers at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment at Kjeller, Norway, where several early computers had been designed, such as the SAM and the SAM 2 aka FLINK. The Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (NDRE), known in Norway as Forsvarets forskningsinstitutt (FFI) conducts research and development on behalf of the Norwegian Armed Forces and provides expert advice to political and military defence leaders. ... Kjeller is located near Lillestrøm in the municipality of Skedsmo, Norway. ...

The success of this program resulted in the founding of A/S Nordata - Norsk Data Elektronikk on August 8, 1967 by Lars Monrad Krohn, Per Bjørge and Rolf Skår. The company became a significant supplier of minicomputers to many research projects, in particular to CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, where they were chosen to produce the computers for many projects, starting with their Nuclear Accelerator Project, Norsk Data's international breakthrough contract. The other market segments Norsk Data succeeded in were process control, Norwegian municipal administration data centers, newspapers, as well as parts of the educational, health, and university sector. is the 220th day of the year (221st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar (the link is to a full 1967 calendar). ... Lars Monrad-Krohn (born July 14, 1933) is a Norwegian electronics engineer and entrepreneur. ... CERN logo The Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire (English: European Organization for Nuclear Research), commonly known as CERN, pronounced (or in French), is the worlds largest particle physics laboratory, situated just northwest of Geneva on the border between France and Switzerland. ... Geneva (pronunciation //; French: Genève //, German:   //, Italian: Ginevra //, Romansh: Genevra) is the second most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich), and is the most populous city of Romandy (the French-speaking part of Switzerland). ... A municipality is an administrative entity composed of a clearly defined territory and its population and commonly referring to a city, town, or village, or a small grouping of them. ... A data center is a facility used for housing a large amount of electronic equipment, typically computers and communications equipment. ...

For a period in 1987, Norsk Data was the second largest company by stock value in Norway, second only to Norsk Hydro, and employed over 4,500 people. Norsk Hydro ASA is a Norwegian oil and energy and integrated aluminium company, headquartered in Oslo. ...

After a long period of exceptional success, the Norsk Data "empire" collapsed in the early 1990s, mostly due to not realizing the impact of the PC revolution (as well as the growing competition from UNIX-based workstations). Norsk Data technology was continued by Dolphin. See more about Norsk Data here (Norwegian). Norsk Data was purchased by Telenor and went through several rebrands and relaunches. The Altair 8800 was among the first microcomputers to be affordable by an individual, although it initially lacked peripherals and memory. ... Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX®) is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. ... Sun SPARCstation 1+, 25 MHz RISC processor from early 1990s A workstation, such as a Unix workstation, RISC workstation or engineering workstation, is a high-end desktop or deskside microcomputer designed for technical applications. ... Dolphin Interconnect Solutions is a manufacturer of high speed data communication systems, located in Natick, Massachusetts, USA and Oslo, Norway. ...

In the UK Telenor kept the Norsk Data name for several years, focusing in on Hardware support and maintenance contracts, mainly with HMCG and local governments.

At the tail end of the dot com boom Telenor decided to try and expand the service by acquiring the ISP CIX and a hosting company in Manchester, XTML. The name and business focus of this group of companies was changed several times in the early 21st Century, being known as Nextra (along with the acquired CIX & XTML), Telenor Business Solutions (still with CIX & XTML) and finally reverting to ND Norsk Data once CIX & XTML had been resold to Pipex, reportedly for less than 10% of the purchase price. CIX (Originally Compulink Information eXchange) was one of the earliest British Internet Service Providers. ...

Much of the loss in value of the acquired companies was put down to the astronomical "goodwill" payment included in the purchase price during the "dotcom boom" and the poor interim management of the group.

Hardware

Significant Norsk Data computer models include:

• NORD-1, 16-bit minicomputer launched in 1968, could run TSS (see below) from 1971
• NORD-5, 32-bit supermini launched in 1972
• NORD-9
• NORD-10, 16-bit mini lauched in 1973
• NORD-10/S, version of the Nord-10 with cache, paging, and other improvements
• NORD-50, second generation 32-bit supermini in 1975
• NORD-100, 16-bit, from 1978, later renamed ND-100. First single-board 16-bit minicomputer CPU.
• ND-500, third generation 32-bit supermini in 1981
• ND-505, 28-bit computer allowed through the CoCom embargo of the Eastern bloc
• ND-5000 ("Samson"), fourth generation 32-bit supermini in 1987 (5400, 5700, 5800)
• ND-5850 ("Rallar"), fifth generation 32-bit supermini in 1987
• ND-5900-2, ND-5900-3, and ND-5904, dual-, triple- and quad-CPU 5000 series machines.

The NORD-1 was Norsk Datas first minicomputer. ... In computer science, 16-bit is an adjective used to describe integers that are at most two bytes wide, or to describe CPU architectures based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. ... Minicomputer (colloquially, mini) is a largely obsolete term for a class of multi-user computers which make up the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems (traditionally, mainframe computers) and the smallest single-user systems (microcomputers or personal computers). ... 32-bit is a term applied to processors, and computer architectures which manipulate the address and data in 32-bit chunks. ... A supermini can be: A car size class used in Europe. ... Two adjacent NORD-10/S systems NORD-10 was a 16-bit minicomputer produced by Norsk Data. ... The NORD-100 was a 16-bit minicomputer series made by Norsk Data, introduced in 1979. ... The ND-500 was a 32-bit supermini-computer delivered in 1981. ... The ND-500 was a 32-bit supermini-computer delivered in 1981. ... 28-bit is a term applied to processors, and computer architectures where the databus is 28 bits wide. ... CoCom is an acronym for Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls. ... For delayed access after publication, see Embargo (academic publishing). ... A map of the Eastern Bloc 1948-1989. ... A typical large ND-500 configuration. ... A typical large ND-500 configuration. ...

Software

In addition to hardware, Norsk Data also produced a wide range of system and application software:

• NORD-TSS – Nord Time Sharing System from 1971
• SINTRAN – Operating system for Nord 10 and later models, version III from 1973, III/VS in 1974
• SIBAS database in 1975
• FORTRAN compiler
• ND-Paint Graphic editing - Windows based
• BASIC compiler developed in Kiel and Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany with the CAT-System (Commom Abstract Tree-Language) using the Vienna Development Method, 1983
• COBOL compiler
• C compiler developed in Kiel and Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany with the CAT-System using the Vienna Development Method, 1984
• PLANC compiler - PLANC was the system language of Norsk Data - a language "defined by its implementation"
• Pascal compiler developed by Shaq and Karl Malone, in Germany with the CAT-System using the Vienna Development Method, 1982
• PED – "Programmer's EDitor" Screen oriented text editor
• LED – "Language-sensitive programmer's EDitor" Screen oriented text editor and debugger
• ND-NOTIS – Integrated, modular word processing and office application suite
• NORTEXT – typesetting system integrated with ND-NOTIS and SIBAS

Along with the above listed applications two batch languages were included, called JEC and XCOM. JEC was used primarily as a simple batch job controller, whereas XCOM was used for much more involved routines such as operating system patches etc. Most of the application came in two different editions, one compiled for Nord-100-series and one compiled for Nord-1100 series. (Type of Multi-Tasking Operating Systems) Time Sharing system is a type of Multi-Tasking Operating Systems which operates in an interactive mode with a quick response time. ... SINTRAN is the operating system for the Norsk Data line of mini computers. ... // An operating system (OS) is a set of computer programs that manage the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... A database management system (DBMS) is computer software designed for the purpose of managing databases. ... Fortran (previously FORTRAN[1]) is a general-purpose[2], procedural,[3] imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing. ... A diagram of the operation of a typical multi-language, multi-target compiler. ... Microsoft Windows is the name of several families of proprietary software operating systems by Microsoft. ... BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of high-level programming languages. ... Kiel ( ) is a city in northern Germany and the capital of the Bundesland Schleswig-Holstein. ... Mülheim an der Ruhr is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. ... Vienna Development Method (VDM) is a program development method based on formal specification using the VDM specification language (VDM-SL), with tool support. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... C is a general-purpose, block structured, procedural, imperative computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system. ... PLANC (pronounced PLAN C) is a high level computer programming language which was only ever found on Norsk Data Mini Computers. ... Pascal is an imperative computer programming language, developed in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a language particularly suitable for structured programming. ... Shaquille Rashaun ONeal (born March 6, 1972 in Newark, New Jersey), commonly known as Shaq, is one of the most dominant basketball players today and currently plays for the Miami Heat of the National Basketball Association. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Notepad is the standard text editor for Microsoft Windows A text editor is a piece of computer software for editing plain text. ... LED was a programmers editor by Norsk Data running on the ND-500 series of computers running SINTRAN III. It featured automating indenting, pretty-printing of source code, and integration with the compiler environment. ... Notepad is the standard text editor for Microsoft Windows A text editor is a piece of computer software for editing plain text. ... A debugger is a computer program that is used to test and debug other programs. ... ND-NOTIS was a tightly integrated yet modular office automation suite by Norsk Data introduced in the early 80s, running on the SINTRAN III platform on both ND-100 and ND-500 architectures. ... Word processing, in its now-usual meaning, is the use of a word processor to create documents using computers. ...

When ND discontinued NOTIS development in 1989, it was continued by NOTIS AS, which later changed its name to Maxware

A point of note: the World Wide Web originated when Tim Berners-Lee wrote the Enquire program on a SINTRAN III mini at CERN.^[1] WWWs historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. ... Sir Tim Berners-Lee Sir Tim (Timothy John) Berners-Lee, KBE (TimBL or TBL) (b. ... ENQUIRE was an early project (in the second half of 1980) of Tim Berners-Lee, who went on to create the World Wide Web in 1989. ... CERN logo The Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire (English: European Organization for Nuclear Research), commonly known as CERN, pronounced (or in French), is the worlds largest particle physics laboratory, situated just northwest of Geneva on the border between France and Switzerland. ...

Notes

1. ^ See Tim Berners-Lee's FAQ [1] or the ENQUIRE article

ENQUIRE was an early project (in the second half of 1980) of Tim Berners-Lee, who went on to create the World Wide Web in 1989. ...

External links

• Official Website - Now owned by Microsoft
• Norsk Data Forum - a Norwegian site operated by ND ex-employees.
• A commercial Norsk Data-related home page
• Norsk Data Pakistan Private Limited
• Norsk Data hall
• Computer-Archiv - Norsk Data
• A Norsk Data page operated by Tore Bekkedal