Unisys ICON
Encyclopedia
The ICON was a computer built specifically for use in schools, to fill a standard created by the Ontario Ministry of Education
. They were widely used, mostly in high school
s in the mid- to late 1980s, but disappeared after that time with the widespread introduction of PC
s and Apple Macintoshes. They were also known as the CEMCorp ICON, Burroughs ICON, and finally Unisys ICON when Burroughs and Sperry Corporation
merged to form Unisys
in 1986. The machine was also nicknamed the bionic beaver.
sensed that microcomputers could be an important component of education. In June the Minister of Education
, Bette Stephenson
, announced the need for computer literacy for all students and formed the Advisory Committee on Computers in Education to guide their efforts. She stated that:
According to several contemporary sources, Stephenson was the driving force behind the project; "whenever there was a problem she appears to have 'moved heaven and earth' to get it back on the tracks."
The Ministry recognized that a small proportion of teachers and other school personnel were already quite involved with microcomputers and that some schools were acquiring first-generation machines. These acquisitions were uneven, varying in brand and model not just between school boards, but among schools within boards and even classroom to classroom. Among the most popular were the Commodore PET
which had a strong following in the new computer programming
classes due to its tough all-in-one construction and built-in support for Microsoft BASIC
, and the Apple II
which had a wide variety of educational software, mostly aimed at early education.
The Ministry wanted to encourage uses of microcomputers that supported its curriculum guidelines and was willing to underwrite the development of software for that purpose. However, the wide variety of machines being used meant that development costs had to be spread over several platforms. Additionally, many of the curriculum topics they wanted to cover required more storage or graphics capability than at least some of the machines then in use, if not all of them. Educational software was in its infancy, and many hardware acquisitions were made without a clear provision for educational software or a plan for use.
A series of Policy Memos followed outlining the Committee's views. Policy Memo 47 stated that computers are to be used creatively, and for information retrieval; at the time most systems were used solely for programming. They also announced funding for the development of educational software on an estimated 6000 machines. The Ministry decided that standardizing the computers would reduce maintenance costs, and allow for the development of consistent educational software. The Ministry contracted the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATA) to help develop specifications for the new system.
The first set of concerns were rendered moot when the specifications were introduced in March 1983 in the "Functional Requirements for Microcomputers for Educational Use in Ontario Schools--Stage I." The physical design required a PET-like all-in-one case, headphones output for voice and sound effects, and a trackball
for mouse-like pointing support. Inside the case, the specification called for a processor and support systems to allow a multitasking
operating system
to be used, selecting the Intel 80186
as the CPU. Color graphics were specified, at least as an option, along with monochrome and color monitors on top. Voice synthesis was built in, and the keyboard provided for accented characters. Additionally, the systems would include no local storage at all, and would instead rely on a networked
file server
containing a hard drive.
The specification was considerably in advance of the state of the art
of the time, and when it was delivered commentators immediately reversed their earlier concerns and suggested the machine was too powerful, and would therefore be available in too small numbers.
(OISE) was asked to convert 30 existing programs to the new machine. In order to be able to afford what was expected to be an expensive machine, the Ministry announced a special "Recognized Extraordinary Expenditure" (REE) grant that would provide for up to 75% of the purchase costs of machines meeting the "Grant Eligible Microcomputer Systems" or "G.E.M.S." specifications.
At the time, only the ICON met the GEMS requirements, which cut its purchase price from around $2500 to a mere $495 (in USD, $2700/$696 CAD) -- less expensive than most existing microcomputers. The entire program was politically explosive throughout its gestation as a result, causing a continual stream of news stories. Critics complained that other machines could be bought for half the cost, and when IBM
released the PC/AT
in 1984 there was a machine that now competed with it technically. Around this time other platforms, such as the Waterloo PORT networking system, gained approval for the government support that had originally been the province of the ICON.
The basic ICON design had reached "beta quality" after just over a year, using off the shelf parts, the hardware manufactured by Microtel and operating system
from Quantum Software Systems
. The original Microtel machines were first introduced to Ontario schools in 1984 in small numbers, packaged in a short-lived dark brown case. At this point Burroughs Canada was brought in to sell and support them. It wasn't long after this that Sperry
and Burroughs merged to form Unisys
in 1986. Several generations of ICON machines were produced, evolving steadily to become more and more PC-like. They were built into the early 1990s, but by this point were used almost entirely for running DOS and Windows programs.
The Ministry ceased all support for the ICON in 1994, and Archives Ontario declined to take ICON hardware and copies of the ICON software, which were destroyed. This was controversial in its own right, as others maintained that it could be sent to other schools that lacked extensive Information Technology. Despite the development of the ICON program, equality among schools was not assured because each school community could afford different capital outlays depending on the parents' affluence.
/file server
model, with no storage local to the workstations. Both the workstations and the servers were similar internally, based on Intel 80186
microprocessor
s, and connected to each other using ARCNET
. Several upgrades were introduced into the ICON line over time. The ICON2 sported a redesigned case, a detached keyboard with integrated trackball, expanded RAM, and facilities for an internal hard disk. The CPU was upgraded to the 386 in the Series III, while an "ICON-on-a-card" for PCs also appeared.
The original ICON workstations were housed in a large wedge-shaped steel case, with a full-sized keyboard mounted slightly left-of-center and a trackball mounted to the right. A rubber bumper-strip ran along the front edge, a precaution against a particular type of cut users sometimes got from the PET's sharp case. The EGA
monitor was mounted on top of a tilt-and-swivel mount, a welcome improvement on the PET. It also included TI
's TMS 5220 speech chip, originally designed for the TI-99, and would speak the rather confusing phrase "dhtick" when starting up. Early Microtel machines were dark brown, but the vast majority of examples in the classroom were a more nondescript beige.
The fileserver, sometimes referred to as the LexICON, was a simple box with an internal 10MB hard drive and a 5.25" floppy drive opening to the front. Later Lexicons included a 64MB hard disk, divided into two partitions. Unlike the PET's floppy system, however, users of the ICON used Unix commands to copy data to their personal floppy disks from its "natural" location in the user's home directory on the hard drive.
Both the client and server ran the Unix-like
QNX
as their operating system with the addition of network file-sharing, the basic portions of it embedded in ROM
. To this they added a NAPLPS
/Telidon-based graphics system, which was intended to be used with the trackball to make interactive programs. The system included a Paint programme that used the trackball, but did not include a usable GUI
, although there were several attempts to produce one. QNX 2.0.1 included a modest one called "House", and another was built at least to the prototype stage by Helicon Systems in Toronto and appeared in one form as Ambience, though its capabilities were limited. A later upgrade called ICONLook improved upon this greatly, but it was apparently too slow to use realistically. Helicon Systems also produced a MIDI interface for the original ICON.
The biggest problem for the machine was a lack of software. The ICON was originally designed to let teachers create and share their own lessonware, using a simple hypertext-based system where pages could either link to other pages or run programs written in "C". The "anyone can create lessonware" model was rejected by the Ministry of Education before the ICON shipped (in favour of a model where the Ministry funded and controlled all lessonware), leaving the ICON with only the QNX command line interface and the Cemcorp-developed text editor application.
The various Watcom
programming languages were quickly ported to the system, but beyond that, the educational software teachers expected was few and far between. The Ministry contracted for a number of applications, but the small target market and the sometimes-difficult procedure required to secure such contracts were significant obstacles for realistic commercial development.
operating system is alive and well, if particularly different from its earliest versions. In addition to being present in over 100 vehicle models (navigation systems
, telematics
, speech recognition
, bluetooth
hands-free systems, etc.), it also powers the Cisco
CRS-1 and RIM's
BlackBerry PlayBook
.
Ministry of Education (Ontario)
The Ministry of Education is the agency of the Ontario government in the Canadian province of Ontario responsible for government policy, funding, curriculum planning and direction in all levels of public education, including elementary and secondary schools.This Ministry is responsible for...
. They were widely used, mostly in high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
s in the mid- to late 1980s, but disappeared after that time with the widespread introduction of PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
s and Apple Macintoshes. They were also known as the CEMCorp ICON, Burroughs ICON, and finally Unisys ICON when Burroughs and Sperry Corporation
Sperry Corporation
Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the twentieth century...
merged to form Unisys
Unisys
Unisys Corporation , headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, United States, and incorporated in Delaware, is a long established business whose core products now involves computing and networking.-History:...
in 1986. The machine was also nicknamed the bionic beaver.
Origins
In 1981, three years after the first usable microcomputers appeared, the Ontario Ministry of EducationMinistry of Education (Ontario)
The Ministry of Education is the agency of the Ontario government in the Canadian province of Ontario responsible for government policy, funding, curriculum planning and direction in all levels of public education, including elementary and secondary schools.This Ministry is responsible for...
sensed that microcomputers could be an important component of education. In June the Minister of Education
Ministry of Education (Ontario)
The Ministry of Education is the agency of the Ontario government in the Canadian province of Ontario responsible for government policy, funding, curriculum planning and direction in all levels of public education, including elementary and secondary schools.This Ministry is responsible for...
, Bette Stephenson
Bette Stephenson
Bette Mildred Stephenson, OC, O.Ont is a Canadian medical doctor and former politician in Ontario. She served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1975 to 1987, and was a cabinet minister in the Progressive Conservative governments of Bill Davis and Frank Miller.-Medical career:Born in...
, announced the need for computer literacy for all students and formed the Advisory Committee on Computers in Education to guide their efforts. She stated that:
It is now clear that one of the major goals that education must add to its list of purposes, is computer literacy. The world of the very near future requires that all of
us have some understanding of the processes and uses of computers."
According to several contemporary sources, Stephenson was the driving force behind the project; "whenever there was a problem she appears to have 'moved heaven and earth' to get it back on the tracks."
The Ministry recognized that a small proportion of teachers and other school personnel were already quite involved with microcomputers and that some schools were acquiring first-generation machines. These acquisitions were uneven, varying in brand and model not just between school boards, but among schools within boards and even classroom to classroom. Among the most popular were the Commodore PET
Commodore PET
The Commodore PET was a home/personal computer produced from 1977 by Commodore International...
which had a strong following in the new computer programming
Computer programming
Computer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in one or more programming languages. The purpose of programming is to create a program that performs specific operations or exhibits a...
classes due to its tough all-in-one construction and built-in support for Microsoft BASIC
Microsoft BASIC
Microsoft BASIC was the foundation product of the Microsoft company. It first appeared in 1975 as Altair BASIC, which was the first BASIC, and the first high level programming language available for the MITS Altair 8800 hobbyist microcomputer....
, and the Apple II
Apple II
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
which had a wide variety of educational software, mostly aimed at early education.
The Ministry wanted to encourage uses of microcomputers that supported its curriculum guidelines and was willing to underwrite the development of software for that purpose. However, the wide variety of machines being used meant that development costs had to be spread over several platforms. Additionally, many of the curriculum topics they wanted to cover required more storage or graphics capability than at least some of the machines then in use, if not all of them. Educational software was in its infancy, and many hardware acquisitions were made without a clear provision for educational software or a plan for use.
A series of Policy Memos followed outlining the Committee's views. Policy Memo 47 stated that computers are to be used creatively, and for information retrieval; at the time most systems were used solely for programming. They also announced funding for the development of educational software on an estimated 6000 machines. The Ministry decided that standardizing the computers would reduce maintenance costs, and allow for the development of consistent educational software. The Ministry contracted the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATA) to help develop specifications for the new system.
Choosing a design
Policy Memos 68-73 followed in early 1983, stating that none of the existing platforms had all the qualities needed to be truly universal. The idea that a new machine quickly gained currency, with the added bonus that it would help develop a local microcomputer industry. In order to make the new machine attractive, the Ministry agreed to fund up 75% of the purchase price from their own budget. When the plan was first announced there was widespread concern among educators. Their main complaint is that the Ministry would select a standard that was not powerful enough for their needs. A secondary concern was that the time delay between announcing and introducing the computer would be lengthy, a period in which existing purchases could be funded instead.The first set of concerns were rendered moot when the specifications were introduced in March 1983 in the "Functional Requirements for Microcomputers for Educational Use in Ontario Schools--Stage I." The physical design required a PET-like all-in-one case, headphones output for voice and sound effects, and a trackball
Trackball
A trackball is a pointing device consisting of a ball held by a socket containing sensors to detect a rotation of the ball about two axes—like an upside-down mouse with an exposed protruding ball. The user rolls the ball with the thumb, fingers, or the palm of the hand to move a cursor...
for mouse-like pointing support. Inside the case, the specification called for a processor and support systems to allow a multitasking
Multitasking
Multitasking may refer to any of the following:*Computer multitasking - the apparent simultaneous performance of two or more tasks by a computer's central processing unit...
operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
to be used, selecting the Intel 80186
Intel 80186
The 80188 is a version with an 8-bit external data bus, instead of 16-bit. This makes it less expensive to connect to peripherals. The 80188 is otherwise very similar to the 80186. It has a throughput of 1 million instructions per second....
as the CPU. Color graphics were specified, at least as an option, along with monochrome and color monitors on top. Voice synthesis was built in, and the keyboard provided for accented characters. Additionally, the systems would include no local storage at all, and would instead rely on a networked
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....
file server
File server
In computing, a file server is a computer attached to a network that has the primary purpose of providing a location for shared disk access, i.e. shared storage of computer files that can be accessed by the workstations that are attached to the computer network...
containing a hard drive.
The specification was considerably in advance of the state of the art
State of the art
The state of the art is the highest level of development, as of a device, technique, or scientific field, achieved at a particular time. It also refers to the level of development reached at any particular time as a result of the latest methodologies employed.- Origin :The earliest use of the term...
of the time, and when it was delivered commentators immediately reversed their earlier concerns and suggested the machine was too powerful, and would therefore be available in too small numbers.
ICON
To deliver such a machine, Robert Arn, a member of the CATA team, set up CEMCORP, the Canadian Educational Microprocessor Corporation. When the specification was announced in 1983, CEMCORP was announced as the winner of a $10 million contract to develop and supply the initial machines. An additional $5 million in funding was announced to cover development of new software applications, while the Ontario Institute for Studies in EducationOntario Institute for Studies in Education
The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto is a teachers' college in Toronto, Ontario.-History:OISE/UT traces its origins to the founding of the Provincial Normal School in 1847...
(OISE) was asked to convert 30 existing programs to the new machine. In order to be able to afford what was expected to be an expensive machine, the Ministry announced a special "Recognized Extraordinary Expenditure" (REE) grant that would provide for up to 75% of the purchase costs of machines meeting the "Grant Eligible Microcomputer Systems" or "G.E.M.S." specifications.
At the time, only the ICON met the GEMS requirements, which cut its purchase price from around $2500 to a mere $495 (in USD, $2700/$696 CAD) -- less expensive than most existing microcomputers. The entire program was politically explosive throughout its gestation as a result, causing a continual stream of news stories. Critics complained that other machines could be bought for half the cost, and when IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
released the PC/AT
IBM Personal Computer/AT
The IBM Personal Computer AT, more commonly known as the IBM AT and also sometimes called the PC AT or PC/AT, was IBM's second-generation PC, designed around the 6 MHz Intel 80286 microprocessor and released in 1984 as machine type 5170...
in 1984 there was a machine that now competed with it technically. Around this time other platforms, such as the Waterloo PORT networking system, gained approval for the government support that had originally been the province of the ICON.
The basic ICON design had reached "beta quality" after just over a year, using off the shelf parts, the hardware manufactured by Microtel and operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
from Quantum Software Systems
QNX
QNX is a commercial Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. The product was originally developed by Canadian company, QNX Software Systems, which was later acquired by Canadian BlackBerry-producer Research In Motion.-Description:As a microkernel-based...
. The original Microtel machines were first introduced to Ontario schools in 1984 in small numbers, packaged in a short-lived dark brown case. At this point Burroughs Canada was brought in to sell and support them. It wasn't long after this that Sperry
Sperry
-Persons:*Armstrong Sperry , American author and illustrator*Brett Sperry , American video game designer*Carlos A. Sperry, Democratic President of the West Virginia Senate from Greenbrier County, served 1872-1872...
and Burroughs merged to form Unisys
Unisys
Unisys Corporation , headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, United States, and incorporated in Delaware, is a long established business whose core products now involves computing and networking.-History:...
in 1986. Several generations of ICON machines were produced, evolving steadily to become more and more PC-like. They were built into the early 1990s, but by this point were used almost entirely for running DOS and Windows programs.
Ending the project
Throughout the project's lifetime it was subject to continual debate and much political rhetoric. A 1992 article on the topic complained thatBette Stephenson favoured top-down decision making and as a result got trapped by her tunnel vision. Her ICON computer fiasco drained millions from the provincial
treasury and created a white elephant scorned by boards and shunned by teachers.... Computer resources were forced upon the school system as a result of a top-down government decision that was taken precipitously and without research.
The Ministry ceased all support for the ICON in 1994, and Archives Ontario declined to take ICON hardware and copies of the ICON software, which were destroyed. This was controversial in its own right, as others maintained that it could be sent to other schools that lacked extensive Information Technology. Despite the development of the ICON program, equality among schools was not assured because each school community could afford different capital outlays depending on the parents' affluence.
Description
The ICON system was based on a workstationWorkstation
A workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems...
/file server
File server
In computing, a file server is a computer attached to a network that has the primary purpose of providing a location for shared disk access, i.e. shared storage of computer files that can be accessed by the workstations that are attached to the computer network...
model, with no storage local to the workstations. Both the workstations and the servers were similar internally, based on Intel 80186
Intel 80186
The 80188 is a version with an 8-bit external data bus, instead of 16-bit. This makes it less expensive to connect to peripherals. The 80188 is otherwise very similar to the 80186. It has a throughput of 1 million instructions per second....
microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
s, and connected to each other using ARCNET
ARCNET
ARCNET is a local area network protocol, similar in purpose to Ethernet or Token Ring. ARCNET was the first widely available networking system for microcomputers and became popular in the 1980s for office automation tasks...
. Several upgrades were introduced into the ICON line over time. The ICON2 sported a redesigned case, a detached keyboard with integrated trackball, expanded RAM, and facilities for an internal hard disk. The CPU was upgraded to the 386 in the Series III, while an "ICON-on-a-card" for PCs also appeared.
The original ICON workstations were housed in a large wedge-shaped steel case, with a full-sized keyboard mounted slightly left-of-center and a trackball mounted to the right. A rubber bumper-strip ran along the front edge, a precaution against a particular type of cut users sometimes got from the PET's sharp case. The EGA
Enhanced Graphics Adapter
The Enhanced Graphics Adapter is the IBM PC computer display standard specification which is between CGA and VGA in terms of color and space resolution. Introduced in October 1984 by IBM shortly after its new PC/AT, EGA produces a display of 16 simultaneous colors from a palette of 64 at a...
monitor was mounted on top of a tilt-and-swivel mount, a welcome improvement on the PET. It also included TI
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...
's TMS 5220 speech chip, originally designed for the TI-99, and would speak the rather confusing phrase "dhtick" when starting up. Early Microtel machines were dark brown, but the vast majority of examples in the classroom were a more nondescript beige.
The fileserver, sometimes referred to as the LexICON, was a simple box with an internal 10MB hard drive and a 5.25" floppy drive opening to the front. Later Lexicons included a 64MB hard disk, divided into two partitions. Unlike the PET's floppy system, however, users of the ICON used Unix commands to copy data to their personal floppy disks from its "natural" location in the user's home directory on the hard drive.
Both the client and server ran the Unix-like
Unix-like
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
QNX
QNX
QNX is a commercial Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. The product was originally developed by Canadian company, QNX Software Systems, which was later acquired by Canadian BlackBerry-producer Research In Motion.-Description:As a microkernel-based...
as their operating system with the addition of network file-sharing, the basic portions of it embedded in ROM
Read-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
. To this they added a NAPLPS
NAPLPS
NAPLPS is a graphics language for use originally with videotex and teletext services. NAPLPS was developed from the Telidon system developed in Canada, with a small number of additions from AT&T...
/Telidon-based graphics system, which was intended to be used with the trackball to make interactive programs. The system included a Paint programme that used the trackball, but did not include a usable GUI
Gui
Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
, although there were several attempts to produce one. QNX 2.0.1 included a modest one called "House", and another was built at least to the prototype stage by Helicon Systems in Toronto and appeared in one form as Ambience, though its capabilities were limited. A later upgrade called ICONLook improved upon this greatly, but it was apparently too slow to use realistically. Helicon Systems also produced a MIDI interface for the original ICON.
The biggest problem for the machine was a lack of software. The ICON was originally designed to let teachers create and share their own lessonware, using a simple hypertext-based system where pages could either link to other pages or run programs written in "C". The "anyone can create lessonware" model was rejected by the Ministry of Education before the ICON shipped (in favour of a model where the Ministry funded and controlled all lessonware), leaving the ICON with only the QNX command line interface and the Cemcorp-developed text editor application.
The various Watcom
Watcom
Watcom International Corporation was founded in 1981 by three former employees of the Computer Systems Group at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada...
programming languages were quickly ported to the system, but beyond that, the educational software teachers expected was few and far between. The Ministry contracted for a number of applications, but the small target market and the sometimes-difficult procedure required to secure such contracts were significant obstacles for realistic commercial development.
Current usage
Although the Icon disappeared, the QNXQNX
QNX is a commercial Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. The product was originally developed by Canadian company, QNX Software Systems, which was later acquired by Canadian BlackBerry-producer Research In Motion.-Description:As a microkernel-based...
operating system is alive and well, if particularly different from its earliest versions. In addition to being present in over 100 vehicle models (navigation systems
Automotive navigation system
An automotive navigation system is a satellite navigation system designed for use in automobiles. It typically uses a GPS navigation device to acquire position data to locate the user on a road in the unit's map database. Using the road database, the unit can give directions to other locations...
, telematics
Telematics
Telematics typically is any integrated use of telecommunications and informatics, also known as ICT...
, speech recognition
Speech recognition
Speech recognition converts spoken words to text. The term "voice recognition" is sometimes used to refer to recognition systems that must be trained to a particular speaker—as is the case for most desktop recognition software...
, bluetooth
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a proprietary open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks with high levels of security...
hands-free systems, etc.), it also powers the Cisco
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking, voice, and communications technology and services. Cisco has more than 70,000 employees and annual revenue of US$...
CRS-1 and RIM's
Research In Motion
Research In Motion Limited or RIM is a Canadian multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada that designs, manufactures and markets wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market...
BlackBerry PlayBook
BlackBerry PlayBook
The BlackBerry PlayBook is a tablet computer by Research In Motion , best known for the BlackBerry smartphone. It competes against Apple's iPad and a slew of Android-powered tablets....
.
Software
- A Week in the Life of..., a choose-your-own-adventure type game in which you would play as one of five high school students, making various choices for them and dealing with consequences.
- The Bartlett Saga, a four-part game on Canadian history
- Build-A-BirdBuild-A-BirdBuild-A-Bird was educational software for the Unisys ICON II public school computer. It may have appeared on the ICON I or Unisys ICON III.-Overview:Build-A-Bird was designed and developed by Ergonomics Lab, University of Toronto...
[Ergonomics Lab, University of Toronto] - Cargo Sailor (1987), a game where you delivered goods to different ports around the world, given the latitudeLatitudeIn geography, the latitude of a location on the Earth is the angular distance of that location south or north of the Equator. The latitude is an angle, and is usually measured in degrees . The equator has a latitude of 0°, the North pole has a latitude of 90° north , and the South pole has a...
and longitudeLongitudeLongitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east-west position of a point on the Earth's surface. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees, minutes and seconds, and denoted by the Greek letter lambda ....
. - ChemistryLand, a simulation involving elements taken from the first two rows of the periodic tablePeriodic tableThe periodic table of the chemical elements is a tabular display of the 118 known chemical elements organized by selected properties of their atomic structures. Elements are presented by increasing atomic number, the number of protons in an atom's atomic nucleus...
, from atomic, molecular and chemistry lab perspectives [Ergonomics Lab, University of Toronto] - Cross Country Canada (game), a game where you travelled across Canada in a truck, picking up and delivering cargo.
- Cross Country USACross Country USACross Country USA is a 1985 edutainment videogame by Didatech. Developed for the PC, the purpose of the game is to pick up commodities from one city and deliver them to another by driving across the country. Players interacted with the game through a command line using commands such as "turn on...
, same as above but within the USA. - Decide, your excellency, a game about being the leader of a small country, similar to the Bartlett saga where the choices you make determine the games outcome, uses + and - which affect your score
- Ernie's Big Splash, a video game including Sesame StreetSesame StreetSesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...
characters - fgED, a drawing program
- IPaintIPaintIPaint is an animation editing program for the ICON computer.IPaint animates drawings on the principle of points that act as pivots. To animate a figure, the user creates a line drawing, then copies the drawing to a new frame and moves the figure's points to new positions. IPaint then calculates...
, an animation editor [Ergonomics Lab, University of Toronto] - ITalk, a speech editor [Ergonomics Lab, University of Toronto]
- Logo, an implementation of the Logo programming language
- MathRace, a math video game where solving problems will make the runner move faster
- MathMaze, a math video game where a knight is led through a castle
- Mathville, a math video game involving solving puzzles and conducting transactions to earn money and "move up in the world".
- MoneyMarket, a stock market simulator
- MusicLandMusiclandThe Musicland Group, Inc. was an entertainment company which ran Sam Goody, Suncoast Motion Picture Company and the Media Play Superstore Chain. Musicland filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in January 2006. Trans World Entertainment which runs FYE, and sells CDs, DVDs, and video games, purchased...
[Ergonomics Lab, University of Toronto] - Northwest Fur Trader
- Offshore Fishing, an offshore fishing simulator
- Spectricon, a drawing program
- Lemonade StandLemonade StandLemonade Stand is a basic economics game created in 1973 by Bob Jamison of the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium. Charlie Kellner ported the game to the Apple II platform in February 1979...
, an educational game where you set lemonade prices based on the weather forecast - Eco-Island, a game where the ecosystem of a small island is simulated
- Robot R&D, a game where you created robots from various parts, and could drop-test them.